VALUES TO VALUE: When two leading sustainability business leaders became obviously distressed during panel discussions at last week’s Uniting Business Live event in Sydney, it was a clear indication of the emotional toll of the intertwined climate, nature and human crises that we face.
Dr Ken Henry, a former Australian Treasury Secretary and ex-chair of a top four bank, the National Australia Bank, was choking back tears as he talked about logging impacts happening right now to New South Wales Mid North Coast bushland and greater glider habitat that he enjoyed as a child.
Dr Catriona Wallace, a globally recognised business and technology ethics advocacy figure, also became highly emotional as she discussed the clear and present danger posed to both the environment and humanity, in particular children, by ethically unconstrained development of artificial intelligence.
To be clear, both Ken Henry and Catriona Wallace are highly accomplished leaders who were very publicly overwhelmed emotionally by the subject matter they’d ventured into – in front of a mainly business audience of several hundred people.
the intent is to highlight their humanity and
integrity, and to provoke wider reflection in
regard to issues that concern all of us
Raising their “emotional incidents” here is in no way meant to diminish them professionally or personally, or in any other way. Quite the opposite, the intent is to highlight their humanity and integrity and to provoke wider reflection in regard to issues that concern all of us.
These instances speak to the growing toll on the people at the at the frontline of action and advocacy.
Like a growing number of sustainability events these days, the Uniting Business Live event hosted by the UN Global Compact Network Australia included a session devoted to “personal resilience in action”, covering advocacy, agency and “surviving sustainability”.
It was an overt recognition that “advocates are burning out”, with impacts on the mental health of sustainability professionals ranging from “climate grief” to more practical operational challenges such as “siloed operations” and a simple lack of resources.
What triggered Henry at the event was a simple and open ended question at the end of his panel session on the meaty topic of corporate drivers for nature-positive action and what part of Australia panellists would recommend as their favourite.
19 of my friends and acquaintances have been arrested trying to protect my favourite part of Australia”
Henry shared a personal origin story: “I grew up on the mid-north coast of New South Wales. My father was a timber worker. All his working life. I spent a lot of time in the bush, and so the bushes up there, what’s left of them, are still my favourite places in the world. But I’ll leave you on this note. It’s rather sad.
“One of those bushes that I used to roam around in as a kid, which is habitat to one of the last really lovely colonies of greater gliders, yesterday was being logged by the Forestry Corporation in New South Wales. I’m sorry I’m a bit emotional about this, and thus far, 19 of my friends and acquaintances have been arrested trying to protect my favourite part of Australia.”
It was a genuinely poignant moment. Henry, who was sharing the panel podium with a First Nations lawyer advocate, Terri Janke, was choking back tears over his own loss of connection to the “country” of his youth.
Catriona Wallace was another presenter who revealed her vulnerability.
Known as a “force of nature”, Wallace joined a panel on the theme of Innovation in Action: AI, SI and Sustainability Silver Bullets. She’d come from another event earlier in the week, hosted by the International Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where she was a speaker.
Wallace related how AI-enabled exploitation of children on the internet has now “absolutely exploded”. “Lawmakers don’t know how to control this. It is so severe. So we’ve not only got sustainability with the natural environment [to be concerned about] but with mental health and wellbeing.
“I deal with a lot of the fallout of the AI, and not just AI – the Metaverse as well – where all the damaged children come.
“And people, it’s very serious. We need to wake up. We need to be conscious that this technology will cause harm and is causing harm.
“We have a new species that’s going to be smarter than humans, that can do a few good productivity and predictive things, and is going to do some really bad things to children and the environment. We need to wake the f*ck up.”
My gut feeling is that we are going to experience a lot more of the emotional turmoil being generated at the front line of sustainability.
For too many, we’re crossing tipping points of mental and other wellbeing markers that few, if any, are equipped to manage.
The hope is we might still be able to learn something about from Indigenous people.
