Are ad agencies, PR firms and lobbyists destroying the climate? | Solitaire Townsend

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

An unnoticed industry worth two trillion dollars a year is influencing almost every carbon emission. Sustainability solution seeker Solitaire Townsend calls this sector the "X industry" (where "X" stands for influence), and it includes professional services like advertising and PR firms, management consultancies, corporate law firms, lobbyists and more. In this eye-opening talk, she exposes the industry's massive but largely invisible influence on the environment -- and proposes ways they can use their creativity, inventiveness and knowledge to fix climate change instead of contributing to it.

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Today, we have a fresh way to think about climate change by thinking about influencers. You might think of them as the ones on social media, like hip Instagrammers or TikTokers. But in her talk at the Countdown Summit in 2021, sustainability solution seeker Solitaire
0:23.3	Townsend sheds light on intersecting background players who might be the most effective
0:29.0	behind-the-scenes influencers in the world. Now, when you think of the industry's most responsible for climate change,
0:39.9	you probably summon up an image of an oil rig, right?
0:43.1	Maybe even a coal mine or a megafarm, perhaps heavy engineering.
0:49.1	But there's one industry that's never mentioned in that list,
0:53.1	even though every other industry depends upon it,
0:56.7	I'm talking about an economic sector that makes nothing.
1:01.4	It has no stock, no warehouses, no factories.
1:06.4	It's entirely powered by brains, by spreadsheets, and by PowerPoint.
1:13.3	Who is this mystery industry?
1:16.2	The professional services of advertising and PR firms,
1:21.8	the big management consultancies, the corporate lawyers and lobbyists.
1:32.8	Together, this sector is worth over $2 trillion a year.
1:43.5	Let's call it the X industry, where X is for influence. Now, when it comes to climate change, each individual firm in this sector has the carbon
1:47.7	footprint probably no bigger than your average kindergarten.
1:52.0	But the brainprint of the X industry is felt everywhere.
1:57.3	And that's because these problem solvers and storytellers act as the grease in the wheel of all other businesses on Earth.
2:06.6	And that gives the X industry an outsize influence on the likelihood that we reach net zero, or they will be one of the primary architects of climate destruction.
2:18.9	Now, how?
2:20.3	Remember that oil rig we imagined a moment ago?
2:23.0	Think about how it's actually built.
	...

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