The Know Show - theme: greenwashing, with Susanna Hasenoehrl

Welcome to The Know Show. Every week, Andrea T Edwards, Joe Augustin and Tim Wade, review the news that’s getting everyone’s attention, as well as perhaps what requires our attention. We’ll talk about what it means to us, the world and we hope to inspire great conversations on the news that matters to all of us. 

This week we’ll be joined by Susanna Hasenoehrl to discuss green washing. What is green washing? It’s when disinformation is disseminated by an organization so as to present an environmentally responsible public image, and the world is rife with greenwashing. We’ll dig into what it means and how you can identify it, as well as discuss some examples we’re seeing in the news. 

The Know Show is based on Andrea T Edwards Weekend Reads, and covers the climate crisis, Covid 19, topical moments in the world, global politics, business, social issues and passion/humor/history. Join us. 

To get in touch with me, all of my contact details are here https://linktr.ee/andreatedwards

My book Uncommon Courage, an invitation, is here https://mybook.to/UncommonCourage

My book 18 Steps to an All-Star LinkedIn Profile, is here https://mybook.to/18stepstoanallstar

Transcript

This is AI generated and will have errors. 

All right. Welcome to the no show. My name is Andrea Edwards on Joe Gustin. And I suppose I'm Tim blade.
You've come to the show where you get to know what's going on in the world updates on key news items, key things that need to be remaining in the headlines. We've got a special guest with us today. Yes, we have. Yep. Susanna hasn't heard that. So Susanna is the sustainability speaker. She is a little bit on the side of awesome. If you've
I don't know if you've you've met a Suzanna before but she's great that she she speaks with leaders and key influences organizations about sustainability. And Suzanna, you want to tell us a little bit more about what you do. Just before you do, I just want to say, I've heard Susanna present. And her her content is fantastic. Her data is amazing. And what she says for organizations to be able to implement change within the organization with regards to KPIs on sustainability and real measure abilities is astonishingly good. And if you're a business leader out there, or somebody's talking to businesses about this, I think you should have a conversation with Suzanna as well, because I think her perspective is very, very valuable. Susanna,
team, thank you very much for those kind words. So indeed, I'm the sustainability speaker and I work with business leaders and their teams, helping them to embrace sustainability as part of their strategy and everyday decision making. I also speak at conferences, I provide executive briefings and also interact with teams in town halls. So always in the interest of crater sustainability, resilience, and climate action as part of our business. Great to be here today. Fantastic. It looks like you've been locked out of your castle, or you.
Yeah, I'm kind of moving in and out still.
Further.
when needed. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, for a time living somewhere else earlier. So the theme of today's show is to talk about greenwashing. Right, we got some echo going there on some buddies. Yeah, sorry, guys opening up on on my many, many other pages so I can see what's going on my fault. All right. All right. Okay, minus 1.4. Joe. So yeah, the scores are 000 and minus one minus one.
Starbeck? Yes. Yeah. So one of the reasons we invited Suzanna is because you really wanted to talk about greenwashing. There's been a couple of times I've used the phrase recently, and people have gone with it, what the hell is that? And it's one of the passion topics for Susanna in the in all of her topics. So I'm looking forward to getting stuck into that. And just really helping people understand what it is and why it's important. So there you go. Yes, super important topic, my favorite topic.
And if you're watching, it would be great. If you could hop in the comments and say hello, and keep the comments coming while we're chatting away, as we would love to hear from you and, and voice out some of those comments as well. And Joe will be keeping an eye on that in order to try and earn back his one point that he lost.
All right, should we get stuck into the news that struck a chord this week?
Yeah. All right. So the news that got my attention this week, is the build up to the 20th anniversary of 911. Have you guys been reading the stuff that's been circulating?
Right
now? Okay, so well, you got a lot, a lot of catching up to do. And this really links into the Afghanistan news, which is still not out of the headlines, which is a relief. 911 is a very significant day, obviously, for America. But it's a significant day around the world. Obviously, there are people who lost loved ones that day. And we're seeing interviews with many of the children at the time, who lost their parents, and then now adults. Then there's also the stories, the powerful stories of those who got out by the skin of their teeth. And then there's people like me, who actually canceled a meeting in the World Trade Center at 9am on 911. And I cancelled it the day before and stayed in Boston. And that's always left me feeling very deeply connected to this moment in time. I was very thankful that everybody I knew got out that day, but I know a lot of my friends did lose a lot of people. Most people who are old enough will will remember exactly where they were at that moment. Do you guys remember where you were when that when that news hit? Yeah, very clearly very clearly. Yes. We I was actually in Bangkok. It was an evening we were having a dinner at a restaurant.
And they had this, you know, television screen there. And yeah, we were aware that something was happening, something had happened in the US. And as we watched the TV screen, the second plane, flew into the second tower is very dramatic. Yeah. I think most people got got to the coverage. Just at that moment. Tim and jG guys remember where you were?
Oh, yeah, I was doing. I was doing a show on on tocom. We were doing a show for the for the for the recruits. And when we were coming out waiting for the ferry, the I'm always listened to radio, and I heard the bits and pieces of it. And at the time, I was in charge of the radio station. And this was like, like, after hours for the news team. Because there's such a thing with me and our business.
But I was in charge of the radio station. So me and someone else got it down to trying to report about it. And it was just incredible. It was just growing bigger and bigger. And I got you know, just it just unbelievably huge. We thought something small happened. And then it got even bigger. And it got you got to the point because I was I was among some very young people at the time.
The size of what was happening was was so big, they couldn't figure out how to deal with it except through laughing. It. You know, it was it wasn't real. Yeah.
Yeah, it was very shocking. It was shocking for a long time to took. I remember it took me about two weeks to get out of the stupor. I just I was completely I was always in front of the television, just watching the news and watching it again and again and again. And all of my friends in Boston, were doing the same. And we were on the roof looking for the next plane to hit the Prudential because that was predicted. One of the planes left from Boston, or two of the planes left from Boston. So it was Yeah, now it was really it was a big moment. Tim, do you remember where you were? Yep. I was in Melbourne. And I was living in Collingwood or near on the euro. And my, my
fiance was watching the news, and I was in another room and she just went you need to come have a look at this. And it was just we were at home, it was late.
And, and then we saw the second one flying. And we were just calling out. We were calling up the news to each other as we're running around the house doing stuff. But
but it was
it was I guess I was a bit numb. I mean, it was it was just
I was watching it happening. And I was just like, what
I don't think the the enormity of it and hit me. Even though I'm watching this stuff unfold in front of me. And I don't know whether that's a desensitization for because of violence and stuff that's happening around the world.
Or, or even
or a selfish apathy on my part. I'm not quite processed that really but but I I do know that it was it impacted us in, in, in crazy ways in the weeks that followed, because every everybody thought everything was a terrorist attack after that.
You know, I mean, I flew to Adelaide. And and, and you know, there was this sort of everyone's a bit worried about aeroplane hitting a building in Adelaide. And I was just like, Who? Nobody's gonna attack it. So that was my demo. So we're taking this out of control.
So, yeah, I
know, there was a dad was in a two storey building as well as working, not at the time it happened. But the, that's where I was working. I was in this two storey building, and we thought we were going to be attacked, it's like, nobody's gonna take a two storey building. And, and then we, you know, I was call, I was managing this whole group of people there. And I was called to the lift where there was some white powder on the glass surface. On the side of the lift was a bit of weight and, and everyone was freaking out that it was anthrax.
And so we're standing there pointing at it every once and for all and Haley it was it was standing there pointing in a garden. You know, it could be Android or whatever. And it's a bit like this and the cleaner walks past and we're all standing looking at his lift, which is proudly clean arrow pointing at this thing. And he just goes, Oh, and just wipes it with his cloth walks off. And we're like, oh, well, I guess resolve that then wandered away. But so in a way there was this. I guess remoteness from it in that we were so far removed, but at the same time, it was it just changed everything. Yeah, it did. It really did. And we talked about it in the first no show that it was this moment you know where
the whole world changed.
You know, the fear that was ricocheting around the globe and, you know, the, the shoe, the shoe bomber, and you know, we had another plane go down. So I think, obviously Mexico by this point, so it was about four months after, you know, there, it was a crazy time and but you know, it's it's it was the beginning of the division. It's not just in America but around the world, it's also the starting point where the populace leaders, sort of the fertile ground sort of emerge, you know, the inequality is growing safe, since the suffering is growing since but across the media, the both the left and the right wing media, which I've been reading both, there's a lot of really deep and thoughtful articles, which are included, obviously, in the weekend reads.
And I, and I found that the coverage has been fairly consistent. So we usually find extreme opposition, a lot of the information that's coming through, you know, is actually pretty similar. So it's worth it's worth having a look, I really, you know, just it's 20 years after the Afghanistan war has just finished, it's a good time to read it. You know, the terrorists we went to war to defeat are stronger than ever. And every bomb that was dropped, created new terrorists.
It's a very poignant moment, you know, how can we change paths? You know, we're going to continue as we've been going for the last two decades, or
we're going to learn because, you know, really what has been achieved. And this is the question all of these articles are asking the news coverage it's discussing or the failures, the decisions that were made in fear, anger and outrage right at the beginning, that sort of that's why it was important. You talked about your feelings, their team, because we have to remember that that's where people were, they were feeling sitting in very, very, very deep fear. And there was very, very little dissent on both sides of the party.
But then there was a lot of arrogance, you know, there was a comment to the Afghanistan is your history starts now. You know, really completely ignoring the rich history of this magnificent country. But also, it's more recent wars with countries like Russia, you know, this idea that America was strong enough, because it had the mightiest army on Earth, it was going to go in there and defeat the terrorists and defeat the Taliban. And it didn't achieve that goal. And it's made those groups stronger. So that sort of really comes through blood lust, the blood lust that was going on at the time. And there was, there's many, many quotes of George W. Bush, saying that he was experiencing blood loss during that period. And you got to say, that's a very good, a good foundation of leadership when it comes to war. Intelligence failures that happened. And this is one of the things that is really has really improved, since they've all they're all starting to work together. But the reason it happened was because different groups weren't sharing information, not just in America, but around the world.
Then there was this rhetoric like you're either with us or against us. And of course, the French said, we're not with you. And french fries were rebranded as freedom fries. Do you remember that? Yeah.
Yeah.
Right. Exactly.
Yeah, exactly. There was a lot of that. Did you notice at the time, and certainly in the years after that, that fear became the political campaign agenda. across every election that happened? It was all it was about, it was about making sure that you were afraid? And who would you trust to lead you through that? And so it was fear and trust, weirdly enough?
And
who do you trust? Who do you for? In other words, do you trust us to bring you through this as we've been bringing you through it so far? Or do you trust these other guys who haven't done anything, didn't have to go through this? That's kind of what, whether we're positioning it. And then we're making sure that you're putting trust also in a very patriarchal way, like, you know, who's got the biggest guns and the army and the intelligence and all of that rather than maybe some other markers of trust as well? Well, but then again, and then again, you could almost like you know, in that environment, pick any, any opponent and say, you know, now we have to be like, totally opposed to each other, if not go to war directly, right.
Yeah.
Even thinking of local elections, even it or straightening elections, where we don't have the biggest guns or anything, we just got the biggest landmass That's hot. Well, whatever. Your weapon of choice is right?
bushfires.
Just, I so I just I'm kind of I'm just hearing this and I'm a bit worried by that because it's just I think, I think I think it motivations have always been about fear. I mean, it always has been above here. I don't think it changed.
to dramatically by being the face of fear
is what became very clear. After that time, there was a there was a reference, I think fear has been used for the longest time whether it's been used as a as a mindful tool, or people really believe that and they really feel the fear. And they really speak what their truth is, as they're fearful, and therefore the speaking campaign on the basis of fear as well. I just think that after 911, what you were afraid of was more common. It became something you could you could kind of direct yourself too. But most I just thinking back about pre pre 911 there's so many things that happened as well, they were all about fear.
Yeah, sure. I think a lot of the campaigning was about fiscal responsibility in Australia. Usually, it was about who's gonna make you wealthier. And then it's gonna keep you safe. And he's going to keep our borders safe. And all of that sort of stuff. That would that was, yeah, that was my experience, justifying military in investment. Right. But yeah, another another big part of the story that's being told at the moment is the amount of disrespect towards not just the Afghanistan ease, but also the, the perceived disrespect in the Middle East. Right. And obviously, Guantanamo Bay is a big part of that story. And, you know, the the Bush administration justified and lowered the rule, the laws and the Geneva Convention to justify what they were doing in Guantanamo Bay. But this was one of the issues that the Middle East could not tolerate. And it's a big part of the problem that emerged. And the reason that America could never win is because of things because of those things. Their their credibility is the good guy, and my country is part of that England's part of that.
Wow, it could it couldn't recover. Lost everywhere.
No, we're still here. Are you there? All right. Yeah. So I mean, the damage was really done. And there was some other incidents that last, you know, just the lack of respect towards the Afghanistan ease. And you know, there's so much more but you know, when you think about what do we achieve in that 20 years, and I say we, because I might I come from a country that was part of it. No, true dreams, spent 1000s of lives lost the Taliban and packing power, the fear is on the ground, and still on the ground, they're still talking about the risk of terrorism in the future. And then you go in, look at more news this week. So the new Taliban government's been announced. And then from a female perspective, which is obviously an area I'm focusing on, the good news is that women can still get an education, but they can only be taught by women, or
older men of good character. So that that was the news is where you go. And classes have got to finish five minutes early, so that the women and the male students don't interact with each other.
Also, women can't play sport in Afghanistan. So I'm glad that the Australian Government got the the Olympic arm and the sports female sports stars out of the country. But you know, when you get to the end of it, you've got to wonder about, you know, this whole story of fear isn't enough of a lesson for us to have learned to change our paths. If you want to understand there's a couple of really good pieces. One is Afghanistan was a Ponzi scheme sold to the American public. And the other one was 911 was a test, the books of the last decade, of the last two decades show how America failed. So there are two really, really great articles. If you're not a reader, the other place that I would recommend is a series called The turning points on Netflix, on Netflix, sorry, it looks at Afghanistan, Iraq, the Taliban, the politics of the moment. And if you just want to get a full sort of 20 view, but also prior to that time beginning, it's a really great show to watch. So yeah, some very thoughtful, heartfelt pizzas. And I would definitely recommend, if you're interested in understanding this moment, what's being shared right now is meaningful, and it matters. And it's an opportunity for us to learn. So we don't continue doing the same stupid things over and over again.
Yeah, always learn from history. Right? Well, you'd hope so. Right.
You talked about the the journey A while ago, and it made me think about it and then go like, you know, I don't know how many people realize they are on that journey. You know, when when when you are, when you're in the middle of it.
I sometimes you don't know where you're where you're heading, you just you just are moving along with what seems to be the momentum of the day momentum of the time.
I just I just was thinking about that. And as in like we were, we were thinking about how people have to think about where they are, or think about the journey that they're on. And I think for many people because they don't look around to think about that, or they be a bit preoccupied with so many other things. The existence of the journey itself fades away. You know, you're the you're the fish in water, who isn't? Who isn't aware of water? Yeah, well, I think it's quite easy to get drawn into certain pathways in our lives. You know, from
Additional or otherwise, because, you know, certain incentive structures kind of keep pushing you certain ways. And, you know, more often than not, it takes a bit of a crisis to, you know, gain distance from that, whether voluntary or voluntarily or involuntarily, and to actually, to be able to gain that distance. And, and, and, and look at things a bit more holistically and in a more balanced way, and if you're part of the system and in that stream, yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I agree with Joe, that the ability to, to see the bigger picture really, really, really does help you to understand, you know, we talk about the arc of history. And a lot of people live in the moment. And when you're in the moment, the emotions are high. If you're only paying attention to the crises, you're sitting in a place of heightened emotion. But if you can look at it from a big picture perspective, you go back into history, you think about what it really means in the future, will it matter in five years time, those sort of questions, it helps you to step back from the emotion. And as we saw with the reaction and the response to, to 911, I think if if, if the government was able to get beyond the emotion, they might have been able to start looking at a more sensible way of approaching it and getting,
getting the revenge that they required without putting themselves into into an unwinnable war, and now sort of licking their wounds and trying to work out what they what they did wrong, and how they could do it better. So let's hope we learn. Well, I hate to introduce a metaphor that might confuse but you know, I do trading. And I don't know whether you've done any kind of trading before looking at candlesticks and what have you. But in when you're trading, and you're trading what they call a smaller time frame, you can get caught up in what what you see in that moment, you can see that the trends moving in this direction on that, listen the other. And as you were talking about this thing about taking that, that that worldview, it really is something that that we do, or I try to do and remind myself to do when I'm trading, which is to go out and step out of that small timeframe and look at the bigger thing that's happening. But I also realize that what even though I'm trained for that, even though I'm looking out for that, in the moment, as it's happening, I don't you know, it's it's you're right about the emotional aspect, you are driven by that you were driven not only by the emotions of your emotions in that moment, you're because we're social, we're driven by the emotions of the people around this as well, you know, you're you're not going to take that I you know, I'm not one, okay. And then you and you end up doing something big and it feels right in the moment as well. Because socially, it's all around you. It's it's what should happen. Hmm. Yeah, like, what's missing out right? Knowing the join the queue, join the motion.
All right, should we move into COVID? So, a lot going on. So just in case you don't know we we have past 224 million Coronavirus of Coronavirus cases worldwide and officially 4.6 million deaths. They expect that with excess excess deaths to be at least double. But a report was released this week that shows definitive proof that mass work, which is good after 19 months. The really concerning story that sort of jumped out at me is the one with the Aboriginal community in Australia.
infections are breaking out in remote communities.
And of course, this is a community that does not trust the white when white men medicine for very, very, very good reason. And the medical infrastructure in these communities is often appalling. The fact that delta is out in the regional communities of Australia, if you know Australia, it's a big, big wide country. I think it's a devastating turn of events. And especially, you know that a lot of the elderly people in Australia live in these sort of communities. So there's a lot of anxiety and fear in regional Australia, which I don't blame, blame them for feeling that way. In Singapore, the Delta barian outbreak is threatening. It's living with COVID goals. So I'm sure you guys living in Singapore are getting ready for what's next. India has seen a spike 14% spike in cases just in the last week. But with it vaccinations accelerating across the country, I've got it we've all got a hope that we don't see the catastrophe that we saw earlier this year.
Unfortunately, the World Health Organization has forecasted that there will be 25% fewer COVID vaccines available for the world than earlier thought. And there's a lot of reasons behind this and factory factory mount, you know, breakdowns and stuff. But this is devastating news for the poorest countries in the world. I mean, I'm in a place where people still haven't got their first, that first round of vaccine. So it's very difficult.
Joe Biden today announced I'm sure you guys have seen this, a mandate that if you're a business of 100 or more employees, especially federal contractors, to federal
consultants, that type of thing. They are
have mandatory vaccination or will have to face weekly testing. This is obviously going to cause a huge ruckus and pushback. But based on what we were talking about last week with achieving consensus, when we don't achieve consensus of the best way forward, the day is going to come and the heavy hand of government is going to come down. And so that's happening. So that's just a breaking story that I am expecting to scale up this week. So that's the kind of the roundup of what's going on around COVID. Anything else you guys have been noticing? Or how do you feel in Singapore with what's going on?
Actually, I think I've got an I've got an idea. It's a stupid idea. But it's a good one. It's a good stupid idea. And that is, when everybody gets together to protest the mandatory ones, you send in a crop duster, and you just drop an inhalable vaccine on everybody protesting, and you're good. How about that?
Oh, boy, it's an airborne vaccine. Is that gonna work? I'm sure they're working on that kind of idea. That sounds very effective.
Yeah, I'm gonna be working at it. It's a cold trample, I think the website is called trample the rights calm or something like that. Well, actually, you can have big balloons.
And they can have a gas inside. I think I've got this from Batman.
There is a there is a Nordic country that's working on a vaccine, which is in powder form, or it's just basically you ingest it. I don't think I'm sure it's not a sniffing thing. That wouldn't be appropriate right? Now, they'll just leave it. They'll just leave it on tables, on tables in clubs with strollers next to them. Yeah, right. That's how we get
here in Singapore, I think it's interesting to see now whether we really will live with COVID. or, or, or not. So what's the level of tolerance here? You know, 400 plus cases being a record
as of yesterday,
interesting times, interesting. So it's, I think it always comes down to the amount of hospitalizations, right. And that's always the key point is, if the hospitals are overwhelmed, it doesn't just impact people who've got COVID. But obviously, all other conditions that need serious attention, especially ICU attention, so that you know, the high vaccination rates, you've got to hope that if it does break out, it's not going to end up in devastation. And you guys haven't really experienced it. Like, I mean, every neighbor of Singapore is experiencing this devastation. You guys haven't really experienced this yet. So I hope you don't.
Well, the question now is, what do we do after this point, at this point, when you have that you have this high vaccination rate, you're going to have some statistical truths, right, whatever it is going to be, almost all new infections are going to be people who have either, you know, been vaccinated, I mean, okay, okay. It's always going to be either vaccinated or not, by the proportion that I've activated, it's going to be higher and all the time.
And someone asked the question, like, you know, are we at the point right now, if you're talking about living with it and opening it up? Are we at the point we go, like, you know, what, you you've had your chance to decide what to do now you've decided not to be vaccinated? Now we expose everybody to the true risks of it, or are we holding everybody back because we don't want to expose everyone to the true risk of it, because at this point, because of the rate of vaccination, and because of everything else, in that population, that the the test, the mathematical test of the modeling already kind of is happening as like as we return to normal, we're seeing what the numbers are, we've seen the level of infection, and we've seen the level of of recall, mild disease or less than than serious disease amongst the vaccinated there is there is a case although not easily support by FA supported by ethics to just open up and go like okay, you know, we've we've got that we've got that 80% Now, we know that is transmissible, even if you have a vaccination, but it's a less a lesser likelihood that you're going to get seriously ill from that. So we actually have the numbers now. And so I mentioned this to me, but it has to be verified. But in Singapore, the numbers have come to the point where we are very much neck and neck with the flu in terms of if you get COVID. Statistically speaking, you are as as likely or as much in danger as if you've got the flu.
Now that now that the vaccines happened, the statistics have sort of matched up Is that right? Or
the play we have we're spending so much time and resources on dealing with COVID and COVID stuff that we have it's so much under control, that the the what previously was the less important thing that the flu is now
I think showing up in terms of numbers very, very, very close in terms of what the what we like we talk about people who have complications from flu and, and passing on as well. I mean, you know, because because our COVID numbers are so low, flu and COVID are close with each other now.
Yeah, actually, if I remember correctly, flu kills about 5000 people in in Singapore yearly, like pre COVID times. I think it's less now because of hygiene and, and masks and all that. But it's been said that that's been silently tolerated as the death rate.
Yeah.
What's our take on that now in this new era that we're living? What what's tolerated? What's not? That's the question, right? The flu arguments been put out there right from the beginning, right. So countries that have low death rates, like Singapore, people would say, but you know, we've only lost this many people. But then you go to countries that haven't taken COVID. Seriously. And the death rate is 1010 times higher than the flu. So if this argument is with vaccination rates, so high, the death rate is down to about the same as the fluids. And you know, that absolutely makes sense. And I think in the, in the coming months, you know, we'll see what Singapore does. And if it if it's the country, that takes the chance, but Singapore will always watch Israel, and Israel is going through a new round of COVID. Right. So I think that's potentially going to influence the reactions, but they're not as far away from the first rounds of vaccines, whereas the Israelis were one of the first countries to do it. So yeah, they're very interesting. Sorry, I'm very excited about curious about the next days. I mean, who knows what happens in a couple of months time, but, you know, will Singapore continue to tolerate the rates? What will be the infection rates in the next days?
Yeah, debates, I'm sure.
Yeah, well, we're worth 664 cases today that are in wards in hospital wards. 26 require oxygen and seven are in the ICU, across the country at 1% of the total population have been vaccinated, which of your account for about half a million people aged 12. And under takes that percentage higher to those who can be vaccinated who are vaccinated if I understand the numbers correctly. So it's, it's
it depends on what their number is, what their because really, I mean, that the government has to be in a position, which is a great position
to hold, which is every depth is one to many, and, and how do we, how do we maintain that while at the same time, right now, the balance seems to be when do we release? like Joe was saying, When do we release it? Because, because people are starting to get hurt, mentally, and financially from a business side.
I mean, they're starting to they've been hurt for a while. But the longer this continues to worse, that's going to get and, and so so that's now becoming that that's now coming into play in in a in a big deal. So when I did, I did some numbers, I was just responding to some of these Facebook posts, and I just went in and, and did some numbers on it. Now find that that post a little while and try and explain those numbers to but it was it was
we're close to the 90s as far as I can see from those who can be vaccinated who are vaccinated, but it still is a huge number of people who can get seriously ill. And and when, if that number goes huge. Those huge number of people are going to be a real burden on the that these unvaccinated people who require significant treatment will be a burden on the school system, which is the biggest challenge. I think that's probably going to be the biggest challenge then. But you know, being very extraordinarily selfish and I hate saying this in front of both Andrea and Susanna because both of you, oh, you're okay with me being here. Okay, fine, find
a new job. But these other two, they're the ones that are going to probably beat me up for this but I'm going on a cruise ship
on Monday and holiday to nowhere, holiday to nowhere, which uses less it has less emissions.
But
we can watch this later. This is greenwashing. And,
and, and I just you know I don't want to be confined to a suite.
It just sounds so silly.
selfish.
If anything locked down, and we can't see the shows and all that sort of stuff, it was just like dagnabbit. But I will still go, I will still go this time, because I did one before when it happened, I don't think they're going to do it.
Unless it gets, maybe if it goes over 1002 something, they might start to do something, I would be surprised. Because the pressure on
I think the pressure on the government is, is to not be flippity floppity is to say, this is what we're gonna do. Yeah, I think what's been happening, and suddenly speaking about that flippy floppy thing is that people have been making that comment about what's been happening in terms of decisions. And I find it hugely unfair, I mean, partly because I have so much exposure to the the efforts behind the scenes of what what COVID is about
is it is changing that, you know, that you policy doesn't occur without the interaction of the audience, you can put out a policy, you can hope that they're going to go and the the audience or the or the, or the population is going to comply or follow it.
But what happens in real life is just, it's not in your control. You know, I mean, one of the things that that drives me mad about about the whole vaccination thing is, people don't know what it means to be vaccinated. They don't know what it means in terms of what it does, then it'll convey you it does. They feel like it's making you immune, and it feels like they don't have to do the things they usually do. So I've been walking around, being very aware of people letting their guard down, people touching everything. You know, in terms of even social distancing, I was I went to buy lunch the other day for the family and the, the the social distancing wasn't happening. And I was in the middle of a hospital. You know, that's, that's, that's the thing that's happening. Now, if people are letting their guard down, because I'm vaccinated, you're vaccinated, we are all vaccinated, but they feel that that is the excuse to be less vigilant. And I think the numbers reflect that I think the numbers definitely have something to do with that. But then again, if we keep carrying the sense of fear, all the time, anywhere, with all of all of us, that's going to have an impact on our health as well. So I'm not saying we shouldn't let our guard down, but and you know, they are reasonable measures in place, but let's just stick to them and then not worry too much, you know, because that was a key loss. Yeah. But when you when you look at the history of plagues, there's always a point where everyone, let's say, go down because they've had enough. And we've hit that point, you know, and I suppose the question is, will Singapore, step forward into this unknown future? Will, you know, and we'll wait and see, I know, a lot of the other countries in this part of the world aren't really even closely ready. Bangkok looks like it's going to reopen in November. So cases are coming down in Thailand. But Malaysia has been hammered the whole time. You know, looking what's going on in India, America, Israel, but you know, we're coming up to winter in Europe, what's going to happen? You know, so we've got a lot of uncertainty ahead. But if everyone could get their mindset around a two year cycle, that will really, really help if you can just say, I got to get through two years where my life is not getting anywhere near normal. How can I participate in my world, focus on what you can control, don't worry about what you can't control. And let's just try and move forward in our best way possible. It's not going to go away, it's not going to go away overnight. We know that we've got some complications ahead. But take care of your mindset, you know, but if you're constantly in a state of panic, like Suzanna was saying and fear,
you just going to struggle even more, it's because it is PR, and it's not going to change anytime soon. Right? I wonder, I wonder whether whether we were letting our guard down because we're seeing, you know, football stadiums full of people over in Europe. And and we're thinking what's going on? And then, and then I was just on that when no one's asking the question, what's going on after that, if I don't do the answers, right. So when we see that, and I see that, and I found out that, you know, after they've had one of these things, they have 1000s of new cases that come out directly from that one event. Really, and yeah, so that's
let's try to you know, use our brain. I mean, obviously, going into stadium with 1000s of people who are not vaccinated without Mars, you know, it's generally speaking, not the best idea. So what's gonna happen? I mean, maybe we can detach that euphoric sensation, oh, I want to be there. I want to live for a moment and say, Okay, well maybe isn't such a good idea after all, and kind of be happy in relatively safely for a little while.
Well, I wonder if that's
to relax a little bit. I'm, by the way, I am going to a football stadium on Sunday to watch a football match. Here in Singapore bow, you always have to even my wife and I have to sit one seat apart with a spare seat in between was in that pre COVID as well?
Yeah, that's true. Well, that's, that's, that's her. That's her preference, though, then. But here's the other thing I was just, I was on a zoom call just before this. And a friend of mine is flying to the UK.
For a, I think it's a business trip. And the flight is packed.
It's not one seat in between, and you can lay down the whole thing for yourself anymore. The flight apparently is back g g was surprised. Because when they booked it in July or something, it was all, you know, economy is business class now. But But now it's it apparently full, which I was very surprised to hear. I thought the airlines were still
quite spacing everybody out and, and talking about sort of how, you know, everybody's walking around in a spacesuit and everything. So I, I was a bit surprised by that. But there was one other thing I wanted to mention. And we're talking about the psychology side. And I noticed with this cruise coming up, my psychology shifted a little bit. And it shifted a little bit from
from the because of COVID. So if I don't know whether you've booked a vacation before in the past, where we just before that vacation, you weren't feeling great. And you went one person going on this vacation anyway. And you get on the plane, and you fly out even if you're sick, and you go into thing and you just you know get better after a few days or whatever it is, and then you go or you you're not even sick, you just you just go and with this this cruise thing, I'm first of all, there's two things that I noticed. One is I'm a bit paranoid about, about going into any any public place, because I'm getting my swab test tomorrow. And, and then there's another one the other day, and I just don't want anything to get us thrown off the boat, right. But at the same token,
I don't want to go on the boat
and get sick. Like that is I don't want to be I don't want to be the one that first of all, I want to be the one that gets everybody else sick. And I would rather be here if I have got something to be able to get through it and and that weather. But that was that would never been the case. In the past where I've just go, Well, I bought the ticket, I'm not moving the holiday, I've got my annual leave, I got all this stuff, the family's ready to go meeting of people over there, everything's booked, you know, and I can't get my money back if I'm sick. Or I can if it's his insurer or whatever it is. It's just, it's changed a little bit. Maybe it's the flexibility has changed. But but it's maybe it's the I don't know what it is. But I feel like I'm I I'm resigned to being at home. But but Okay, with that collective decision, maybe it's a bit more collectivism coming into play. And that is I'm more concerned about, you know, infecting somebody that can't handle it.
Which wasn't the case pre COVID. If that made sense. I wasn't even thinking about some old lady on the plane or on a boat or, or whatever it was. I was I was thinking more about me and my holiday plans. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I think maybe we've woken up to a little bit more of our collective impact on each other. All right. How about we move on to the climate news, what is our next category? Because we can talk about me.
Here's some highlights. So a big, big report this week, 200 Health journals came together for the first time to call for urgent action on the climate crisis. And it's to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees to hold the destruction of nature and to protect health, when we get to 1.5 degrees and large parts of the earth will be too hot to live. So it's really, really critical that we that we address this and of course, if we keep going where we going we're going to hit 1.5 degrees in the next few years. But it's not going to be permanently embedded as 1.5 for a little bit longer than that, but we really have no time to lose another report. From the Amazon two thirds have lost two thirds of species have lost habitat to fire and deforestation. The worst deforestation in the Amazon's history has happened in the last few years. And during COVID it's been even worse. Some good news out of Australia, Western Australia has said by 2024 all logging of native forests will stop which is great. The other one out of Australia was that the hairy nosed so the long nosed hairy nosed one bat is back from the brink of
extinction, which I thought is lovely wombats are awesome.
JOSEPH BIDEN obviously this after earlier in this week after the shocking events of the week before, stated the climate crisis is here, we really need to be much better prepared, we need to act so that the whole getting ready to deal with it conversation, you know, the subways in New York aren't ready for that to deal with those sort of floods. Whereas if you go to Singapore, like Tim said, there's the stairs go up before they go down, those sort of things. A cool story. And this is something I've been paying attention for a while there's a band called Massive Attack. I'm sure my kids like it. Anyway, they have been collecting gig data to measure the emissions of live concerts. And they're sharing the results with bands all over the world, encouraging them all to clean up their act. And I find it really inspiring stuff. But it's also the sort of collective action that all industries need to commit to
Australia has been warned by the UN officials, that the climate crisis is going to wreak havoc havoc on the economy. And there's a lot more of these coming out against Australia, especially if coal isn't phased out.
Australia was one of the countries that could have made the move to renewables before anybody else. it's it's it's right for this sort of thing. But investors are increasingly abandoning fossil fuel investments. But we'll talk about that in a minute. But there was another piece on Sky News, which of all places surprised me about a shady trade deal between the UK and Australia, where Australia is insisting the emissions targets that are linked to the Paris Climate Agreement removed from these deal. And obviously with cop 26 coming up, this is not a great thing for the UK image. So I've got a friend called Robert Karoubi, he tagged me on that piece of news. Billions of dollars are pouring into businesses with promise of decarbonisation. So Joe, if you want to invest your money, this is the place to do it. And in Iceland, there was a story yesterday, yesterday, I think, a machine has been turned on. And in one year, it extracts enough carbon to counter out 870 cars. So that's 4000 tons of carbon dioxide per year. We currently have 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide in the environment. So we are definitely going to need a lot more machines. But the real message here is technology will not be our Savior, it's going to be a part of it. But it can't be the whole in too many, though, too much too much of what I'm seeing looking forward is about relying on technology rather than changing how we live and work as a global society. And the final piece in the climate news is the most vulnerable nations on Earth are calling for a global pact to deal with reducing global warming. And this group are also struggling to actually be able to afford to get to Scotland for cop 26. So the people who who didn't cause the crisis may not even have the chance to stand on the platforms to talk about the crisis, because because of funding. So that's the climate news this week. Anything else you guys have been noticing?
Well, we I read, I read the article you sent around from the New Yorker. And, you know, when you put this headline up the climate, the climate crisis, what's new, I was going to chime in and said, according to the article, nothing for the last 20 years. So thanks. Thanks for that depressing read.
Did you find it depressing? Well, I found it in a sense that, you know, it was it was talking about where we are and then and how it's all it's all done for and we just have to change the way we look at it. Look at stuff.
I, I disagreed with the idea that nothing can be done, because I think it didn't factor in enough of what technology will do. Like, like you mentioned, the machine you spoke about a while ago, and you said technology itself would change it. But scaling might you know, so if we can figure out how, for instance, this kind of technology can scale how do we find it? How do we how do we how do we resource it how do we Kickstarter, and how do we whatever, you know, how do you figure out a way for us to employ and deploy and
scale technology so it has a greater impact? It'd be fantastic. I think the status quo in terms of what what if we assume that technology is where it is and behavior is where it is and how people behave is where it is where it is. You're right it's going to be hard to turn the boat around. But I think we there is room for something that will happen that can happen, you know,
a safe nuclear powered carbon extracting ice cream making machine you know, something that could be fun as well as save the planet. You know. I check a lot of perspectives, obviously on the climate.
And I don't share a lot of the doom and gloom stuff. You know, there's one guy that reckons that humans will be extinct by 2025. And a lot of people don't agree with that. But you know, for me this article, which was basically saying, there is no hope. But actually, when you got stuck into the article, there is a lot of hope. And it's about all of us stepping into that hope and saying, Okay, I'm going to do this bit. And you know, collectively, I'm going to organize my community, or I'm going to plant a garden, and I'm going to eat vegetarian food. And if everybody does it, then we, then it's not, we can't the the message, we're trying to save the planet. No, we're not trying to save the planet. We're trying to say no ability to leave on the planet. Yeah, that's what we're trying to save. Right? The planet will go on, in various forms, as it always has. It's our ability to live on the planet that we're looking to save and what our opportunity now is, how much worse Are we willing to allow it to get? You know, because once we get over two degrees, you know, the runaway if we allow it to get past two degrees, that, you know, most of the people are saying we're on a runaway collision course with with nature, because if we, if we're that stupid, that we don't stop it before it gets Well, before that, then we're not going to be able to stop it. So it was actually there's a lot more hope in that article than I, then yeah, I think started with
I think the only positive thing about this, you know, recent, you know, catastrophe events on the northern hemisphere summer, you know, floods and heat waves and fires is that, unfortunately, more people are affected by it. But also more people are understanding or experiencing what what climate change means. Now, you know, we it's not a distant thing. It's happening right now in our lives. And if nothing else, my hope is that this will mobilize more support for reasonable measures to counteract that. Yeah.
Just to add on, by the way, I can be very certain The world is not going to end by 2025. Because I have a loan with DBS, which carries on to at least 2030 tools.
Zoom you and ask you for the money. Exactly.
My my challenge
to, to what you said, Andrea, is, I think the solution is technological. I don't think the solution is everybody changing their ways.
While everybody changing their ways would be a good solution. I don't think it's going to happen. If we can't get people to wear masks, we're not going to get them to change everything else that they do
with regards to what they eat, how they travel, what emissions that they do calculating this planting guy that I just, I can't I can see a percentage of people who are aware, making making changes so that they're not hypocritical. But I but there's this giant iceberg of people who are either unaware or not going to change. And the only, it seems to me that the only way that the solution is going to happen is if it's commercial,
commercially viable, profitable somewhere. And, and automatic that will cover the fact that we don't know what would you know that people are not going to do it. Unless like Suzanna said, they're feeling it, when they feel it that it's in their awareness is now peaked a little bit. And I'd love to hear some of Suzanne has
corporate ideas and solutions, because I think companies are a big, big one in in determining how people think, because to force people to make changes, government would be seen as tyrannical, and then the government that comes in as opposition to go, you know, why don't we not do that? And everyone goes, Yeah, we'd like you better we're gonna vote you into then the other lot get voted out even though they try to do the right thing where organizations can operate across national boundaries and make make a difference if they choose to, although profitability is a bigger thing there. And then the other, I just like to throw in before you before you, you do that is how do we help? How do how do we export power?
Like wind power, and that sort of how do we export it because the thing about coal is you can put it on a ship and send it to somebody else. we're exporting the power apart from having a giant tanker battery that then sales over somewhere else and then you know, unloads the battery or or recharges something and it comes back and powers up again.
So that seems there's a lot of stuff that you've just said that will be very difficult to answer within the within the timeframe that we're working on here. But you know, like quick one maybe,
you know, I think changes human human habits and patterns is obviously very difficult. Perhaps the most difficult thing there is
But I do think that businesses and corporations have the opportunity to continue offering us products and services that we experience in a similar way. But which just comes with that way lower environmental footprint, that's the change that needs to happen. Yeah, that's the innovation space. So I don't believe that there's like one single silver bullet that will magically improve everything. On the contrary, lots of companies will need to innovate very hard, and change the products and services that they offer to us. So that, you know, we can consume more responsibly. So that I see rather as as as the pathway,
technology a singular one, or, sadly, changing our habits. And the idea that, you know, what we what we create needs to be profitable. That's the reason we're here in the first place, right? That the only things that we do do it that we're doing because we can make money from them, right. But there's a global education program that is in place, and it needs to get bigger, we need more voices talking and more ripples going out into our communities and more awareness of our own personal habits. And, and, you know, like, if I waste something, I feel this incredible sense of shame. And I want everyone on the planet to feel the sense of shaming themselves when they when they do something that's not good for the environment. And that's just all of us coming together and, and doing everything we can to sort of raise awareness. But one of the things that we want to talk about and that's our theme this week is greenwashing. And this is one of Suzanne is passion topics, like I said earlier, but just this week, Susanna eco business published an article about a report that studying that ESG investment funds are rife with greenwashing. And for those of you who don't know what ESG stands for its environmental, social and governance. It's a generic term used in capital markets and by investors to what is it to evaluate corporate behavior, and determine the future financial performance of companies? So it's a it's a hot topic, it's a growing area, lots of jobs available in the area. But Suzanna, let's start by defining what is green washing.
While green washing can be considered as a form of misleading marketing or any other communications that portrayed a company or a product, it could also be a financial product as something better compared to alternative so better in terms of environmental, social or human rights issues, without the proper evidence to back that claim. In other words, green waters talk loudly about sustainability without actually doing anything.
Yeah, so let's look Yeah, the reason why this exist is that there is a willingness, and there is a demand for for products and services like this. And currently, a lot of businesses and companies are getting away by not actually showing any real evidence or proof that they actually doing anything differently. But by clever marketing tactics, because we prefer to buy such products and services. This gives all the fuel to greenwashing to happen in many, many different areas. Yeah. All right. So let's let's get stuck into some examples. So just a little while ago, I was I was reading an article about this. I think it could have been shell I can't remember. But they were doing a campaign around green coal. And all of their branding was green, you go into the supermarkets, all the packaging is green. Right. So
let's talk through some examples of some of the most outrageous green washing that you've seen. Yeah, well, one case that was actually brought to, in front of the advertising watchdog in the Netherlands reasonably was involving shell. So in the Netherlands shell is running a campaign where they say, hey, tribe admission fee free if you do this carbon offset. Now a group of young students have contested that, and and make the case that shell as the story is actually shell hasn't provided any evidence to support that claim. Now, if you look into the mechanisms that a shell has probably used here, well, they're probably buying carbon credits, which do help reduce the emission load on the world. And surprisingly, there are lots of carbon credits out there. So you can buy a ton of
co2 emissions for about five US dollars. However, it's quite questionable. What's the quality of such a carbon credit? So is that really an additional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the world? And you know, how long would such a reduction last
So if you look at the other markets where, you know, companies are forced to buy carbon credits, because they are regulated and mandated for doing so, they're the prices are at about 75 US dollars in Europe right now. So you can think of, you know, what's causes this 15 times price difference between a $5 carbon credit and a higher quality $75 carbon credit. So this is something shall we'll need to answer, I think, within a week. And then we shall see whether they can continue with this campaign or not.
Buy with Captain shell,
I would simply answer, because we're not locked in. We're not mandated to do it. We're not getting ripped off. That's what it sounds like. But I totally, I totally agree with you that there are different types of carbon credits out there. And some of them are for things that have been made five years ago. And because then they're producing invar, they're producing, they're, I guess, the climate positive producing areas that you can buy credits from it, and it sort of offsets what you're doing. The challenge is, like you said, it's not actually adding something new to solve the problem that we're creating. Now. It's paying for something that's already running. Now, when I was doing some research about what to do, I found this dam in this hydroelectric dam in South America, that was built in 1974. And they added some hydroelectric thing on to it. That that added that, that gave me the opportunity to buy these credits from it. And I was just like, but it's already built it. So that's right. It's already doing a good thing. I want to be able to do a new good thing. So that what I'm doing is incrementally adding to the solution rather than just paying for somebody else's infrastructure. Yeah, absolutely. And now obviously, with the increased bushfires in in us and many other places in the world over the summer, we're faced with the problem of permanency. So a lot of the forestation. afforestation project, additional forestation project have actually burned up.
So yeah, the permanency topic is another relevant one, in this case that shell will need to account for Lisa, what are the whole one of the one of the companies that really came out early was BlackRock
sort of claiming that you know, they're gonna they're gonna get green and earlier this year, there was some outrage. I think the headline was BlackRock accused of greenwashing. $85 billion in calling investments. And then in March, one of their executives basically came out and said, In truth, sustainable investing boils down to little more than marketing, hype, PR, spin and disingenuous promises from the investment community. So it sounds like, you know, all everything that we're hearing on that side is just rubbish. Which means, you know, how do people know what to trust? I mean, because it's not just the investment side, it's, it's the fossil fuel industry, you know, they're, they're relying on future growth, because the plastic companies, the
goods, companies, like Coke are just going to make more and more bottles, or plus, yeah, you know, you know, how do people know? How does it how do you? How do you pick it? Well, in Indeed, I think right now, we are approaching a watershed moment in the ESG investment area, sorry, there's a bit of background noise.
They were listening, very good. But actually, the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US is has started to investigate the Ws and German asset management company for allegedly kind of making a bit stronger sustainability statements about their portfolio than then what is actually or supposedly being the case. So I had the pleasure of being in a in a session with desarae ficks law, who was the the former chief Sustainability Officer there, and she shared about, you know, what's the practice or the lack of practice of actually validating certain investment objects for ESG. And and and how that works community communicated externally. And there seems to be quite a discrepancy in terms of what's what's being put forward as as the methods and practice versus what happened
behind the scenes. So I think the whole investment community is really on their tippy toes because it's certainly not just a dw s. That's I think, facing similar challenges in doing this kind of business. So it could well be that this becomes a precedence case. That spills over
from us to Europe, and other parts of the world, certainly there's a lot of cleanup to be done in the marketing of financial products, it's very easy to say, you know, this is environmentally friendly, ESG ESG integrated, it actually doesn't mean anything. Really, if you ask me,
it's just someone has maybe thought of thinking about ESG in the context of a product, but it's quite different from ESG performance. To start with, and having spoken to many financial advisors here in Singapore as well, I think it's fair to say that there is quite a lack of depth in these conversations here. So again, it's up to us as consumers and professionals to to call out when, you know, we we get this kind of marketing message messages from financial institutions and advisers and not to accept them such. So I really advise everyone to, you know, ask quite pertinently, you know, what's behind those sustainability claims or ESG claims that have been made? In the best case, you get an honest answer, which is, I don't know.
I have also received that many times. But, you know, don't don't buy such products at face value. Really, really ask and do your research, whether there is any substance improve behind the sustainability claims? Yeah. And, you know, it's not just the financial services industry, that's part of the screen washing. Now, the consumer goods industry is part of it, the automotive industry is part of it, you know, that all sorts of cases, you know, claiming that the cars were practically emissions free, and they weren't, you know, it's every industry. And of course, the onus is on the consumer, again, to educate themselves. So follow us is Anna, she shares a lot of really, really great information on these, I put it in my weekend reads as well, if these articles pop up. But the other thing I would say is, you know, I'm I'm a PR, content marketing marketing person for over 20 history, Suzanna, you come from a similar industry, similar background, to it to the people working in this industry, don't contribute to this, to this, to this rubbish, just please challenge your company, to you know, the people, some of the biggest damage that's being done, has been through the marketing and PR, of the of the fossil fuel industry. So I think the people who are working in this field and not everybody in this field is bad, don't get me wrong. And and I think a lot of people were thought they were doing great work. It was exciting work, right? They were changing the narrative. But the impact on earth is obviously something that we all need to be aware of. So if you're in this industry, let's stand up and let's change the courts. You know, as a community, I think we're a powerful community. And I think we can do that. And still talking about emotions. I mean, I think the emotion it's been marketed quite heavily is guilt. By the fossil fuel industry.
It's been shown that the the concept of a personal carbon footprint was actually kind of conceptualized and put forward by a PR agency of a major fossil fuel company, to divert the attention from systemic change to you know, putting the guild's on ourselves as individuals. So this is this is a marketing strategy that's been used over the last decade. So whereas I think it's fine to be conscious of the footprint that we have, I mean, again, if we're not presented with, with better economically available and convenient choices, then it is a systemic issue. And we should challenge the system. Yeah, absolutely. I'm interested in, in how some of these big brands have actually changed their logo to look environmentally friendly. Like, isn't BP is a flower,
like
shell, of course, Standard Chartered just change this to have a water droplet in a leaf.
Well, what looks like a water droplet in the leaf. And I was I just as you're talking, I was wondering, I wonder what sort of call stuff do that and charted sort of finance and I just typed it into Google? And, and came up with this website called here for coal instead of here for good, which is there. That's the tagline. It was here for kohls.com. And the whole website is calling standard shout it out. Against that no call policy and an examining how much funding they're putting into coal and how it's continuing. There's actually another great website. I don't remember the name right now, but they pretty much disclose all the I think top 200 world's banks, fossil fuel, exposure in terms of lending. It's quite interesting leading reading and definitely something that should guide your decision when you choose your bank. consider switching and then these other things like the Adani mine, and us
All right, so the final insurer that was looking at getting on board was Lloyds. And I remember, I don't know, if you guys understand how Lloyds work, I need to because I had did some work with them. But it's a marketplace, right? So they don't actually have central control over the market marketplace. And if people want to go and insure an amine in Australia, they will. However, it was the first time that Lloyds did sort of do a call down and say we we can't support this. So you know, there is change there is there are significant things happening. It just needs to happen faster, but
greenwashing keep an eye out for it. Keep an eye out for the articles, subscribe to the Eco magazines and digital newspapers. So they're out there. There's some brilliant ones out there. I love eco business, spend some money with them to help them keep going because they're doing really important work. But yeah, once again, the education is on us. But if you're not one of those people that can be bothered, then let's make sure that people who can be bothered to sharing that knowledge with their community so that we can get the word out. Alright, so before we move into the other news that's catching our week, our attention this week, because got any funny ones? Yeah, got a great one. Awesome.
So there's
a boy giant panda has been born in Singapore Zoo. And the reason why it's important that it's a boy is because they're looking for a name for the for the panda. And it is you've got till September the 19th to submit the name. So I came up with the name just now. And I think we should call it pandemic.
And the
quick Yeah, pandemic.
I think that'd be great name. Don't you think you heard it here? We've got this on broadcast. Yeah, I love that we have a brand new giant baby panda has been born.
The other the other name I think would be good as quarter pounder with cheese.
You're
good to go back to parents. It's a whopper of a name. Yeah. Is there an
independent? Nope. Bamboo. Okay. Joe, have you got any any any news you've been paying attention to?
This this week has been a little bit distracting for me in terms of cryptocurrencies, you know, what's been going on? So there was a flash crash? Oh, yeah. There was a flash crash that happened, you know, just yet the day, basically. By the way, Joe? Yeah. And that that was, that was like the same day or same week that one of the countries in Latin America is pegged its entire currency to it. Right? Well, what else that one of the reasons that they talk about the crash may be happening is because all of it was building up to this. And then when they when they launched the the apps that was supposed to run, it didn't quite work. So it really opened the great failure, so to speak, I may have caused a little bit of an automatic selling as well, because everybody is a bit on the edge and tense about that price, because we've just hit some new highs. So everyone's just, you know, just on the edge there. And so something like that can really cause a an avalanche of sorts.
bought some
crashes, I pretty simply crash.
It. Did you guys see the women's protests in Afghanistan and the ladies are saying that they're going to keep protesting no matter what, even if they die. And I, I mean, I'm watching these protests and talk about uncommon courage. These women are incredible. And I'm just constantly thinking, what can we do to support the women and the girls of Afghanistan, as well as the LGBTQ community there? And just, you know, just the minority communities? What can we do here?
Okay, thanks very much, Tim.
Another story that I thought was interesting was that Mexico has decriminalized abortion. And they've done it in the states in a northern border with Texas, which is kind of ironic, but it's actually also expected to become a national ruling. So obviously, it's a predominantly Catholic country. This is this is a big deal. The only countries in the world that have gone backwards with abortion, the US Nicaragua, and Poland. So, you know, there's some really interesting commentary about that as well. Any other news you guys picked up?
Nothing, no, just Bitcoin. There's another really cool story this week in Mexico. A 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck me struck me or Acapulco, did you see that? So a lot of damage not not not too much debt that I've seen so far, but it created a lot of
surprise or because it released blue lights, and this is called earthquake lights. And basically I've never heard of this happening before, but it's a common thing.
It's energy being released during a trimmer. So there's some really fantastic visuals, photography and videos around this moment when these blue lights blue lights are released. So go and check that one out to
you got some links.
Of course I have my weekend reads Come on lovely. The other thing that is important news at the moment is Kim Jong Un is looking trim and tanned. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah. Just wanna let you know. Good. Well,
he should be trimmed at the moment because
it's on headline news. I mean, I don't know what headlines I'm reading. But these are these are. Yeah, this was the headline. North Korea's Kim Jong Un is trim Tandon loving a parade.
And that's a country in deep crisis. You know. All right. So, first of all, thank you so much to Susanna for joining us, please, I do encourage you to follow what Suzanne is doing. She's She's She's a great thinker in this space, not just greenwashing, but sustainability, especially from a business context. And I'm totally with her on system change. But so then, are you watching or reading or listening to anything at the moment that's taking your mind off the world and all the stuff and the crazy stuff? Well, one interesting thing that I'm I'm kind of starting to dig deeper is ESG analytics platform. So I've got got the data from 66,000 companies now in my hands. And you know, I'm going to be studying that very carefully. And, and also providing feedback to the provider of the system. And in terms of where I see room for improvement. spot a few things already. So I'll take a bit of a deep dive into that space. So you've got some relaxing talks coming up, then. Hmm, yeah. Lots of crunching and charts and whatnot to come here.
Andrea, do you want to do a shout out for that podcast that features Susanna with regards to the ideas for climate stuff? Because there's some cool stuff coming up on that, too? Oh, you can do a shout out if you like. You know what? Okay, everyone could do shout out, Joe.
I heard there's a really good podcast.
Shout out. So wait, yeah, so obviously, I put the no show straight up on to uncommon courage. As soon as I can download and upload into all the nonsense you have to do. But we just don't Jos
Tim Susanna, and our friend, Michelle just did a podcast where we're talking about all the different things we can do as individuals, but also collective activism. So working together as communities to create change. And we're going to do another one in a couple of weeks, where, which is still on the individual, and then we're going to move into business. And then I'm going to find some people in the travel and tourism sector to talk about it, to talk about it from that perspective as well. So that's coming up, and that the first ones out. So that's an hour and a half. But there's a lot of goodness in that and a lot of really good ideas that every single person can act on. So check out uncommon courage, the podcast.
Alright, Joe, are you still listening to your podcast? Or have you moved on to something new?
Well, I actually I had, I had a thought, and I'm sorry, I know you've kind of headed for the exit there. But I have a thought about the whole greenwashing idea
myself that, you know, while we give everyone a really hard time for not doing it absolutely right I I don't want to I don't want to see a get to a place where people don't want to touch it because it's so dangerous, or it's a kind of a third real situation. And I see that from the computing side of things. Like for instance, for a while and computing that the buzzwords were AI machine learning and every company they came up, I had to talk about computing to have to have some AI and machine learning sort of component to it. And of course, it turns out a lot of people don't really understand what AI machine learning worry, we're just using algorithms, right. And, and, and it got to a point where people have been saying, you know what, let's not let's not do that. Let's not try and do that, because that's not what we're doing.
I think there is some value to a bunch of people saying they're doing something even if they don't really know what they're doing yet. Because I think it becomes a social norm it becomes something where more will be done inadvertently as in like, it becomes this fashion that has to move forward. And it's terrible to talk about things in terms of a fashion but it really is. A lot of times it is about things becoming fashionable. So like like, you know, wokeness for instance. I think there's a there's a certain level of of the true activists at the base level, and then it caught on and then it gets momentum and it moves forward despite despite some people who will really maybe don't know what they're doing. So it was just it was just a thought that I had
about bad how do we how do we, how do we?
How do we figure out a way to save the companies? You know what? Nice try, but here's how you do better rather than bad, bad, bad boy, you know? Yeah, I think that the guilt, guilt never works, right. But we have to come to an agreement where this is the moment in time where we stop looking back and blaming, because the damage is already done. And we look forward and solve it together. And there's no bullshit from now on. Right? So it's just I think we have to have a line. And to me that line has already been crossed. And so just no more rubbish. No more nonsense. No more PR, marketing spin. Just Let's be truthful. Let's be honest. We've got a problem. We need to solve it. We need to come together and solve it. So let's go and anything. Any nonsense from now on. inexcusable.
Right. Now, Bullock's Dr. Andrea. Yeah, yeah.
Because we know, they know. Everyone knows. Let's go. Okay. At the end of my U turn, I'll put you back on course, again, as a U turn back off to the exit. What do you want? What fun stuff? Are you wanting to escape? I've been Suzanne is escaping with a 60,000 disaster report. What do you What are you escaping with? Joe? Um, I will be very ironic. I am watching homeland. And it's it's it's the timing of it. You know, they're in Afghanistan right now. But, yeah. Season Three. I got through halfway through the second season. I just couldn't do it anymore. You know that it was to 24 hours again. It was to America and again, you know, it's the same old same old that sort of, I can't do model Okay, what's the word? Everything Everything starts to feel the same. What's that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. On TV everywhere.
So yeah, yeah. template. Yeah. Some if you're going into season three good for you. Yeah, nice.
recommend you do plow on a lot of shows that suffer from like, I think we got like you got to get past the middle of season two.
But it's one of those shows. So right now I'm at three moving on to the fourth one it's it's evolving. And actually one of the one of the key parts of that show which we will do miss is that it's it's about mental health. A lot of the show is about mental health. A lot of the characters you know that we follow them that way. So
it's the hidden it's the hidden agenda wrapped around wrapped wrapped, or at least wrapped around with a with a with a terrorist plot.
You guys need some lessons in escapism.
escapism so I'm watching only murders in the building, written by Steve Martin, with Martin Short who is hysterical in it. And and it's it's your I can't stand it. It's on Disney Channel. I can't send the I have to wait a week for the new episode to drop. I just I like the I've been become accustomed to being able to binge. And when new things coming out like this. It's just like, come on. But it's beautifully made in such a way that it's it's very funny. It's writing is very funny. It's about it's about these two old guys and a young girl who decided to make a podcast.
And
one guy is being an actor and TV and the other one's been a Broadway producer. And they've all had this sort of, you know, identity losses. But they've decided to make a podcast on this murder that happened in their building. And then they're like, Can we make a podcast about all these other matters? And it's like, no only matters in the building.
And very, very good. I think we've got about four episodes down so far. But it's, it's, it takes you into their building. It's just I don't know what it is. But I just it's kind of it's added I just I I'm laughing out loud. And I usually smoke for something. It's funny, but this one gets me laughing. Yeah. We watched dirty grandpa we'd flex our 14 year old on the weekend. Rob engineering, and that's pretty funny, maybe but one of the series we started watching this week was called is called untold stories on Netflix. If you have an opportunity to watch it, it's brilliant. It's really late. So the first one we watched was with Caitlyn Jenner. So her entire story was absolutely fantastic. And I think it's going to do a lot to help people like trans people. There was another one about a female boxer. So with an abusive husband controlling husband who also it finally accepted that she was a lesbian and lived lived her life fully so really powerful. So I would definitely recommend untold stories.
You know, there is one on my on my
Watch List. That is from the National Geographic Channel called genius. And it's, it's like by its biographies of,
they've got three seasons out. And each seasons one person. So it's like a mini series on just that person. The first ones Geoffrey Rush playing Einstein.
Geoffrey Rush. He's one of my favorite actors. He's just brilliant. So it's almost like if he's doing it, then. That's good. There's Einstein. The first one Picasso's the second, and the third season's Aretha Franklin. Okay, that sounds great. So it That one looks pretty, pretty interesting. If that's in there. I think that's disney channel as well. But if it's not geo, then could be anywhere. Yeah, that geo is on Disney. It's on. It's on Disney. But is it on somewhere else as well? Also, I don't know. Yeah, they're all taking their things off off their different platforms and putting them onto their own channels and charging. So yep, we all have multiple platforms. Alright, so time to say happy weekend. Thank you so much for joining us, Susanna. My pleasure.
Lovely male partners in crime for the no show. Hope you find some using this and just sort of catching up on what's going on. I put these straight up onto uncommon courage, the podcast if you prefer the audio. That's another way of listening to it. To me, Joe, do you want to wrap up?
Well, I want to recommend the podcast because that's a fantastic way to enjoy us without our faces. Well, at least I speak for Tim and myself.
Bye, everybody. Thanks for joining us again. We look forward to seeing you next week on the nose show do catch up do connect with Suzanna, especially if you're running business and you need some KPIs involved, like I mentioned at the start of the show, because she's got some really interesting ways of finding that out and helping you set that stuff up. So have a conversation with her about that as well. Andrea, always a pleasure, Joe, less of a pleasure, but I'll tolerate it.
Alright guys, enjoy the broadcast. See you next time. Bye, guys.