Lingo Gingo

Do you think climate change is attracting too much jargon?

I wonder about this, because years ago I was a senior programmer in a software firm who created online retail systems for supermarkets, and we had a language of our own.  Not just a language other programmers in other companies could understand.  No.  Not just a language other programmers in our own company could understand.  No they couldn’t.  Even people who produced other versions of retail systems in the same company would not understand the acronyms and specialist terms we had conjured up in producing this new system.

ISS400.  OSIF.  TAC.  COREMA.  MS. IA. SP. HSI…listening in during our Christmas party must have been like being a fly on the wall in Bletchley Park during the second world war.  Very excluding.

And now I am wondering whether climate change is distancing some people – in particular, owners of small businesses, purely because there is so much jargon.  And people in the know are starting to forget to explain some terms before they launch into full “TLA” lingo.

(Three Letter Acronym, by the way.  But you already knew that, right?)

PV?  EUETS? Mitigation? Adaptation?  GHG?  UKCIP?  CCC? CCPO? DECC? MtCO2e?  CCA? JI? CDM? 

My goodness, it is the ICL retail systems ISS400 project all over again!

OK, so you and I know what these terms mean (don’t we?) but how about people we are trying to engage with?  Jargon excludes and frightens people off. 

Let’s all commit to explain our climate change acronyms every time we speak to groups who are not likely to know their meaning.  It’s not clever to show you know more than the audience, and can be counter productive.

Indigestion

Recently, I met a pig farming couple based near the M40. Pig farmers are struggling to survive with the recent increases in the price of grain and feedstock.

The opportunity they have of using pig slurry as part of the fuel for anaerobic digesters has been made all the more obvious to those who listen to Radio4’s The Archers where two of the main characters are investigating installing a digester on Home Farm.

The opportunity here in Oxford appears obvious. In Banbury, we have a number of food manufacturers; waste from which could be included in the fuel for the digesters.

The government is making enormous efforts to encourage the production of biofuel crops, providing financial supports. Energy Crops Scheme provides grants for establishing short rotation coppice and miscanthus under the new Rural Development Programme England (RDPE), which will run from 2007-2013 and planning (subject to EU approval):

• £1,000 per hectare for short rotation coppice
• £800 per hectare for miscanthus

But why is there no direct support for anaerobic digesters? This type of local energy generation should surely attract its own focused scheme? Asking DEFRA and the digesters companies themselves, and you are pointed to the diversification programme.

Look on DEFRAs website under grants for livestock farmers, and you will see the words “Scheme now closed” in most of them. The setting up of an anaerobic digester facility can cost millions, so how the pig farming community is expected to fund this is a mystery.

So come on, DEFRA, give the pig farmers a break – and help them survive and thrive by providing interest free loans – payable once the renewable energy starts to earn cash.

Clutching at Straws

Doing a little market research recently has left me flabbergasted.

One of the questions was  “do you think climate change is happening?” Only a third of the people replying said Yes – and these are MDs of companies.

Regardless of the vast amounts of evidence and scientific consensus, how do they explain the weather chaos we’ve seen with our own eyes this year?

On a recent Radio4 “Any Answers?” slot, person after person phoned-in to say that climate change was all a load of rubbish (“that channel 4 programme got it right…”).  Did they not realise that the scientist to which they referred in the Channel 4 programme was also the last one to cling to the view that smoking doesn’t cause cancer?

The thought that some climate change is inevitable is a bit scary, so it is understandable that people are clutching at straws in this way.

But if two thirds of business leaders are still not believing that it is already starting to happen, what incentive is there for them to bring innovative products to market to help people with the problems such as flooding and travel disruption?

Can’t we use our emotional energy to do something positive, rather than stay in denial?

It’s not relevant to my business

I spoke to a business person who worked for a law firm.

“Climate change doesn’t really apply to us”, he said, “we don’t have factories or make anything, we don’t need to transport our products anywhere, and our light bulbs are all energy savers”.

This is old thinking. This is looking at climate change as a problem not an opportunity.

My response was “there is such a lot of legislation, at international, EU and UK levels that affect, or will affect businesses. As a law firm, you could decide to specialise in the legal aspects of climate change, and develop this as a new service stream”.

This is new thinking. This has nothing to do with changing your light bulbs.

I can’t afford consultants!

Not many SMEs can, that’s why you shouldn’t pay anything for them.

There are other ways to develop your strategies – Ems2 can help, it won’t break the bank.

A drop in the ocean compared with China and India?

The rapid commercial expansion of India and China is a fact, and there are mechanisms in the Kyoto protocol which help this to happen without such an impact on greenhouse gas emissions, such as CDM.

We can have an intellectual debate about how well this might work, but to the average small business leader,the reality is usually a little closer to home. There is no getting away from the fact that SMEs, even if they only operate in one country, are going to find themselves under increasing pressure around the climate change agenda.

This might be from legislation, from their customers needing products or services to reduce their own carbon footprint, or from the pure fact that disruptions in weather and transport means the business needs to adjust its operations to survive, or enable customers to survive.

India and China will do whatever they will do – enterprise leaders in the UK, Europe and US need to find a practical way through the confusion to stay in business.