Category: Sustainability Research

Continuing with my first pass through all the reports for my sustainability reading project for the quarter…

I have about five weeks to go, and wandered off for a while to do some other stuff, so I’m hoping to spend this week on a sprint through all the big dense materials. Kind of like I did at the end of last quarter, but a month early, because – adulting.

This document was a fairly easy read.

To go through my usual questions:

1. What is the document, in simple terms?
   • It is a guide from the Federal Trade Commission on how to follow the rules about avoiding deceptive claims in advertising, with regard to environmental claims.
2. When is it from?
   • It was last updated in 2012.
3. What type of language does it use – legalese, engineering-speak, or layman-friendly?
   • Mostly layman-friendly, with a few legal terms.
4. What am I looking for in this document?
   • I’m looking for a clear distinction between greenwashing and reasonable environmental claims.
   • Most environmental claims we see feel like they don’t go far enough, since if they were, climate change would be solved already. But I doubt they’re bad enough to be considered deceptive by the FTC.
   • So I’m trying to find ways to describe that distinction.
5. How many (readable) pages is it, excluding appendices and references? And what cited resources do I want to add to my TBR (‘to be read’)?
   • It’s 36 pages, and ends so abruptly that I had to double check that it had downloaded correctly.
   • It has no conclusion or reference section, so no TBR-fodder from this one.

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Phew. It feels good to be moving again with this project.

My research batch for April-June 2022 is in full swing. I’ve been finishing up the blog posts from the last batch, which I’m listing here. (The posts themselves are over on my Medium page.)

It’s possible that I bit off a bit too much this time around. Considering that I have blog posts from last time to complete, and I selected more reading materials this quarter than the last.

However, there was a long stretch in the middle of last quarter where I was waffling around and being stuck, until I figured out a better reading process and really picked up speed towards the end. I’m hoping that I can get more done this time by avoiding the waffling stage.

I guess time will tell.

I started with skimming the longest document of the batch: the SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule.

These are the questions I usually ask myself while I’m skimming:

• What is the document, in simple terms?
• When is it from?
• What type of language does it use – legalese, engineering-speak, or layman-friendly?
• What am I looking for in this document?
• How many (readable) pages is it, excluding appendices and references?
• What cited resources do I want to add to my TBR (‘to be read’ as the Booktubers say)?

I don’t have the answers to all of these questions for this document yet. Here’s what I have so far.

What it is: The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is proposing a rule that requires publicly traded companies to disclose the risks they face from climate change, so that investors can make informed decisions. This document describes that rule in detail.

When it’s from: March 2022.

Type of language: Lots of finance-talk.

What I’m looking for:

• An interesting aspect of this rule is that even though it’s mainly about companies’ risks from climate change, it also asks about their effects on climate change, such as their greenhouse gas emissions and emissions targets.
  • That’s because being a high emitter is actually a risk to the company as the economy transitions to being lower-carbon. New regulations may force a company to cut its emissions.
  • I’m looking to understand what kinds of information we can expect from companies about their emissions, and what we can do with it.
• Secondly, the document says that this change was made because large numbers of investors use climate impacts in their decision-making, and want more detailed and consistent information.
  • I’m looking to learn more about this trend and how we can be a part of it.

Number of pages: 490, which is long, though part of that is because it’s double-spaced. I’m not sure yet how many of the pages will be relevant or readable.

And that’s all for now!

I’m riding the high of having just finished up my first-ever sustainability reading project. So, this lineup for my next one might be insanely ambitious and a bad idea.

But am I going to do it anyway? Of course!

This time, I’ve picked some books and websites as well as the usual UN/government report-tomes.

1. The SEC’s proposed climate disclosure rule (March 2022)
2. New IPCC report AR6, from three working groups – 1, 2, and 3 (2021-2022). Especially prioritizing Working Group 3, which focuses on Mitigation.
3. October 2021 report from the International Energy Agency (IEA) about Curtailing Methane Emissions from Fossil Fuel Operations.
4. UNEP Six Sector Solution
5. FTC 2012 Green Guide
6. Inconspicuous Consumption by Tatiana Schlossberg
7. Speed and Scale by John Doerr
8. Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
9. Web Survey (of useful websites for climate and sustainability data)

The first two texts above are recent news and developments in the climate space that I want to keep up with.

The next two are continuations of themes that came out of the last reading project, namely, methane mitigation, and what each sector should do about climate change.

Number 5 above has to do with the rules against greenwashing (that is, making false environmental claims when marketing) – a topic I’ve been curious about, and meaning to write about, for a while.

The next three are books that I’m hoping will help me form a big picture understanding of climate strategy. The reviews I’ve read of them piqued my interest.

Lastly, there are a few websites that keep coming up as sources in articles about climate change, and I want to do a quick survey of what they are and when they might be useful in my own writing.

My reading project is finally done! Or at least, the ‘reading’ part of the reading project. The associated blog posts will continue to come out as I finish them.

So how did I do? Well, I managed to read all the materials I’d set for myself, except the two I wanted to reread. When I was running short on time, I decided it was better to forge ahead than retread old ground.

Shockingly, I also finished up my project approximately on time. Unheard of.

I ended up cramming a lot of them toward the end, and that was fun in its own way. I’ve got a bit of a process going –

• first I skim everything,
• then I load the reports onto my tablet.
• I read a report and mark it with a stylus while dictating a voice memo with my real-time reactions,
• transcribe the reactions using a transcription program,
• paste a bunch of quotes from the report into my notes,
• and then write the post about it.

Which sounds complicated, now that I’ve written it down. But it isn’t, really, it just lets me do a lot of different modes of learning – visual, auditory, etc., at once.

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Now for, the recap. Here is how the project started:

Sustainability Research: Where to Start?

My Sustainability Research Lineup For Q1

Researching to Find My Place in the Climate Movement

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Here are my real-time updates:

Research Day 1: Skimming the Longest Tomes

Sustainability Research Project Days 2-3: More Skimming

Sustainability Research – Days 4, 5, 6 – Bigger Bites

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Here are the blog posts I wrote about each report. (I will continue to update this as I add blog posts.)

#	Title	Posts
1	2021 UN Emissions Gap Report	skim, intro chapters, methane chapter, more coming soon
2	Taking Stock 2021 by Rhodium	skim, more coming soon
3	HBR article – What Supply Chain Transparency really means	skim, post.
4	Initiatives that came out of COP26	skim, more coming soon
5	US 2021 Aviation Climate Action Plan.	skim, more coming soon
6	2015 Paris Agreement (reread)	Skipped
7	Green New Deal (reread)	Skipped

I also made a To-Be-Read (TBR) list, including references in the reports that I want to follow up on later.

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So, what’s next?

This was a project I really enjoyed since I was able to quickly learn subjects I’d been meaning to for a while.

I want to do another one! I’m going to have to give the Sustainability Reading projects names to keep them from being mixed up.

I’m working on coming up with a Research Lineup for April-June 2022.