Speaker 1: Hi, this is Dana Perkins and you're listening to Switch
Speaker 1: It on the B n OF podcast. For a lot
Speaker 1: of us who look at climate and emissions data, I
Speaker 1: think many of us have a moment where they think,
Speaker 1: how are my actions having an impact on warming? It
Speaker 1: certainly happened for me a few years back, and I
Speaker 1: tried to go on a carbon diet, if you will.
Speaker 1: I started by looking at movements all around me for
Speaker 1: an inspiration. There were the zero waste folks, the vegans,
Speaker 1: the different shared economy business models, and the second hand options.
Speaker 1: Then were the things that I needed to do to
Speaker 1: upgrade my life, like how I heat and insulate my
Speaker 1: home and looking at my transportation choices. It was a
Speaker 1: long list, and in all honesty, it took me a
Speaker 1: year of incremental changes to evaluate all of these aspects
Speaker 1: and guess what, I am still not personally net zero,
Speaker 1: not without carbon offsets. So where I landed at the
Speaker 1: end of this year of carbon dieting was that my
Speaker 1: actions were really a little bit less about the individual
Speaker 1: missions gains and more about the consumer markets signals I
Speaker 1: was sending to companies. It was about what I was
Speaker 1: and wasn't buying. My story is not unique, nor is
Speaker 1: it unique to people focused on climate. So today I
Speaker 1: speak with Hugh Bromley, who focuses on consumer trends for
Speaker 1: us at b an EF. He recently wrote a research
Speaker 1: note titled Boycotts Bycotts, Lifestyle Choices and Discursive Acts. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about some of this framework and
Speaker 1: the examples of things that people are doing right now
Speaker 1: in regard to these categories. Hughes research really tends to
Speaker 1: focus on surveys and he'll talk of it today about
Speaker 1: what they might be telling us about what people are
Speaker 1: thinking and doing. As a reminder, b any F does
Speaker 1: not provide investment or strategy advice, and we've got a
Speaker 1: full disclaimer at the end of the show. Also, if
Speaker 1: you get to the end of the show and you
Speaker 1: decide you want to read the research that he is
Speaker 1: referring to, it can be found at b NF go
Speaker 1: on the Bloomberg terminal on BNF dot com, or via
Speaker 1: our mobile app for our subscribers. And now let's speak
Speaker 1: with you. So Hugh, thanks for joining today. Let's start
Speaker 1: a little bit by explaining what it is that you
Speaker 1: focus on researching at b A d F. Because it's
Speaker 1: not our usual technology adoption and looking forward price curve
Speaker 1: sort of situation. What is your primary area focus at
Speaker 1: the moment? I have had a little bit of unusual
Speaker 1: role at being as you say, where my primary focus
Speaker 1: is producing analysis on consumers. It's not marketing research or
Speaker 1: market research per se. I'm really thinking about consumers as
Speaker 1: a vector for transition and decompanization. So that's you know,
Speaker 1: how to choose to climate change and energy and transport
Speaker 1: technologies and how their behavior is affecting the pace of
Speaker 1: change in the speed of decompanization. This is a topic
Speaker 1: that I'm keenly interested in, but I think you have
Speaker 1: a much bigger theme within this, which is how do
Speaker 1: all those little actions that are leading us closer but
Speaker 1: not personally actually there in many regards to that zero,
Speaker 1: How does that have a potentially larger impact on the
Speaker 1: political and corporate environment that we all exist in. So
Speaker 1: let's start by asking what is a political consumer? Which
Speaker 1: is a deliberate term that you used throughout your research
Speaker 1: on this topic. Political consumer changes over time for each topics,
Speaker 1: and we think about climate change, it starts off with
Speaker 1: a pretty fringe group of society caring about a topic,
Speaker 1: right at the edge of the social radar climate change
Speaker 1: of different environmental issues. But over time those ideas become
Speaker 1: more mainstream around admissional reduction or around the emissions related
Speaker 1: to big consumption, for example. And as they do, obviously
Speaker 1: the population involved, the populace that cares about this topic grows,
Speaker 1: enters what we call the lifestyle politics of that minority,
Speaker 1: and still it keeps growing and growing, and suddenly there's
Speaker 1: critical mass the political landscape that changes the commercial landscape
Speaker 1: as well, where companies see an opportunity and cater into
Speaker 1: this growing minority soon to be a majority by offering
Speaker 1: new products and services and thinking about their own supply
Speaker 1: chains and how they need to evolve to not be
Speaker 1: called out within there. So you created a bit of
Speaker 1: a framework in which to think about what are the
Speaker 1: different things that political consumers actually can and are doing
Speaker 1: currently and where those might actually exist within the climate
Speaker 1: change space, because that is a specific lens you're looking
Speaker 1: at it. You talk a little bit about that framework
Speaker 1: with us. Political consurism as a concept has existed for
Speaker 1: many decades now, and there's examples of political consumerism dating
Speaker 1: back to British settle in India and different trade disputes
Speaker 1: through the environmental movement of the nineteen fifties sixty seventies.
Speaker 1: The framework has been used for media finishes before, but
Speaker 1: really what we're done here in this piece of research
Speaker 1: is applied to climate change. The four ways that consumers
Speaker 1: can act in response to political matters are defined as
Speaker 1: Boycott's pretty simple. You choose not to consume a product
Speaker 1: or a product group or a brand. They can be
Speaker 1: bi coots, let's be buy cots, and those by coots
Speaker 1: are a little bit different. Sometimes it involves ring fencing
Speaker 1: only buying products that are certified green power or certified
Speaker 1: be Corp, for example, or it could be more broader
Speaker 1: than that, by cots of solar storage or technologies of Tesla.
Speaker 1: Then you've got discursive actions. And this is really not
Speaker 1: so much about what you buy or you don't buy it,
Speaker 1: but it's about how you communicate your consumption choices. It's
Speaker 1: about imposing those beliefs on others, generally by making fun
Speaker 1: of a corporation, a brand, or a politician and there
Speaker 1: in many cases greenwashing. And finally you've got lifestyle choices.
Speaker 1: This lifestyle choice is going to compass everything, but it's
Speaker 1: where you see cobalt to the population avoiding flying, avoiding needs,
Speaker 1: electrifying their homes, or you know, some cases, going off grid.
Speaker 1: So let's stay fit a little bit on the discursive
Speaker 1: actions part, because I think that's one that might be
Speaker 1: very new to us conceptually, or at least you know what.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to speak for other people. It's new
Speaker 1: to me conceptually, but it's something that actually, now that
Speaker 1: you bring it up, it is really obvious that it's
Speaker 1: we're surrounded by it because we live in this increasingly
Speaker 1: technology filled world where we spend an inordinate amount of
Speaker 1: times actually interacting on our phones and looking at different messaging,
Speaker 1: not just advertising, but like different people's agendas on whether
Speaker 1: it be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or a variety of other
Speaker 1: much hipper apps that I'm sure people younger than we
Speaker 1: actually use. So what is an example of something that
Speaker 1: we might see that like a polluter parodying is one
Speaker 1: of the areas that you looked to our social media movements.
Speaker 1: Would something like a meat free Monday be considered a
Speaker 1: social media movement? I could say that a lot a
Speaker 1: lifestyle action in many cases where you're engaging a certain
Speaker 1: population or community in changing their behavior. When we think
Speaker 1: about discursive actions, we're thinking more about a way of
Speaker 1: picking an antagonist and really reversing the script on them,
Speaker 1: and we see this all around. Actually there's been as
Speaker 1: much discursive actions, I think as there has been greenwashing
Speaker 1: is you know, played climate discussions for years. But you know,
Speaker 1: an example would be if you walk around any of
Speaker 1: the cops cities and the most recently Glasgow billboards posted
Speaker 1: across the city, you know, really pulling out brands like NatWest,
Speaker 1: like Shell, like Standard, Jot and Jagua Landerer. So they're
Speaker 1: you know, what's perceived or conveyed to be their greenwashing,
Speaker 1: and they're a false script on the action they're taking
Speaker 1: on climate change. There actually was a Twitter butt on
Speaker 1: International Women's Day when people activated the butt by tagging
Speaker 1: it to a Twitter feed where someone said Happy Women's Day.
Speaker 1: Their gender pay gap number was automatically inserted by the
Speaker 1: Twitter butt. That be considered a discursive action, yeah, I
Speaker 1: would think. So, you know, they're really innovative, they're engaging,
Speaker 1: they're normally comical. They're not going to appeal to everybody.
Speaker 1: They are really just about getting a message out there
Speaker 1: to they already believers. Uh and potentially highlighting a problems
Speaker 1: outbuts so on discursive actions, they're almost always intended to
Speaker 1: send a signal to the company that they're specifically talking about.
Speaker 1: And yes, there is a public sentiment element to it
Speaker 1: where you're trying to rally others, but you're also sending
Speaker 1: a very deliberate message to either consumer or political group. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's right. So clearly the main audience here
Speaker 1: is the climate engaged and the company being targeted, and
Speaker 1: it's the pressure there c suite and executive to make
Speaker 1: it just the change the behavior. As you said before,
Speaker 1: they're monitoring their socials to see how much negative feedback
Speaker 1: there is. If these you know, engaging billboards and tweets
Speaker 1: and marketing campaigns get picked up by mass menia and
Speaker 1: center and viewed by by thousands or hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of millions of people, then suddenly that's extremely powerful and
Speaker 1: potentially more powerful in their own brand in many cases
Speaker 1: their own marketing efforts, and there's the expectation that there
Speaker 1: will be a response. It's a distraction to their core
Speaker 1: business and the way of avoiding that is the change.
Speaker 1: Now for a very short break, stay with us. One
Speaker 1: of the things that I read recently was about the
Speaker 1: tagging within social media. So let's say Instagram and negative
Speaker 1: Instagram post, and it was in the tens of thousands,
Speaker 1: not hundreds of thousands, where a negative reaction to something
Speaker 1: actually started to get a response from the marketing team
Speaker 1: essentially at that company, and then would escalate it upward.
Speaker 1: So getting the eyes of a company on their consumers,
Speaker 1: which you know, the most important stakeholders in many respects,
Speaker 1: is actually something that happens more quickly than you might
Speaker 1: think because they're quite sensitive to what it is those
Speaker 1: consumers think about, particularly in the consumer discretionary space, how
Speaker 1: they're tied to that brand. But let's talk a second
Speaker 1: actually about the boycotts and bycotts. So we're thinking boycotts
Speaker 1: are the things we don't buycots are the things we
Speaker 1: do buy, and what sort of market signals those may send.
Speaker 1: But how about lifestyle choices? How would you say lifestyle
Speaker 1: choices differ from these boycotts and bycotts. They generally bit
Speaker 1: more all encompassing. So it's not just about buying a
Speaker 1: certified componutral products. It's about changing your loss job obviously,
Speaker 1: and being inconvenience in order to make your point at
Speaker 1: the slight shaming movements out of Northern Europe is a
Speaker 1: classy example here vegan and vegetarians and where it is
Speaker 1: tied to a driver are examples of lifestyle movements. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier, you could trace this back to far
Speaker 1: more fringe groups, you know, living off grid or in
Speaker 1: isolated communities, living an environmentally friendly lifestyle. So in this
Speaker 1: we have identified the different things that people are and
Speaker 1: can do within within this space in order to influence.
Speaker 1: But my question really is how do we measure it
Speaker 1: and what sorts of things do you look at to
Speaker 1: see whether or not these are significant things to be
Speaker 1: watched by the political and corporate environment. I tend to
Speaker 1: measure things through survey, and surveys are fraud beasts in
Speaker 1: that you know what people say and what people do
Speaker 1: is not always the same thing. Certainly, there's an agel
Speaker 1: saying that the perception is reality. So really, as a
Speaker 1: forward indicator, perception of how people view companies of happy
Speaker 1: with your policies and politicians will shape their reality more
Speaker 1: so than data of what has happened in the past.
Speaker 1: And through that lens we can be a number of
Speaker 1: people who are adopting different technologies for different reasons, for example,
Speaker 1: through survey or the number of people who have positive
Speaker 1: or negative opinions of a politician, of a policy, of
Speaker 1: a corporation, of a corporate action. And it all informs
Speaker 1: a view of can you consume a driver and how
Speaker 1: much activity and behavior might just be economic and rational,
Speaker 1: and how much might be taken to us into account
Speaker 1: some sort of other X factor or disengagement of the
Speaker 1: political discourse. What are some of the more interesting surveys
Speaker 1: that you've looked at as a fleet? I highlight the
Speaker 1: surveys have flagged a couple of problems in the way
Speaker 1: we talk about climate change. Generally speaking, the surveys highlight
Speaker 1: that climate change in the environment are conflated and one
Speaker 1: of the same water pollution is treated the same as
Speaker 1: coal emissions, and therefore the symptoms, causes, and solutions climate
Speaker 1: change are really not abvious to people and their actions
Speaker 1: they're spending. Their actions might be totally misdirected towards what
Speaker 1: they feel activities that will benefit the climate in some way.
Speaker 1: There's certainly willingness or increase willingness to pay for those
Speaker 1: products and solutions. But if you don't know where to
Speaker 1: spend the money or if you're misdone and a way
Speaker 1: to spend the money. We're obviously getting some poor outcomes.
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about the political part of it.
Speaker 1: The term is political consumer and what we've talked about
Speaker 1: thus far. You brought up politicians, but I'm really seeing
Speaker 1: this is much more sending signals to companies in particular
Speaker 1: again in the consumer and consumer discutionary space. How does
Speaker 1: this influence politicians and how closely are they watching boycotts,
Speaker 1: by cuts, lifestyle choices in terms of how they're not
Speaker 1: just formulating policy, which is really important, but also forming
Speaker 1: their platform for election and re election. To talk about
Speaker 1: companies first and clearly, within political consumerism, the company can
Speaker 1: be the antagonists. It can be That's how I got
Speaker 1: on all Board that he has made a mockery of
Speaker 1: because of their green washing. They can also be the consumer.
Speaker 1: And in the final stage of put consumerism, really, when
Speaker 1: you're going through those fringe groups society into a larger
Speaker 1: minority into the majority, the corporations ultimately change as well
Speaker 1: and pressure their supply chain, and they become the catalyst
Speaker 1: that change. They become the force here. I think political
Speaker 1: consurers is pretty apparent to me. Within my time of
Speaker 1: being effort I have recalcissant governments have followed me around.
Speaker 1: I suppose you know. I started here in Australia shortly
Speaker 1: within a year or so, the Tony Abbott was elected
Speaker 1: Prime Minister and quickly tore up the carbon pricing regime
Speaker 1: that we had in place at the time. I moved
Speaker 1: to the US. Within a year, Donald Trump was elected
Speaker 1: to up a clean power plan and drew from the
Speaker 1: Paris Accord. With each of those advance the immediate local
Speaker 1: reaction was we're moving enormously backwards. There's three or four
Speaker 1: years of backwards stepping on climate change and climate policy
Speaker 1: before there's any hope of change. And actually, what we
Speaker 1: saw in both cases, in Australia and in the US
Speaker 1: some of the most recalcistant administrations were seen in the
Speaker 1: Western world, is that some slack and not all, but
Speaker 1: some slack was taken up by consumers and corporations taking action,
Speaker 1: and cities and organizations and others as well. But they
Speaker 1: took up the slack as a message to those politicians
Speaker 1: that we still care. In Australia, you know, when their
Speaker 1: carbon pricing raising was torn up. We had no carbon
Speaker 1: policy there for a while, we had front page news
Speaker 1: story saying that we had the highest power prices in
Speaker 1: the world. It was attributed by the politicians to carbon pricing,
Speaker 1: but really it's pretty obvious to everybody now that it
Speaker 1: was network spending and a very high exchange right, very
Speaker 1: strong dollar that was leading to those record of power prices.
Speaker 1: But that didn't change the social impression that it was
Speaker 1: the climate policy and the action that was taken by
Speaker 1: many consumers to say, we're still going to invest in
Speaker 1: solar an investment solo, either because we don't like our
Speaker 1: power company for price gauging us or for not taking
Speaker 1: climate action, or we don't like this government again for
Speaker 1: not taking climate action. That wasn't everybody installed solar. It
Speaker 1: was around a fifth percent of customers installed as a
Speaker 1: political message. Around four fifth was economics driven and they admitted.
Speaker 1: So it is a significant minority twenty of the population
Speaker 1: in the US. You have very similar stories when you
Speaker 1: have the kind of the we are still in it
Speaker 1: movement that was started up the Trump announced you would
Speaker 1: withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement, and you've got city states, colleges, churches,
Speaker 1: everyone's saying we will commit to a pathway consistent with
Speaker 1: one and a half degree warning and take action toward it.
Speaker 1: And some of those actions work economic anyway, but many works,
Speaker 1: many were two or three years ahead of the economics
Speaker 1: really making sense on such a pledge, and yet they
Speaker 1: made that decision anyway, and that maintained the political pressure
Speaker 1: such that not all was lost. Now for a very
Speaker 1: short break, stay with us. One of the things I
Speaker 1: think that we see very clearly in our analysis across
Speaker 1: the varied deems that we have at being the efforts
Speaker 1: that there is no one single thing that is the
Speaker 1: most important thing. There is this kind of concept that
Speaker 1: generally you have this archway and each stone is interdependent
Speaker 1: on each other to hold each other up. And I
Speaker 1: know that this is definitely one of those the political
Speaker 1: consumer space as it interrelates then with politics and with companies,
Speaker 1: but specifically as we head now into what is a progressed,
Speaker 1: high inflation environment, and some of these technologies, as you're
Speaker 1: pointing out, technologies are actually products that are considered to
Speaker 1: be greener, cleaner. Adoption may slow down as people have
Speaker 1: less discretionary income to spend on these things or spare
Speaker 1: income to spend on kind of things that are more expensive.
Speaker 1: How important is the political consumer space in driving change
Speaker 1: because you referenced that at some point it picked up
Speaker 1: the lap when you know the politics backed away from
Speaker 1: looking at this in certain geographies. Will we be able
Speaker 1: to have the same progress on reaching certain climate goals
Speaker 1: if this ends up becoming a decrease in element of
Speaker 1: I guess the change nexus that we're looking at inflation
Speaker 1: is a good place to start. Actually, it was obviously
Speaker 1: contemporary topics, and I think it will drive change. When
Speaker 1: people drive past and see fuel prices they haven't seen ever,
Speaker 1: or haven't seen in at least ten years, they're going
Speaker 1: to make decisions. Very few, I would argue, we're going
Speaker 1: to do the calculation of workout whether an e V
Speaker 1: makes sense of its day. But enough will be outraged
Speaker 1: at the fact that politicians are still levying fuel exercises
Speaker 1: on them whilst petrol prices are so high, or outraged
Speaker 1: that fuel companies are a price gouging them, you know,
Speaker 1: oblivious to the greater macro picture, and they'll make a
Speaker 1: decision to purchase electric vehicle regardless. Now that might not
Speaker 1: be driven by climate, maybe it will be a factor.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there is political consumerism going on right now
Speaker 1: around inflation and particularly energy inflation with climate benefit. That's
Speaker 1: a really good point because I'm thinking about the high
Speaker 1: gas prices at the moment, and then this whole discussion
Speaker 1: around heat pumps and how difficult in some geographies they
Speaker 1: can be to install. And actually I know a few
Speaker 1: people who are essentially pushing extra hard through that paper
Speaker 1: were given the current economic and political crimeate around what
Speaker 1: is you know, fraught pipelines of natural gas from eastern
Speaker 1: to to western Europe. I was thinking about it as
Speaker 1: people probably would spend less on greener things. But you
Speaker 1: raise a really good point. A may spur additional action
Speaker 1: in other areas. They need to be able to afford it,
Speaker 1: so certainly, so that's that point is not lost. But
Speaker 1: given the capability to afford to make that decision, and
Speaker 1: we're talking about you know, fringe to to to larger
Speaker 1: minorities of the population here, action will not always be
Speaker 1: driven by economics. That we've driven by a political statement
Speaker 1: or a statement to corporations that the status quo isn't
Speaker 1: working and change needs to happen. So you've got a
Speaker 1: couple of case studies in here that I think are
Speaker 1: worth highlighting. So maybe we could go into those in
Speaker 1: some detail. But let's talk about California households and the
Speaker 1: bi cuts of pv SO photovoltaic home solar and backup
Speaker 1: batteries and some regards which I know have become useful
Speaker 1: as a alternative of two backup generators. There have been
Speaker 1: some power outages that have continued over the last few
Speaker 1: years in California, specifically due to things like buyers and winds.
Speaker 1: What has happened in California that that's a sophisticated by
Speaker 1: cut market, is it not? I think it is. I
Speaker 1: think it is of multiple technologies. But you know, the
Speaker 1: conflation of different events around, you know, around the period
Speaker 1: was really interesting California because clearly you had solar already economic,
Speaker 1: and for most consumers you had storages really being pushed
Speaker 1: and new intenses in place, so economic drivers improving. But
Speaker 1: beyond that, the political landscape had just changed. Trump is
Speaker 1: in his second year in office and in becoming he's
Speaker 1: announced he's going to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement,
Speaker 1: and meanwhile California face its most destructive wildfire season ever
Speaker 1: forty seven lives or lost. Ten thousand buildings or more
Speaker 1: were destroyed, and there was a bit of a movement there.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a strong uptake in all the
Speaker 1: storage to go after those fires. Plus some other liabilities
Speaker 1: incurred by the local power company, Pacific Gas and Electric,
Speaker 1: ultimately led to their bankruptcy. So suddenly you have these
Speaker 1: two antagonists. You're PG and E, and you had a
Speaker 1: federal government who was moving backward on climate change, and
Speaker 1: meanwhile you're facing what you see as the most destructive
Speaker 1: and cataclysmic climate events in history. It was only a
Speaker 1: year later there were more wildfires and more damage than
Speaker 1: the political response was to the Trump criticized the California
Speaker 1: authorities for not breaking the forest. So when there's that
Speaker 1: sort of political discourse, there is going to be a
Speaker 1: consumer action. It helped that the economics were great, of
Speaker 1: course it did, but you saw these other nudges. And
Speaker 1: in consumer behavioral science we always talk about nudges, and
Speaker 1: the political nudge here was actually to do nothing or
Speaker 1: to pretend it wasn't a problem. And that was enough
Speaker 1: of a nudge for the engage and the educator to
Speaker 1: make a decision to adopt technology. Then let's talk also
Speaker 1: about another case study that you referenced a little earlier
Speaker 1: regarding in the Nordics flake shaming, and some airlines have
Speaker 1: seen it as a threat, other airlines have actually taken
Speaker 1: it head on. So KLM lunch this Fly Responsibly campaign
Speaker 1: that actually addresses and embraces a little bit this flight
Speaker 1: shaming mentality that's going on at the moment. What sort
Speaker 1: of changes have the surveys that you looked at, how
Speaker 1: people responded to this, and is this pressure or potentially
Speaker 1: virtue signaling, is it working and is it changing people's patterns.
Speaker 1: Flight shaming or at least flight avoidance is larger than
Speaker 1: people expect. And the flight shaping movement was a very
Speaker 1: Northern European movement at first, a little bit elitist. It
Speaker 1: was a bunch of local celebrities talking about their boycott
Speaker 1: of plane and travel because of emissions. It's spread across
Speaker 1: Western Europe. But really we're seeing science that all around
Speaker 1: the world now. For example, in the UK, the majority
Speaker 1: of Britons now say they have already or likely to
Speaker 1: avoid traveling by plane on holidays. You see even similar
Speaker 1: numbers in China, smaller numbers in Japan, but an awareness
Speaker 1: that's short distance flying short distaviation its emissions and can
Speaker 1: be avoided. Follows through is more difficult to measure, especially
Speaker 1: during the last two or three years when the wiped out,
Speaker 1: So it's a bit too early to know, but this
Speaker 1: was very much on the forefront of airlines minds and
Speaker 1: dialogues going in COVID. You mentioned KOM that fly responsibily
Speaker 1: campaign is particularly interesting because they're basically asking travelers to
Speaker 1: consider not flying at all, are using something else. Most
Speaker 1: other airlines really just present your carbon offset options or
Speaker 1: you know, flying carbon neutral options. They're not trying to
Speaker 1: turn away your business. Across Europe we see a under
Speaker 1: of organizations banning short distance flights to their employees. Lots
Speaker 1: of universities, the BBC Greater London Authority all banned employees
Speaker 1: from traveling. We see Deloitte, for example, making a major
Speaker 1: investment in light Year, likely as a company out of
Speaker 1: the Netherlands that makes solar powered cars, which will be
Speaker 1: one of the first customers of to move their employees
Speaker 1: across continental Europe seeking out alternatives because again, you know,
Speaker 1: corporations are kind the final movie here. They think about
Speaker 1: their supply chain, they think about where criticism is going
Speaker 1: to come from in the future, and they're taking action.
Speaker 1: He referenced Curbon offsets and then said, you know, playing
Speaker 1: Curbon neutral on that. But we have a whole another
Speaker 1: episode with Kyle Harrison about the offset space and how
Speaker 1: incredibly fraught the additionality of those offsets can be. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to digress too much there. Let's go
Speaker 1: into one final example while we're on the show today
Speaker 1: about resilian products and how that may have an impact
Speaker 1: on the Amazon rainforest. And you know what people are
Speaker 1: actually doing and how they're tying specific products to that
Speaker 1: geographic space and that ecosystem. This is a really fascinating example.
Speaker 1: And as a current example, right before I mentioned Australia,
Speaker 1: I mentioned the US and California. With that political dynamics
Speaker 1: passed in many cases, in most cases in Brazil is
Speaker 1: still very much happening. And you've got a President Bosonara
Speaker 1: there who has been skeptical and critical of climate action
Speaker 1: since his in operation, and you know, not a lot
Speaker 1: of pressure, not a lot of accountability from the Brazilian people.
Speaker 1: One because it's very difficult to take action against what
Speaker 1: is really in many cases illegal operations clearing the Amazon
Speaker 1: add Secondly, because you know protests is fraught with danger essentially,
Speaker 1: so what instead you see is that the supplier channel.
Speaker 1: Did you see corporations taking action for their customers and
Speaker 1: their constituents on the opposite side of the world. An
Speaker 1: example here would be a group of supermarkets around the world.
Speaker 1: It included you know, Audi and Astor and test Go
Speaker 1: and woar Wars from Australia pressuring their concern to the
Speaker 1: Brazilian government around a proposal that they say would lead
Speaker 1: to further deforestation, and they basically threatened to stop buying
Speaker 1: all products that were tied to the Brazilian agricultural supply chains,
Speaker 1: enormous impacts further upstream obviously if they were to do so,
Speaker 1: they're advocating basically on their behalf customers in Europe and
Speaker 1: Australia and elsewhere, to say, our consumers won't stand for this,
Speaker 1: even if your consumers in Brazil havevent or can't take action.
Speaker 1: We've seen it from European banks decided to divest from
Speaker 1: meat producers or tied deforestation in Brazil and really distributed
Speaker 1: action on the other side of the world forcing some
Speaker 1: level of change in Brazil. So here This brings me
Speaker 1: to a point regarding who and specifically where are these
Speaker 1: political consumers really prevalent. And this is going to vary
Speaker 1: geography to geography, probably for a variety of reasons, including
Speaker 1: culture and discretionary income. But where are we seeing high
Speaker 1: percentages of individuals within some of these surveys that you
Speaker 1: looked at that are willing and interested in engaging in
Speaker 1: being a political consumer. So one thing I've looked at
Speaker 1: here is to compare the willingness of people to pay
Speaker 1: more for products that are good for environment. Again, they
Speaker 1: can plate environment and climate and their intention to actually
Speaker 1: buy more sustainable products, and what we see is a
Speaker 1: bit of a mismatched there so many countries, many affluent
Speaker 1: countries Germany, US, UK, Australia, consumers say they are willing
Speaker 1: to pay more for products they can afford it. They're
Speaker 1: willing to pay more for products that they see good
Speaker 1: for the environment. But it's much more vary when it
Speaker 1: comes to intention, it's universally lower. Fewer people will intend
Speaker 1: to buy more sustainable products than are willing to say
Speaker 1: to pay more for them. In some cases that stuck.
Speaker 1: So in Australia, for example, half the population says they're
Speaker 1: willing to pay more, but only about a third intends
Speaker 1: to buy more. So they were the wealthy countries you're
Speaker 1: talking about, But that's not always the class. Clearly, there's
Speaker 1: plenty of countries where consumers just don't have the income,
Speaker 1: the ability and the financial stability to make these to
Speaker 1: make altruistic choices whatsoever. And in others it really comes
Speaker 1: down to the ability to be an activist. And for
Speaker 1: example in India, which you could well be paid to
Speaker 1: the prior of the last cop given they aid the
Speaker 1: discussions go on for the last two days. Climate activism
Speaker 1: is really not part of the social discourse, so potentially
Speaker 1: not even out of the political thinking and priorities and
Speaker 1: in addressing climate change. So if you there are certain
Speaker 1: supply chains and certain parts of the supply chain which
Speaker 1: are invariably going to be more responsive to in consumers
Speaker 1: like people like you and I than others. In what
Speaker 1: areas is the consumer voice a really important and critical
Speaker 1: part of moving towards a decarbonized future? And what areas
Speaker 1: where really is going to come down to politics and
Speaker 1: the companies themselves looking at things differently, In consumers maybe
Speaker 1: don't have as much of an influence, and I think
Speaker 1: it is a second question into that personally, where should
Speaker 1: I spend my time? It's an awesome question. I'll like
Speaker 1: to think that consumers can do three things. They cannoither
Speaker 1: buy something, change the product produces lower emissions. They can
Speaker 1: change their behavior and not necessarily need to buy anything.
Speaker 1: Or they can stop consuming and that will almost certainly
Speaker 1: lower emissions in a great way, and not the other
Speaker 1: two options. Failing that, you need the supply Chaine decarbonize
Speaker 1: that supplies consumers. And remember you know you could tie
Speaker 1: back two thirds or three quarters of emissions can be
Speaker 1: tied back to household consumption. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we are generally producing something for someone who needs to
Speaker 1: produce something for household. So when you think about the
Speaker 1: sectors that are really reliant on consumer action, road transport
Speaker 1: or passenger transport is extremely reliant on consumer action. We
Speaker 1: are then he consumers to biolect vehicles and replace their
Speaker 1: I C s or to forego driving, or to move
Speaker 1: from vehicles into public transit, microbit mobility and pedestrian alternatives.
Speaker 1: Without that, without consumers changing behavior or products, there will
Speaker 1: be no decobanization in road transport riding off bio fuels
Speaker 1: and other options that the supply chain could do. But
Speaker 1: when you think about something like aviation, consumers have no alternative.
Speaker 1: They can stop flying potentially if it's a shortcoll flight
Speaker 1: and there's alternatives available, but that's going to be a
Speaker 1: fairly minority of people. Look in dense markets like where
Speaker 1: you're sitting in London, it's going to be nobody where
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in Australia. And so really that we're totally
Speaker 1: reliant on the airline supply chain, the aviation supply chain
Speaker 1: to build lighter aircra after, create lower emission, lower fuel
Speaker 1: consumption planes and invest in alternatives, invest in hydrogen or
Speaker 1: electric or whatever the alternatives might be. Because consumers won't
Speaker 1: have that don't have that ability. And then you know,
Speaker 1: when across the power sector kind of you need both.
Speaker 1: Consumers need to be buying the electric appliances such that
Speaker 1: the decarbonized electricity system can provide them with clean power.
Speaker 1: If you don't get both of those things, you still
Speaker 1: have emissions stemming from heat from cooking, from from other
Speaker 1: oil gas and solid fuel us. So consumers are a
Speaker 1: massive vector of change. They're needed. Really, the question here
Speaker 1: is around how do they engage with politicians, how to
Speaker 1: politicians engage with them support that transition. When you look
Speaker 1: at the emissions in your home, that the bulk are
Speaker 1: coming from, heat aviation is a big factor as well.
Speaker 1: So you need to decide whether there is a product
Speaker 1: substitution that will allow you to go about your lifestyle
Speaker 1: or whether you're willing to be inconvenienced or abstained from consumption.
Speaker 1: And at the moment that comes down to an economic
Speaker 1: versus a lifestyle decision, but in the future doesn't necessarily
Speaker 1: have to be because gosh, I think all roads lead
Speaker 1: to heat in so many respects, both in the residential
Speaker 1: and in the industry heat space. So hopefully my friend
Speaker 1: who is looking at that heat pump will help bring
Speaker 1: prices down in increased skilled labor to actually look at
Speaker 1: heat pumps to build a potentially more sustainable home environment
Speaker 1: for all of us in the future, uh and bring
Speaker 1: those costs down of that technology in the meantime, Thank
Speaker 1: you Hugh for keeping an eye on different consumer behaviors.
Speaker 1: We look forward to speaking with you again sometime soon
Speaker 1: regarding what the surveys are telling us around consumer adoption. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I appreciate it. Today's episode of Switched On was edited
Speaker 1: by Rex Warner of gray Stoke Media and produced by
Speaker 1: Ava Marina Gonzalez Isla at b F. Bloomberg an A
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