Robert Gardner: 0:03

And so I suppose my small steps are if every listener contacted their HR department, if every HR department held their pension provider to account eventually every pension provider held their fund managers to account, and every fund manager held their companies to account, you get massive change.

Tom Raftery: 0:24

Good morning, good afternoon or good evening wherever you are in the world. This is the climate 21 podcast, the number one podcast showcasing best practices and climate emissions reductions. And I'm your host, global Vice President for SAP. Tom Raftery. Climate 21 is the name of an initiative by SAP to allow our customers calculate, report and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In this climate 21 podcast, I will showcase best practices and thought leadership by SAP, by our customers by our partners on by our competitors if their game in climate emissions reductions. Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast in your podcast app of choice to be sure you don't miss any episodes. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the climate 21 podcast. My name is Tom Raftery with SAP and with me on the show today I have my special guest, Robert. Robert, would you like to introduce yourself?

Robert Gardner: 1:22

Yeah, well, firstly, Hi, Tom. And thanks. Thanks for having me on. So yeah, I'm Rob Gardner. I'm the director of investments at St. James's Place Wealth Management, which means that I'm responsible for planning growing and protecting the wealth of over 850,000 clients. And we literally have clients who are babies, and we've we've got quite a few clients who are over the age of 100. And, and to put that into pounds, and pence, that means that we look after just over about 145 billion pounds, so I run the team that's responsible for doing that. And, and very simply, what we're trying to do is help our clients achieve two things, financial well being in a world worth living in. So financial well being is all about maybe not running out of money when you retire, or having enough money to kind of have financial freedom. And a world worth living in is this idea that sort of money makes the world go round. And actually money is the most powerful voting mechanism on the planet, you know, one pound $1 is one vote. And certainly we believe that that money can be used as a force for good and I've listened to some of your previous podcasts. And I know not all people agree that which is great, because I think it's such an important discussion.

Tom Raftery: 2:41

Super Rob, that's that's a lot of money. it this is this is great, because as you rightly mentioned, I did have a number of people like David Harris and Shri Callie and Paul O'Connor from you know, London Stock Exchange group and JP Morgan respectively. And then I had to read fancy command, former Black Rock, and there were kind of opposing views there on on the world of will be called sustainable investing or investment for good, or I'm not sure how we should refer to it. And, and just as well, to kind of step back a second say, you know, I'm not a financial wizard by any stretch. So please use small words in the context of this conversation, because I don't want to get too technical, and I'll get completely lost. So given that we've had some conversations about this already, and people like, you know, Paul, and Dave Harris and Trey have all said, you know, ESG is great green bonds are fantastic, and they're gonna save the world. I'm exaggerating wildly, but you know, that's the kind of that's the path they took. And then Tariq came on and said, he didn't say quite the opposite. But he said, you know, it's not quite as as black and white as it may have been painted. And there are some definite problems. And there's a lot of reform that needs to be done. Where do you stand in that whole spectrum of opinion?

Robert Gardner: 4:09

Yeah, look, so I, from a philosophical perspective, I definitely sit at the sort of polar corner, David Harris. end of the spectrum, but I think terrorists warnings about greenwashing are absolutely right. And I think the point is, it is nuanced. And, and the issue is, is that many people use different words. So ethical investing, sustainable investing, responsible investing, environmental, social, and governance, ESG impact investing. Now, some people use these things interchangeably. Like they mean the same thing. For me personally, they mean very different things. And I think there's a very clear spectrum and I think it's worth going back in history to sort of say, Well, how did we get here? Well, the starting point is that really for the last 40 years, We've had an economic system that has been based on this sort of ideology, which was started by Milton Friedman, the economy, which is the sole purpose of a company is profit. That wasn't, by the way, always the ideology of, of companies. And that meant that if you were executives and board directors of that company, your goal was to make as much profit as possible, with very little measurement of impact on externalities. We now in a world, where we say, Well, look, there's stuff happening in the world, some of these companies are polluting rivers, some of these companies are producing carbon dioxide, which is causing climate change. Some of these people are not looking after their employees, or some of these people are outsourcing to other companies that have terrible wage practices. Actually, your board is not very diverse, a whole load of issues. And, and as we look forward, we want companies not just to think about their profit, but we also want to think about their impact on people and planet. And actually, the businesses and companies that will succeed in the future, will get prosperity not just in an economic and financial sense, but will also create prosperity in a more sort of holistic way, for people and planet. As people started to do that, the Genesis was probably the 1990s, where people like the Church of England would do what's called ethical investing. And they say, well, we don't want, we don't want companies that make weapons and ammunitions, we don't want companies that are involved with pornography, we don't want tobacco. And they would exclude. So this is kind of concept called exclusion. The issue is, is that actually tobacco stocks did very well over the 1990s to 2000s. And therefore, that created a problem. So while you might ethically choose to cut them out, but your members in your pension fund who you have a fiduciary duty to, you've not done well by them, because they've missed out on performance that they would have otherwise got, and you sort of kicked your ethics maybe on on their behalf. And so ethical investing often gets confused, especially in the mainstream media, with responsible investing or sustainable investing, probably about 15 years ago, this idea of in a much more holistic approach to investing came about, we said not only do we need to think company's revenues and costs and profits, but we also need to think about their environmental impact their social impact, and their governance, we need to understand that companies impact the environment in which they operate both the sort of physical environment as well as so people in communities, and the planet and peoples and communities impacts those companies. And once you understand that there's that circularity, we can start to think more holistically, and we can go well, actually, what happens to this business? You know, if we were wine growers in Spain or Portugal, you know, prospects look pretty grim because I just don't think you'll be able to grow reoccur 10 years from now as a result of climate change. So when you're looking to invest in a business, how does that change the future outlook of that business? Or how is that business is their business practices that business is doing not necessarily next 12 months, but over the medium to long term will mean they no longer have a license to operate. So we've got this concept called ESG. But even within ESG, and I think this is what Tariq is calling out, there are multiple behaviors. So you you get what's called screening. And what Tarik was highlighting is, you get companies for managers who know what's popular, know, this stuff sells, and I think that's what he's calling out. And really, you know, a really easy thing I can do, Tom is if I'm investing in a portfolio of US stocks benchmark to what's called the s&p 500. So the 500 largest companies in the US, I can basically not hold Exxon and Chevron and buy a little bit more Microsoft and say, hey, look at me, I thought you were really low carbon efficient portfolio, because all I've done is I've got rid of two really bad companies that produce a lot of carbon dioxide, have a lot of negative environmental externalities. And I bought Microsoft, which not only is it planning to be net zero, but it's actually planning to offset all of its carbon footprint since the beginning of time. And not only that, some people are charging more money for that. So you have this situation where you can buy a low cost tracker fund, and then someone says, Well, you can, you can buy our ESG fund. We'll charge you more for it and it looks better, but all they've done is bought more of one company and sold another and I don't sit in that camp, but I applaud Tarik for calling it out. And he talks about this idea. I can't remember the word he used, but Well, I think conditionality needs to Yeah, exactly. You need To demonstrate that it's had an impact. And so what we really need to do is we need to make shell, BP, Exxon Chevron, better companies just not investing in it doesn't change the outcome. buying more Microsoft shares, doesn't change the outcome. So there's exclusion. There's selection. There's integration that says, When I think about buying or selling these companies, I'll integrate it, where I sit, and how SAP does it is engagement. And so remember, I told you one, one pound is one vote. So of that 140 5 billion pounds, we have a billion, over a billion pounds worth of just Microsoft stock. Microsoft, by the way, is really good at this stuff. And lots of people buy it, it's well rated and all the rest.

Tom Raftery: 10:50

In fact, I had their chief environmental officer Lucas Java on this podcast a couple of months back. So for people who are listening, if you haven't heard that podcast, you should go back and find it in your podcast player, just scroll through the list of climate 21 episodes, you'll find it near the start. Excellent, excellent, excellent episode.

Robert Gardner: 11:08

So they score very highly on E. And they are definitely leaders in that space. But let's be honest, it's easier to be a leader in that space. If you're a technology company, than if you're an oil and gas company or metals or mining company. What are our managers are saying, Well, what about your ethics around AI or machine learning? Or you make lots of money around gaming? And you know, what are the kind of social consequences of gaming? How are you thinking about social? How are you thinking about responsible gaming? I don't know if you know, like, when you drink a beer, it says, drink aware, game aware almost, you know, like, playing computer games is cool, but spent, you know, spending 15 hours a day on a computer game is not cool. Not only is it not cool? It cannot be good for a young, a young adult.

Tom Raftery: 11:55

My kids might disagree with you. But anyway.

Robert Gardner: 11:58

Yeah, maybe maybe so but that's an example of engagement. On the flip side, we own shares in BP, shell, and total, but we don't own shares in Exxon, and Chevron and Gazprom, and that's because shell and BP and total have signed up to net zero, they, they acknowledge the Paris Climate accord her putting plans in place. And we're part of a group which called climate 100, which is focusing on the 100 worst emitters. So of all the 1000s of companies in the world, just 100 companies make up 70% of all co2 emissions globally. And what we're saying is we don't want to diverse because divest doesn't create the outcome doesn't create the additionality doesn't create the impact. Anyone can sell oil and gas companies or by Microsoft, that doesn't change anything. And I think that's what Tariq's calling out.

Tom Raftery: 12:51

does it not lead to a... does it not send a demand signal as it were? Does it not say, okay, your stock is less attractive, and therefore the price should fall?

Robert Gardner: 13:02

Correct. It should do and so and I suppose that would be the argument of, of some other people, I think you can add weight to that, which is, did you engage? I think he wasn't saying that was an issue, I think he was saying that. I was just asking myself, and are sort of greenwashing and pretending to do more than what they do. So we I can show you how our fund managers were part of climate 100 and got shell to sign up to net zero in January of this year, how in April, our fund managers voted against them because they felt that their their commitment to carbon reduction were not sort of enough. And then actually subsequently, shell re released their 2035 commitments to reduce their co2 footprint by by 45%. So I anyway, I said on the part that says I think ESG is good. I think money can be a force for good, but you have to engage. And I think there's this sort of fundamental idea that as a shareholder, you own a stake in that business. And I think to break it down really simply, Tom is if you're a homeowner, you've bought your own home, it's your responsibility to maintain your building to maintain your roof to look after the windows, because over any year, it probably doesn't matter. But if you live in your house for 30 years, and think about what your house will be worth 30 years from now, it's a function of how you've cared for maintained it invested it over that 30 year period. And I think when you take this active ownership mindset, I choose to invest my money in your company, Tom. And I also have a responsibility as a shareholder to make you a better business and, and to stretch this a bit further. At the heart of this is this concept called being a good ancestor, this idea that not only do we think need to think about the people today, but we need to think about people in the future who haven't been born. We need to think about your grandchildren who don't exist yet, but but just sort of mentally Think about this. So I want you and our listeners to just do this trick. I want you to imagine someone you love, maybe your mom or your dad. And I want you to imagine it's their fifth birthday, and I want you to close your eyes, and go back to that person's fifth birthday. So it's probably 50 6070 years ago. And I want you to think about what the world looked like who was there, their parents, their grandparents, their sisters, your brothers, aunties, uncles, etc. I want you to come back to today. And I want to, I want you to think about someone you love today, it might be your son, your daughter, or niece and nephew or godson, they got daughter, and I want you to think about their 90th birthday in the future. So that's probably 75 8090 years, 85 years from now. And I want you to close your eyes. And it's their 90th birthday, who's their, their husband, their wife, their kids, their friends and family. And they're about to talk and they say, actually, before I do that, I want you to I want I want to tell you about my Dad, I want to tell you about my mom, because they're going to describe why the world is the way it is on their 90th birthday. And what role do we have today, and the elephant in the room is with over 420 parts per million co2 in the atmosphere. With temperatures risen over one degree C since 1850 levels, the level of population growth, economic growth, energy consumption is no longer sustainable. We are on a pathway where we will have more heat waves, we will have more hurricanes, we will have more floods. And guess what, Tom, you may and our listeners won't be the least impacted by climate change. It is the poorest people in the world who will be most impacted by by climate change. And it will play out in that period. I think the question we all need to ask ourselves is are we going to do something about it. And the thing that I'm most passionate about is I actually think that we can deliver prosperity for you, Tom, your family, and the whole planet, because you may not think about it. But even saving 100 200 pounds a month or 200 euros a month or $200 a month into your pension gets massed together with billions of pounds or dollars. So in the case of sjp, we've got, you know, 150,000 clients, they're just saving 100 pounds, 200 pounds, 300 pounds a month, that's all aggregated up. When it's invested with us, that's 145 billion pounds, we invest with 39 fund managers around the world. And that collectively is about 8 trillion pounds. And they then invest in about 13,000 companies around the world. And that's about 80 trillion pounds. So your 200 or 300 pounds is having this massive force multiplier effect. And a few years ago, Nordea did a study that showed that if you save in your pension for 40 years in a sustainable and responsible way, where you're actually having impact and not doing what Tariq caught about, that is 27 times more impactful than flying less, eating less red meat, or cycling to work. Now the reality is we need to do both, we need to start at home, and we need to change our actions and behaviors. But we also need to think and I think most people don't realize it, that their pension, which is probably their biggest sort of financial asset that's invested in stocks and shares is this massively powerful voting machine that can change the future trajectory of the planet and how we do about it. And I think if one thing that people could take away from listening to this podcast today is this aha moment, which is, I had no idea that how my money is invested, could have such a big impact. And if only if any listener just went away, and just emailed their HR department and said, How is my money invested? Who is the pension provider? What is their philosophy on this? Are they into exclusion? Are they into ESG? integration? Are they into ESG? selection? Are they into engagement? If you just go away and find that out? And then ask yourself, how do you want it to be that would be a brilliant takeaway from this podcast?

Tom Raftery: 20:43

Amazing. Actually, it's, that's, that's something that hasn't occurred to me. And I do think about this kind of stuff a lot because I do this podcast amongst other things. But you're absolutely right. I mean, for most of us, we don't know where our pensions are and what what's being done with it, how it's being invested. So yeah, that's a great takeaway. Contact the HR department and say Where is my pension and do is is the is the organization managing my pension? Are they responsible? Are they are they thinking about these kind of things? That's Yeah, that's phenomenal takeaway.

Robert Gardner: 21:22

All these companies, you know, whether it's managed with a blackrock or sjp, or a legal and general or a fidelity, they will have documents on their websites. And the same way that companies produce an annual report and accounts, they should have a document that sets out how they think about these things. And, and when you read it, you'll know whether they're into divestment, integration, selection or engagement. And then you can ask yourself, Is that the right thing? And by the way, on your own, you can't but if you and your enough employees write in and challenge the way that you do it, you can change the way your company pension fund is invested?

Tom Raftery: 22:00

Yeah, that's I was gonna say, how easy would it be to make that change? If you find that it's not being handled responsibly,

Robert Gardner: 22:07

HR departments at large companies like s, s, SAP and all the rest take this extremely seriously. And I think one of the biggest things is that most HR departments feel that their employees don't engage with their pension don't really value it, and don't realize how important it is to get it right. And actually, you know, I was involved with a project a few years ago, with the HSBC pension fund in the UK, this is all public, by the way. And we created a future world fund, we created a new fund that was going to do all the stuff that I that we've just been talking about. And the byproduct of that was that they found the engagement, especially in the under 40 roads, which was about two thirds of their employee base, went through the roof where they were suddenly really interested to know how their pensions invested and, and what impact it having. And I know it's controversial, because yesterday I was in London, and we had extinction rebellion and and they're of the view of divestment. divestment is the only answer. I don't I don't sit there I I honestly believe that we need to get BP and shell to change. I think that's the better answer. Now. Everyone's entitled to a different opinion. What I do agree is that the oil and gas companies cannot continue the way they they have been continuing for the last 20 years that that is just not sustainable. And in anyone's interest, either economically or socially or, or environmentally,

Tom Raftery: 23:28

and how as a fund, how do you know that they are changing if they say they are, I mean, these companies now, for example, are talking carbon intensity rather than emissions. And so it's very easy to raise your emissions and then just buys some offsets are similar to mask the rise in emissions. How do you how do you account for that? Well,

Robert Gardner: 23:57

I think this is what Tara is calling out. You've got greenwashing. So I think rightly people understand that if you sort of say your product is green and sustainable, it's more likely to sell and you've probably seen that in the supermarket or even close, right, more and more close companies are doing this is it you know, the fascinating thing is, before the late night 1927 Wall Street cash, companies in the US could basically make up their revenues and their costs and their profits. The whole auditing industry, the sort of PwC is the IE Why's the Deloitte the KPMG s, was born out of the fact that said we need external people to come in and say, when SAP say their revenues are x, and their costs are why we made that much profit? Are they actually what they say they are when SAP says these are our revenues? These are our costs, these are our profits, are they their PwC, or our auditor's and they have to produce that what what is going to happen is that the auditors are going to move into this ESG space. So it won't just be the auditing of financial information. But it will be the auditing of all of this ESG information and, and again, people will be able to look through and go well, you know, because even within accounting, right, you can sort of have revenues in this country, and that you can have tax in different places you can move it around, and then it will be the job of the fund managers and go well actually, maybe I'd rather have a company that's got a slightly higher carbon intensity, because they just have, you know, offsetting it, you know, is is cheating, it's sort of like not parking is parking illegally and paying your parking tickets rather than just don't park illegally. I think again, it becomes more nuanced because even if you do offsets, different offsets are in different ways. And I think if you've got companies who are genuinely trying to reduce their carbon intensity, there are some industries where it's a lot harder. But yeah, if they are reducing it, or if they are reducing their intensity and then offsetting. And then even within the offsetting market, you know, not all offsetting projects are equal. And so again, there's a lot of greenwashing there and a lot of people talking about planting trees and and doing stuff that sounds good. But yeah, not all Not all carbon offset, not all carbon sequestration programs are equal. And therefore what we do need our trusted sources, like the auditors to be able to come in and verify A or B and C and allow for managers on our behalf when they're investing that money to kind of make those those decisions and trade offs.

Tom Raftery: 26:33

Okay, and talk to me a little bit as well about the engagement that you do that you mentioned, how does that work?

Robert Gardner: 26:39

Well, so our business is a face to face advice business. So we have sort of four and a half 1000 advisors up and down the UK, and, you know, so that they'll look after individuals and their families, like, you know, like you, Tom like me, and have that conversation. And so engagements a lot easier. You know, our team produced an enormous amount of collateral, to try and talk to our clients. But with 850,000 clients, we have a full mixture of people, we have some people who don't care, who think it's all greenwashing and think it's a whole lot of nonsense. We have others who are super engaged in saying, Well, what are you doing on this issue or that issue and, and getting into like, really, you know, what are you doing about, you know, nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation? are asking very technical, technical questions. So as you might expect, you get the full range, I think the trick that the challenge is to be able to explain what it is, explain how we approach it, and how our approach is different. And therefore can also come back and report and say, and here's, here's examples of what we've done. And here's what we did last, here's what we said last year. And here's what we did this year, and keep coming back and bringing that to the to the fore,

Tom Raftery: 27:54

what I'm what I'm really referring to is the engagement with the companies and how you get them to change their tactics or their strategies or whatever.

Robert Gardner: 28:04

Yeah, so So what not, what normally happens is you can either you or I could just go and buy company shares in the company. Or what normally happens is you appoint a fund manager to do that on your behalf. And that's normally done through some kind of wrapper, like a pension or, or, you know, an investment savings account in the UK, or they're different wrappers around the world. So the way we do it, sjp is that we have our beliefs, and then we engage with the fund managers. So we like we ask our fund managers, you need to be signed up to what's called the United Nations principles for responsibility, or responsible investing, that's a bit of a sort of kite mark for responsible investing. We track them, we assess their capability and all the rest. And then we want to look for evidence to say demonstrate to us, Tom, that you have engaged with Microsoft, let's show me your meeting notes. Show me the meeting where us asked them about ethics of AI, where you talked about how are you thinking about gaming, show me File Manager where you voted against show, I want to see it. So we use the system, we use Rebekah, and we can track all the voting of all of our fund managers. So what we don't want is anyone riding on the coattails of others where there, they could be invested in Microsoft and invested in Shell taking the credit, but actually, there's no evidence that they actually engaged. So for us, we want to see those live case studies over time, about how you as a shareholder engaged with those with those companies. But to the point that that some of these funds, and some of these trackers won't be able to do that, because that's not what they're doing. They're just buying some ESG data that says this company is a double A rated ESG company and this one to triple B will buy more of that and less of that. And there's no engagement. And so really, all they can do is just report back that ESG company and say, Look, this company's got a more diverse board, it's got a lower carbon footprint, which is all good stuff. That's good stuff. And as you say, over time, the weighted average cost of capital will be lower for those companies with a higher rating, and half of those are the lower rating and and overtime will create will will create change, but but for me personally and our philosophy and how we do it, it's all about the evidence of engagement, show me that you have actively engaged with the executive board, and the non executive directors of that company to challenge them on their key ESG risks. And it's different for different companies, and how are you holding them to account to deliver against that not over the next 12 months, but put in place credible plans and incredible transitions to move from where they are to where they want to be? Cool, cool.

Tom Raftery: 30:46

Martin Luther King at a great quote, and I'm probably going to Mangle it here. But essentially what he said was that the, the arc of the moral universe tends towards justice. In other words, over time, things tend to get better. And, you know, I, I'm a firm believer in that although, you know, with climate change, you might argue that, you know, at times it gets worse and but other times, it gets better and You know, it's kind of a two step forward and one step back. What do you think? Are things getting better? Are we going in the right direction? Do we have time? Are we doomed? Where do you lie on that?

Robert Gardner: 31:24

So I love I love the the ethos. I'm like a glass half full guy. So he I love the idea that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. But it does require change. would that change have happened without the lights of Martin Luther King. It requires people to be very brave and courageous. And so although I don't necessarily believe in everything that extinction rebellion does, and I was out there yesterday, because it's just around the corner from my office. I think you do need agitators who are raising awareness. I think the truth is, you know, do I think gretta thunberg will solve it? No, but she has raised in awareness. That wasn't there. The truth is, Tom, when we turn on our news and our newspapers were influenced as human beings we're very short term in nature. The reason why did that exercise about the good ancestors and 90 years we're terrible at thinking about the long term, just behaviourally, it's, it's not our fault, right? And, and the truth is, as well, being a doomsday person doesn't work, you cannot motivate people to change through Doomsday through fear. That's not a powerful motivator. And that was what was so clever about Martin Luther, his Luther King's speech. Where I sit is I'm quite pragmatic, I think, unless we change the pathway that we are on is Doomsday. And and you know, an area that we don't really talk about much, which is absolutely linked to climate change, is the complete loss of biodiversity on the planet. You know, there are 90% less sharks in the ocean than there were when I was born. There's about 90% less tree elephants in Africa than when I was born. On average, I think biodiversity around the world has decreased by 70%. And yet, our Flora or fauna our animals are the best solution to climate change. The whale population in the ocean today sequesters over a trillion dollars worth of co2. And you're gonna have people running around the world to build some special carbon capture thing, well, why don't we just let those whales may and have families. And if we had double the number of whales in the ocean, that would double the amount of carbon sequestration that exists today. So and the sad truth is, is that not only are we killing nature, by our activities, but the byproduct of our activities, and climate change is killing nature. And yet the very thing that can take us out of this is his nature. And for me, I think change my my, my recipe for change rests on three things. You need awareness. So you do need Martin Luther King to march you do need people to stand up in the streets and be hosed down by the police and people to look at that and go, that is awful. You do need people to take over the streets of London. And and you know, I'm peaceful protesting I'm pretty supportive of that is a good thing that raises awareness. And people under need to understand what the problem is, and what the solution is, we then need to take small actions. And the mistake we make is we try and take big actions. And once we start to take those small actions, we can accelerate. So why am I positive? If five years ago, I would have told you that in 2021. electric cars were the best selling cars. In Europe. If I was to tell you that in five years time, there will be five new makers of cars, but they won't be internal combustion engine cars. They will be electric vehicle makers. And I'm not talking about Tesla. I'm talking about Pollstar, I'm talking about rivia. And I'm talking about Fisker, I'm talking about lucid motors, car companies, that people haven't even heard of, if the fact is that the entire European energy needs can be met by a small 100 mile area of the desert in the Sahara. And we could just sort of pipe that across to Europe. So we have enough energy, we just need to do things differently. We also need to shift from this Milton Friedman, Friedman, mate, take make waste economy, I take stuff out of the ground, I make stuff and when I'm done with that, I bin it, and I put it in a big heap. And we need to adopt this kind of concept called the circular economy. And again, I know you know, one of your speakers was was talking about that. Companies like Nike are leading the way here, which is how do we reuse and recycle more and more of our stuff. We all want new trainers. That's cool. We don't need to Sacra feis. But in order to have new trainers in order to have new clothes, we need to demand that our companies that manufacture it do it in a way that adopts the circular economy and not the old way. And so I suppose my small steps are, if every listener contacted their HR department, if every HR department held their pension provider to account, eventually every pension provider held their fire managers to account and every fund manager held their companies to account, you get massive change. So I am love the sentiment of the arc of the moral universe is long. But it does require people like Martin Luther King, to light that candle, and we all need to light each other's candle. And if we keep lighting each other's candle, that's how we get the change that we all need to burn. Robert, we're

Tom Raftery: 37:01

coming towards the end of the podcast. Now, is there any question I have not asked that you wish I had, or any topic we've not covered off that you think it's important for people to consider?

Robert Gardner: 37:12

Well, again, a few of your people have talked about systemic change. And, you know, we've talked about small change that can happen, I think, if you wanted a more radical solution, the part of the narrative, why do people not want to change is that they see change the sacrifice, no one wants to sacrifice anything, right? And so you've got to understand human psychology. So when Greta Thornburg says our house is on fire, if you're a 50 year old white person hearing that you don't want to sacrifice your car, and your house and your holiday and all the rest. And so yeah, maybe the house is on fire, and I don't really want to think about my grandchildren, because I probably accept that the house is on fire for my when my grandchildren when they're 90 years old. But I don't want to make sacrifices today. And so what we need to do is how do we accelerate that movement? How do we align those outcomes? And so for me, a more radical concept that I've been thinking about is how do we align money? Because I think at the heart of it, people are greedy and want more money? And how do we align that outcome? And so, you know, one of the big things has happened over the last 10 years is the rise of cryptocurrencies, which is basically digital assets, digital money that is decentralized. So outside of the control of the Fed, or the Bank of England, or the ECB, or all the rest, highly controversial topic that some people love. Some people hate even more than ESG and responsible investing. And you have this concept called tokenization. So you can buy art, and then you can tokenize it and put it on the blockchain. What if I took all those whales in the ocean and backed it by a token and created whale coin? What if I created elephant coin, and you could have a coin that's backed by nature, and I want to make more money, which means in order for my money to be worth more, I want more whales and I want more elephants. And the more whales and elephants there are the more carbon they capture. The more carbon they capture. The more money the more I can sell that carbon offset to sa p to HSBC to sjp. And how do we create this flywheel of change, which aligns a fundamental human desire for prosperity and greed and making money but where that making money doesn't come at the expense of nature, but it realigns nature, and the to grow together? So anyway, that's my it's not a question you haven't asked. But that's my sort of slightly more out there radical suggestion on how we start to tackle this challenge.

Tom Raftery: 39:41

Fascinating. What a cool idea. Great. Rob, that's been fantastic. If people want to know more about yourself, or sjp, or any of the things we discussed in the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

Robert Gardner: 39:55

Yeah. So on on LinkedIn, Robert, James Gardner, and I sort of described myself as a as a sort of money activist for sjp. Just go into Google and and type s JP. And if you want to follow me on Twitter, or Instagram, I'm at Robert J. Gardner. That's Gardner, which is G AR D ner. Perfect.

Tom Raftery: 40:21

Perfect. Rob, that's been great. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today. Thanks, Tom. Great to be on. Okay, we've come to the end of the show. Thanks, everyone for listening. If you'd like to know more about climate 21, feel free to drop me an email to Tom raftery@sap.com or connect with me on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you liked the show, please don't forget to subscribe to it and your podcast application of choice to get new episodes as soon as they're published. Also, please don't forget to rate and review the podcast. It really does help new people to find the show. Thanks. Catch you all next time.