Shell Game

A client of the firm I work for slipped a requirement into the guidelines it demanded for our working relationship.  Specifically, we needed to prove that we could pass the GHG (Greenhouse Gas) Protocol and ISO 14064 in order to certify our sustainable and environmentally neutral contribution to the project.  Unlike you or I in our piddly interactions with the companies and services we employ and are at the complete mercy of down here at ground level, at the highest echelons of power it's the clients who are in the driver's seat and they can and do impose any restrictions and limitations they please on the professionals who bow and scrape to serve them.  Discounts, rate freezes, prohibitions on being charged for certain costs that the firm must incur in its work are only part of what clients feel empowered to impose on the professionals they employ.  In the past few decades, facing their own battles with a lack of diversity in their executive suites among other complaints, corporations got wise to the idea of leeching off the virtue of others, forcing firms that worked for them to adhere to strict Diversity standards, inspiring even self-policing firms like mine to adopt DEI.   Now that the firm has gone as far as adding a Chief Officer of Diversity to their C-Suite, with the coming of the current administration, the wind has blown the other way, causing whispers of the wisdom of finding ways to obfuscate our DEI compliance should the business environment tilt away from it.  The same is surely possible with Greenhouse Gas Protocols but as the client asking them of us is European and the requirement was demanded only after January 20-- and the firm has its own history of environmental window dressing anyway-- the protocols will be followed.

The ISO 14064 Standards are the product of the International Organization of Standardization (always abbreviated and pronounced ISO in keeping with its global reach), a NGO  that comprises the selected representative standardization organs of 173 member nations, the successor of an international professional association of engineers commissioned in 1947 by the UN to broaden its mission to complement the UN's own under a rebranded ISO umbrella, now headquartered in Geneva.  ISO concerns itself with the development of internationally recognized standards in a variety of fields "from manufactured products and technology to food safety, transport, IT, agriculture, and healthcare" per the Wikipedia article on it.  Per the ISO website, the 14064 Standard contributes to a group of related standards called the "Sustainable Development Goals."  The current iteration of the Standard was published in 2018 and replaces the original which was introduced in 2006. The protocol is reviewed at least every 5 years to ensure its currency, and though it has passed its most recent review, a successor is already in the works.  ISO 14064 was devised as a way to give corporations and others metrics for demonstrating compliance with established greenhouse gas guidelines such as the already existing GHG Protocol.

The GHG Protocol is the product of the World Resources Institute, a Washington based research non-profit established in 1982, with now a dozen international offices and a presence in over 50 countries worldwide.  Per Wikipedia, as an institution WRI "seeks to promote a sustainable human society with a basis of human health and well-being, environmental sustainability, and economic opportunity" and partners with local and national governments, corporations and other non-profits in this mission.  Originally funded with MacArthur Foundation money, of late it has received sizeable gifts from Real Estate and Sports mogul Stephen Ross and the Bezos Earth Fund.  The current CEO, Ani Dasgupta has just published a book ,The New Global Possible: Rebuilding Optimism in the Age of Climate Crisis, that has been blurbed by former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry and Jesper Brodin of Ikea, and which Jane Goodall describes as a "compelling and hopeful reminder that change is not only within our grasp-- it is happening." (Yes, but what kind of change?)

ISO 14064 and GHG Protocol are complementary tools for corporate Greenhouse Gas accounting, and their history is intertwined.  As a 2007 notice described:

ISO, WRI, and WBCSD have already collaborated on the multiple globally accepted standards for GHG accounting and reporting. The ISO 14064 standard, established in 2006, is consistent and compatible with the GHG Protocol, published by WRI and WBCSD in 2004. The organizations are encouraging corporations, governments, and others to use them as complementary tools. ISO 14064 details internationally agreed requirements on what needs to be done in GHG accounting and verification efforts, while the GHG Protocol outlines, not only what needs to be done, but also how to undertake GHG accounting and reporting. 

Is there any plausibility to thinking the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064 series of standards are just window dressing and self-congratulatory mcguffins for corporate malfeasance and not really environmentally effective standards?  If you scratch the surface of the GHG Protocol you don't have go too deep to find trouble for actual action on climate change. From the WRI website:

GHG Protocol arose when WRI and WBCSD recognized the need for an international standard for corporate GHG accounting and reporting in the late 1990s. Together with large corporate partners such as BP and General Motors, in 1998 WRI published a report called, “Safe Climate, Sound Business.” It identified an action agenda to address climate change that included the need for standardized measurement of GHG emissions 

Similar initiatives were being discussed at WBCSD. In late 1997, WRI senior managers met with WBCSD officials and an agreement was reached to launch an NGO-business partnership to address standardized methods for GHG accounting. WRI and WBCSD convened a core steering group comprised of members from environmental groups (such as WWF, Pew Center on Global Climate Change, The Energy Research Institute) and industry (such as Norsk Hydro, Tokyo Electric, Shell) to guide the multi-stakeholder standard development process.

Having BP, GM, Shell, utilities and the banks that finance all of the above construct standards for GHG compliance is rather like inviting the fox to contribute to the design of the henhouse.  Of course the emphasis will be on strategies for exchanging your corporations "credits" for allowable GHG emission for another company's needs to rape the planet.   Of course the emphasis will be on anodyne entreaties to individuals to bear the burden of environmental mitigation by choosing to consume approved products.  While the change actually required by our predicament is too dear from the perspective of corporations' bottom lines, no expense can be spared in securing the stamp of approval of the Green Energy Committees whose board members come from the same corporations or from "Citizens' Climate Lobbies" founded by the ubiquitous former Reagan Secretary of State George Schulz, Republican congressmen and Ivy League climatologists.   

The interwebs abound in optimistic appraisals of where we are with respect to climate change as a result of voluntary compliance of our worst offenders to their own Protocols.  Finding the real news about how we're doing is much harder to come by.  When we leave the policing of polluters on their progress with climate change to themselves, the noise of the optimism of their self-congratulatory public relations can drown out the conversation of what really must be done to mitigate the harms we continue to inflict on the planet.

The dilution of what should be the mission of the protocol is in the title of that 1998 report. Isn't "Sound Business" what got us into this mess?