It is extremely unwise to be an Aids denialist, because the medical facts and experience contradict that position. Is it equally unwise to be a climate-change denialist?
It would seem so. Facts and analyses have been marshalled over many years by leading scientists (see page 42), and the imminent Copenhagen conference is concentrating the collective mind. There have been glossy and emotional documentaries of the kind presented by former US vice-president Al Gore. Television and the Web show pictures of polar bears drifting on diminishing pieces of ice that have broken free as the Arctic ice cap melts. Recently, a vast iceberg was found floating from the Antarctic towards New Zealand. We are told that the sea will rise to partially submerge some coastal towns; some small islands have already disappeared. Weather patterns will change - for example, the rain that presently falls over SA's wheat-growing region of the Western Cape will in future fall fruitlessly over the seas - and food security will be threatened in many countries. To deny that carbon emissions are causing global warming is tantamount to recommending open season on whales.
However, the denialists are also able to marshal hard facts - which they say are routinely suppressed - and vivid imagery to support their case. Some of them argue that the world is actually cooling. To the confused layman, the more persuasive denialist argument is not so much that global warming is not happening, or that the gloomy examples above are illusory. It is rather that the warming is happening regardless of what humanity has done to the planet, just as there has been previous temperature volatility over millions of years, and that we are diverting precious resources to combat something that is beyond our control.
The point here is not to say which side is right, or that either side is all right or all wrong. It is a complex debate, and balanced in a way that the tired disputes over what causes Aids, and how that condition should be treated, are not.
The danger is that business leaders, when confronted with news of phenomena (political, economic, scientific) that are not from their own areas of expertise but could affect them, tend to seek out the arguments that suit their own prejudices and inclinations. They may have a personal ideological view, or a corporate culture that drives them in a particular direction. Or they might want to save money, or just take the easiest way out.
This is why there is a lot of what we might call relative denialism in SA. Of course everyone knows coal-fired power stations are bad for the environment, the argument goes, but we can't do without them: our priority is to stimulate economic growth, so we'll worry about emissions later. And in a recession, it's tempting to see "green" spending as discretionary, along with the PR budget and the orphans project.
That mentality has to change, and fast. Wherever the truth may lie in the current debate, most of the products of human activity that are alleged to cause global warming are bad in any case. Carbon emissions are often spewed out alongside other nasty gases - witness the respiratory problems that are common in the industrial and power-station belt in Mpumalanga.
Visionary companies understand that there is no such thing as a separate green agenda. As with apartheid, separate is not equal when it comes to corporate strategy. If environmental imperatives are not seen as an integral part of the business idea, and if executives are not rewarded for driving them as hard as any other part of the business, then they will inevitably be neglected.
We need to use less fossil fuel, less electricity, less water. That is why some of SA's leading companies are investing in becoming water-neutral and energy-neutral. It makes sense for the broader society - and what those companies are discovering is that it will save them money as well. A generation from now, there will be astonishment that we took so long to realise this - but now there's no excuse.
Ranking the Analysts 2009
