Data Will Save Us: The View from London Climate Action Week
LCAW was full of optimism - but its central message reveals the flawed logic keeping real climate action out of reach.
Last week was London Climate Action Week, a jam-packed extravaganza of the latest and greatest in sustainability.
At an evening session promoting a new reporting framework, the introductory speaker captured the essence of the week in a single line.
As he wrapped up his remarks he said, “Data will save us.” He didn’t mean it as a contentious comment, and the audience didn’t question or comment. But if there was one takeaway from LCAW, this was it.
On the surface, the key idea is risk. His point was that data translates climate change into calculable, financial, risk – a business-friendly way of conveying how the climate crisis, in its myriad manifestations, poses risk to businesses’ operations. The idea is that once companies understand how they’re at risk they’ll start solving whatever problems they face. Data, in this sense, is the fuel stoking the fires of change.
It’s an idea that most people in sustainability seem comfortable with. LCAW was festooned with advertisements for consultancies, frameworks, and reporting standards, all promoting “data driven solutions” to sustainability problems. Translating the climate crisis’s impact into measurable financial risk is the lion’s share of work for sustainability practitioners today.
But, as with any utterance, there’s more going on behind the words. And there are some notable features here that are worth exploring.
First, there’s the matter of data itself. We already have an enormous amount of data explicating, in exhaustive detail, the existential risks of climate change. My previous posts link to the usual line-up of scientific evidence. But to claim that data will save us is to imply that we need more, or different, data than what we already have. In other words, knowledge of the impending collapse of society, the food system, human health and even capitalism itself isn’t enough to get businesses to act. Only when they understand their risk exposure – in other words, how their finances will be impacted by climate change – will they make changes. The fact that we already know that their finances will be impacted, catastrophically, doesn’t seem to matter; risks must be short-term to be actionable.
The second implication is that numerical data matters more than qualitative information. People that control corporations will be more inclined to act when they see numbers on a graph rather than seeing the plight of climate refugees or the destruction of land and livelihoods caused by the crisis. The language business understands, in other words, does not have vocabulary for empathy, suffering, or care. Instead, information should be presented as unfeeling numbers – not as stories, anecdotes, or narratives.
The third notable feature of this utterance is its trust in process. It’s a confident statement, assured by the invisible hand’s ability to swoop in and save us (who is meant by “us” is a topic worthy of its own article). But for this sentence to function the audience must believe that once businesses get their heads around the data they not only have the capacity to enact whatever changes need to be made but can also do what needs to be done before cataclysm occurs.
In short, the unspoken logic that upholds this statement is threefold: first, financial materiality is what moves the world (and that’s ok); second, that numerical data is the best way to make decisions about the world; and third, the system will not fail.
There’s a lot that could be said about any of these tenets. But for me, the most damning thing about this sentence is how its logic manifests elsewhere.
Businesses’ inability to do anything that doesn’t benefit them financially is precisely the logic that gives rise to odious “influencers” like Andrew Tate and charlatans like Creflo Dollar, whose belief system can be summed up as “if it makes me money it’s good, and I will never care who I hurt along the way,” celebrating a culture of ruthless self-interest where financial ends justify perverse, destructive means.
Businesses’ reliance on numbers at the expense of living stories is reflected in the way sustainability is presented as a matter of numbers becoming other numbers, not as anything to do with lived existence, creating a disconnect between something that matters intensely to all of us and a disembodied, abstract way of understanding it, removing urgency and obfuscating the real-life consequences of climate change - which are happening now.
The speaker’s unshaken trust in process is present when things fall apart around us and those in power don’t improve them, clinging to economic justification with blind, undying confidence even as millions suffer, creating an omnipresent cognitive dissonance that’s intensely troubling.
My point isn’t simply that this utterance isn’t true. The problem is deeper: it appears true according to flawed logic. The logic that makes statements like this appear valid isn’t only insufficient to fight the climate crisis, it’s also giving rise to a mirror-image in the culture that is equally selfish, dehumanized, and destructively self-confident.
This was the problem with LCAW. It was chock-full of ideas like “data will save us” but never questioned the unspoken assumptions which are allowing the crisis to occur and continue.
Fighting for changes in sustainability within the parameters set by the logic of markets is unfit for purpose. Real flourishing on this planet requires a deeper rethink. Making the climate crisis visible in the language of business is better than nothing. But such a position surrenders the lives of billions to needless suffering before the crisis becomes sufficiently material to the handful of mega-corporations who are responsible. It also bets the future of humanity – undemocratically, and unwisely – on companies’ ability and willingness to fix things when their balance sheets begin to show the damage. We simply do not need to do any such thing. We know better, and can do better, now – without waiting for data to catch up.