Climate Careers: Bill Weihl, Executive Director of ClimateVoice
Today's guest is Bill Weihl, Executive Director of ClimateVoice.
ClimateVoice is a non-profit that mobilizes the voices of employees to encourage companies to go "all in" on climate. Large corporations and companies have historically shied away from lobbying against the fossil fuel industry. ClimateVoice was founded on the idea that these companies need to engage in climate policy and use their power to fight for the climate. Before founding ClimateVoice, Bill spent twelve years at Google and Facebook working on sustainability for the tech giants. He also spent a decade as a computer science professor at MIT. Bill holds a Ph.D. from MIT in computer science.
In this episode, we dive into ClimateVoice, the non-profit's mission, and the problem it's tackling. Bill also touches on why corporations are hesitant to get involved and how ClimateVoice mobilizes employees to demand change. It was great to have Bill come back on the podcast and learn more about ClimateVoice.
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded April 8th, 2021.
In Today's episode, we cover:
An overview of ClimateVoice and the role of corporations in combating the climate crisis
Why some companies are risk adverse when it comes to mobilizing around climate and sustainability
How ClimateVoice is educating employees about the importance of public policy
Advice for CEOs and potential funders looking to tackle the climate crisis
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the, My Climate Journey or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show, that weren't just looking for education, but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people, that's now mushroomed into more than 1,300 members.
There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screen for, determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent, and we're not wasting our time for trying, and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity, the better.
There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community and a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you want to learn more, you can go to My Climate Journey.co, the website and click. They become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show.
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Bill Weihl, Executive Director at ClimateVoice. The mission at ClimateVoice, is to mobile as the voice of the workforce to urge companies to go all in on climate, both in business practices and policy advocacy.
Now Bill's got an interesting story in that he started his career in computer science on the faculty at MIT. In 2006, he was able to focus his career on climate action and took a role at Google as Green Energy Czar. He then spent six years in Facebook as Director of Sustainability. And now, he's focused full time on directing the massive influence of companies to help address the climate crisis.
Now Bill came on the show once before, and at that time, this was an area that was interesting to him, but he hadn't yet figured out where to anchor and what to do. We brought him back on, because now he is neck deep in his work with ClimateVoice. So we have a great discussion about what they're doing at ClimateVoice, why it matters, the role of corporations in combating the climate crisis. Some of the barriers holding them back, some of the key levers that will them to change. And of course, what ClimateVoice is doing strategically and tactically, to bring about that change. Bill, welcome back.
Bill Weihl: Thanks Jason. Great to see you, to hear you. It's been quite a while.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah, I should say welcome back to the show. 'Cause you've been on once before, although when you came on last time you were in between gigs and now you have anchored and landed and are building something officially once again.
Bill Weihl: Yes, indeed.
Jason Jacobs: Thus the hall to bring you back on and hear about it, both because I'm interested personally to learn more about what you're doing. And also, it's just a timely topic in terms of the problem that you're solving, and I wanna thank a lot of listeners who care about.
Bill Weihl: It's great to be here and I appreciate the opportunity.
Jason Jacobs: I have a bunch of questions, but typically where we start these things and maybe there's a little more muscle memory now because you were an early guest, but we've done like 180 of these or something at this point, but we'll just kind of take it from the top with your current work. So what is ClimateVoice?
Bill Weihl: So ClimateVoice is a nonprofit focused on educating and engaging the workforce, especially of large influential companies to get those companies to go all in on climate in everything they do, and especially in their use of their influence in the, what we call or what's called policymaking process. So we want them to decarbonize their operations, we want them to decarbonize their supply chain, all the things that they can do, sort of under their own control, absolutely. We want them to innovate on new products, absolutely. And I've been calling it climate improv. It's yes and do all that. Of course that's all vital and we really need them to step up and use their influence in the policy process to get public policy that will help drive the changes we need, the speed and scale required.
Jason Jacobs: Now, in the first episode, when you came on, we spent a bunch of time on your history and origin story and all of that. And we're, we're not gonna rehash all of that. But when you came on last time if I recall, we had talked about how the first phase of your career was in technology, leadership positions and growing technology companies, and you had a quite successful career there. And then you had kind of a second era when you were on the clean energy side and the sustainability side in large technology companies, Facebook and Google, and you were coming out of that and you were looking to put climate even more front and center in this third wave, but you didn't know how yet. So can you talk a little bit about that journey and both how you went about figuring out and why you landed, where you did?
Bill Weihl: One of the things I think I was lucky to learn over the course of my career in the first phase, which was really technology focused in academia and then industry and the second phase, which was sustainability and climate focused in technology companies. I got exposed to a wide range of, and more than exposed, got to really dip my toes and maybe up to my hips or in some cases over my head, a little bit involved in a lot of the different kinds of things that need to happen to, for us to collectively address the climate crisis.
And I'll say crisis because I think some people think that's alarmist, but the urgency here is immense and it is unfolding more slowly than COVID over the last year. It's not that different in terms of the scale or the potential problem and what is making it hard for society to respond to the way it really needs to. The conclusions I came to, you know, when I was at Google and Facebook, especially in Silicon Valley, there's a huge focus on technology as the solution to this crisis.
And I think it is to a large extent, a huge part of the solution. I think that what I came to realize, especially over the last few years was how important new technology was and how important at the same time it was to have the right market rules or good market roles. It's not that there's one set of right market rules, but good market rules, which really are public policies to drive the change that we need. As I said before, the speed and scale required.
We need to cut emissions according to the IPCC approximately in half, or maybe this point a little more than in half by 2030, and then the net-zero by 2050, and probably then net-negative after that. Cutting emissions in half in the next nine or 10 years, means 8% reduction per year in emissions. We didn't even do that in the last year with COVID where we shut down a good part of the global economy. And we don't wanna cut emissions by shutting down society, we wanna cut emissions by building a society where we can all thrive and have cleaner air and cleaner water and so on.
So we need to drive change rapidly. And I think one of the things that I've come to believe, and I think I'm not alone is that, that's not gonna happen just through the natural actions of market forces. It's going to take more than simply making cleaner technologies, cheaper and waiting for people to adopt them because it's the economically sensible choice, we need to drive change much faster than that. I would like to think of myself as a systems thinker, if you will. And the system that we're operating in here, is not just a technological system, it's a political and economic system.
And the reason we don't have the public policies we need at the moment, is fundamentally that the fossil fuel companies and their allies have spent the last, honestly several decades, but especially the last decade, engaged in a battle of obstruction and denial and delay, to prevent us from being in really bold, effective climate policies. And they have been the dominant in many situations, the primary business voice speaking up in these policy battles.
So where I got to, and this was happening before I left Facebook, was feeling like my company that I was at, other companies that we worked with, needed to speak up more in public policy and were reluctant to. And after I left Facebook, talking to lots of people, and this is part of what we talked about when I was on the podcast year and a half, almost two years ago, I guess.
Jason Jacobs: Is that how long ago it was? Wow.
Bill Weihl: It was summer of 2019.
Jason Jacobs: I was a young man. I don't know what happened in the last year and a half or two years.
Bill Weihl: There was this global pandemic that made each day feel like either a couple seconds or a few years. So the conclusion I came to was, there's this really loud corporate voice. Essentially it was, I would put two caricature things on the wrong side of the issue. And there's a much too quiet corporate voice on the right side of the issue, pushing for clean energy standards, clean transportation standards, price on carbon, clean building standards, other policies that could actually drive de-carbonization much faster. And you know, you've got NGOs, you've got millions of mostly young people, but also older people marching in the streets.
But when it comes to the battle on Capitol Hill over a specific bill or in Sacramento, California, or Columbus, Ohio, or other state capitals or another countries, the fossil fuel companies and trade associations like the US Chamber of Commerce and others who have been mostly on the wrong side of this issue, they're in there every day, pushing really hard. And mostly other companies, if they speak up at all, they sign a letter or they make one phone call. They're not lobbying like they mean it and they're not, not lobbying very often.
So they're not using their influence to really push for the kinds of policies we need, and that means that politicians who listen to business, which is many of them, including not just Republicans, including many Democrats, unless they are really passionate about climate, they tend to be swayed and pulled toward the position of the business voice they hear. And the result is that's a way and paralysis that we've seen. So where I got to was, we need a loud business voice pushing for aggressive, bold, equitable climate policy and helping shape it. I founded ClimateVoice with a, amazing team of volunteers just over a year ago. So we launched in February of 2020.
Jason Jacobs: Great timing, great timing.
Bill Weihl: It could have been worse.
Jason Jacobs: [laughs].
Bill Weihl: The world was still open until we were around for about three weeks. So a month later, it would have been way worse. It was not the year we expected by any means, but it's overall been at least for the work we've been doing, I think a good year. So we launched ClimateVoice with the goal of giving companies a good reason to step up and speak up and really make climate one of their top advocacy priorities. So that's what we launched, just over a year ago.
Jason Jacobs: Now you mentioned that the primary voice that the elected officials hear from the business community, has been from the fossil fuel industry or the trade associations on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. And that there has been resistance from, and reluctance from big companies to speak out on the other side of the issue. What do you think is driving that reluctance?
Bill Weihl: So I could be flippant and I will and say, you know, they're scared. To be a little more charitable, they're risk averse. They see risk and there's real risk. Companies generally, when they speak up on public policy, they do it on things, mostly that matter to their core business. So if it's taxes, if it's immigration, if it's trade policy, if it's things that relate to local policies that might affect the way their business, their factory that their data center operates, tax breaks or infrastructure issues related to their business, they'll speak up. And then, you know, Facebook speaks up on privacy policy and really engages.
If it's an issue that affects society, but doesn't affect them directly very much, they tend to stay out of it. Unless, there is some other reason why they feel they should engage. And so I think we talked about this a bit when we talked, you know, in 2019. And the approach we're taking, we've been inspired by watching what happened in the fights around LGBT rights and what motivated companies to really get engaged and speak up on public policy.
If you go back 10 years, there were hundreds of companies that were very active on LGBT rights in their operations. So they had policies, equal benefits for all employees, whether you're in a domestic partnership or a legally sanctioned marriage or whatever, you can get benefits to cover your family and other policies that promoted equality and outlawed discrimination in their own operations. They were mostly silent on public policy. They weren't speaking up on same sex marriage. They weren't speaking up on, are there issues that were percolating in the public policy sphere.
That changed over the course of a few years, and we saw 370 odd companies file an amicus brief in the Supreme court case on marriage equality. We saw dozens of companies speak up in Indiana on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and pushed Indiana in the end to essentially repeal it. We saw dozens of companies. And I think the NBA All-Star Game also spoke up in North Carolina on their Bathroom Bill, which discriminated against trans people. The All-Star Game relocated. A bunch of other companies essentially said to North Carolina, "We as a state, will stop growing in the state, if you don't fix this." In the end, North Carolina, fixed it.
And then we saw a cascade of similar actions in other States where similar religious freedom or bathroom bills were being considered and didn't pass because the companies kind of dug in and spoke out really strongly, before they were even voted on. They didn't wait for them to pass and then try to repeal them. We're seeing that today around voting rights and Georgia passed, what many of us are who as restrictive voting laws that would restrict access to voting, in a pretty discriminatory manner. And companies, maybe they lobbied against it before it passed, but it passed.
Now we see dozens of companies speaking up really vocally about it. America's pastime. So the All-Star Game, this is the Baseball All-Star Game is being relocated out of Georgia. And we're now seeing companies speaking up vocally in other States that have not yet passed similar laws, not waiting for them to pass, but trying to get in and head them off. In the case of LGBTQ rights, what motivated companies to really speak up was employees and a feeling that the Zeit guys had broadly shifted and that young people, college students who were the talent pool that companies wanted to hire from, for the next generation of employees, that they were broadly in favor or of equal rights, including for LGBT people.
And that continuing to be silent would be seen as, and certainly easily painted as being on the wrong side of the issue. And companies saw that as a real risk to their business. If it was harder to retain and to hire people, that was a problem. I think we're seeing that with the voting rights stuff as well, that the companies that want to be anti-racist, are feeling like they really have to take a stand or they will find their customers, and their potential employees and their current employees being really unhappy with them. We think the time is really right for a similar push around climate.
Jason Jacobs: So a couple questions there. One is around, if you want to mobilize these companies around climate, how do you determine what to mobilize them around, given how many different potential policies, potential areas, and in some cases, conflicting policies and areas. So kind of sorting through that and whether it's one size fits all, or if it's custom on a per company basis and then a secondary area to dig into, is more just tactically the theory of change. And so if you want them to do it, then what do you do? What do employees do? Like how do you bring about that change and help be a catalyst to make it so?
Bill Weihl: The question of which policies, is a really good one and a really hard one. Our belief in increasing, and I think the belief of many people is there is no single silver bullet policy. I mean for years, I forget who coined the phrase, but from a technology point of view, people have talked for awhile about there, there isn't a silver bullet technological solution to the climate problem, but there is silver buckshot. There are dozens, hundreds Drawdown, has a hundred problem and solution areas that they talk about. There isn't one technology that applies to all of those. There are lots of different technologies. There isn't one power generation technology that is the solution, there are a bunch.
And I think this increasingly people are coming around to the realization, the same is true on the policy front. There isn't one policy. I think there are some people who think the policy solution is a price on carbon, whether to carbon tax or fee and dividend or cap and trade. I think that can be one useful piece of the policy solution. It doesn't stand on its own and it doesn't solve the whole problem. And certainly, it doesn't solve it at the speed and scale we need to solve the problem.
So we can't just point to, you know, tell a company, "Here's the policy, go support this." What we are asking companies to do, is to make climate a one of their top advocacy, lobbying priorities, to treat it with the same urgency and relevance to their business, they would treat taxes, immigration, privacy, antitrust, other things that they view as potentially existential issues for their business and invest the resources directly and through their trade associations to track the range of policy proposals on the table and make reasoned judgements about which ones to support and which not to support.
There will be cases where I think, you know, "Here's a great policy and Apple, you should support it." And Apple might say, "We don't like that one." The problem today, is that there are dozens of great policies that are hundreds that have been on the table over the last few years, that companies haven't even taken the time to have an opinion on. So they are sitting on the sidelines while this policy battle goes on and you've got in a centrally united opposition, very wild opposition from the fossil fuel industry. And other companies are sitting on the sideline saying, "Not our issue." And we need them to get on the plane field and treat it like a real priority, because it is.
As I said, there's a range of policies. One of the issues that we have in the US is that, things have been so politicized and so polarized, that part of what's needed is for companies to get in there and say to both sides, but especially on the suites of the right, which has been really in the position of just saying, "No," say that, "We need you to come to the table, that all policy options need to be on the table. And what we need is action and solutions not continued delay." Continued delay is an outcome. It is the worst possible outcome at this point.
We continue to delay and we're looking at three, four, five or more degrees of warming. And according to the IPCC, the potential impact of that is really catastrophic and enormously expensive in terms of dollars and human lives, and so on. We can't wait for the perfect technology, the perfect policy. We need to make progress and then improve it as we go, something that should be familiar to any technology startup or any company. Something that our current political system makes hard, but it's something that we think companies could help shift the political dynamic and help drive progress.
Jason Jacobs: In some of the other examples that you gave, like immigration or taxes, you said, there should be a key priority like those, those are key priorities because of the selfish needs of the business, whereas the voting rights or the trans issues or things like that, that is more about collective good and doing what's right. And so if climate is an issue of collective good and doing what's right, and the other examples of those, it was them thinking that their employees were demanding and then they wouldn't be able to attract and retain the best talent. Is that the theory of change here as well?
Bill Weihl: Exactly. So we are working to educate employees about really three things. One policy is important. Right now, and I'll say more about this in a minute, we launched a campaign at the end of March, to focus on the big five US tech company. So Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft asking them to make climate a real priority in their lobbying and to devote one in every five of the dollars they spent on lobbying this year to climate, because this is a really critical year and a critical opportunity around climate policy.
And we are educating employees about the importance of policy. So all of those companies are doing great things in their operations. They've set really aggressive targets to decarbonize, whether it's carbon neutral or net-zero or a 100% clean energy or all of the above for their own operations. And in many cases now for their supply chains, we need to educate people, that's really important and it's not enough. That there is a need and an opportunity for their companies to speak up in the policy sphere in a much more vocal, vigorous, stronger way than they have been.
So that's number one. Number two, I think people don't realize generally how massive and insidious the influence from the fossil fuel industry has been. So there was a study that came out a couple of years ago by a professor, Dr. Robert Grewal, who analyzed political spending, lobbying, spending around climate. And the data shows that from 2000 to 2016, the fossil fuel companies, outspent pro-climate advocates. Not just other companies and the pro-climate advocates in terms of companies, were mostly solar and wind and clean tech companies in their trade associations, but also all of the pro-climate NGOs. They outspend them by 10 to one on climate. And we're talking about billions of dollars, I'm not talking about small amounts of money that they spent in that time.
So there's a huge mismatch in lobbying spending with the fossil fuel industry, really outspending pro-climate forces enormously in that period. People, I think don't understand the massive amount of money that's gone into trying to delay or prevent progress. So that's the second thing. And then the third thing is, I think, you know, in talking to employees at the big tech companies and other companies, they don't realize how much their companies lobby and how much they spend in terms of people's time and money in influencing policy outcomes. And so educating about that and the opportunity for them to step up on climate and make it a priority.
When we get those three points across, there often is this light bulb moment of "Oh, okay. Policy's important. There's this huge imbalance and big progressive pro-climate companies. They're already lobbying, so we don't have to have them do something they don't know how to, or don't already do. We need them to do it on this issue." If it's a priority, they know how to do that. They need to make it a priority. What we are focused on doing, is getting people to the point where they understand those things.
And then right now we have a, a petition drive, to focus on big tech. We call it the 1 in 5 campaign. It's one in $5 devoted to lobbying on climate to keep warming below 1.5 degrees. So 1 in 5 for 1.5. And we're asking employees of the big tech companies and everyone else, students, employees at other companies, the general public to sign this petition, calling on these companies to make climate a priority and devote 1 in 5 of their lobbying dollars this year. It's not forever, this year in particular to lobby on climate for a bold, equitable climate policy that will put us on the path needed to keep warming below 1.5 degrees.
Jason Jacobs: Do petition drives like this, have a track record of success? And if so, are there any specific examples you think about that are kind of role models for what you're trying to do?
Bill Weihl: The short answer is yes. I think petitions all by themselves without media strategy around it, social media, earned media or the press, if you will, we need that, and we're doing that. And we need employees not just to sign the petition, but to speak up internally, to talk to executives, to speak up at all hands or company town hall meetings, and to raise this issue. And we're encouraging them to do it in a constructive way, so not in a finger wagging, "I work at company X, but I think company X sucks because it's not doing this," but rather as, "There's an opportunity and the company is at risk, if it continues to stay on the sidelines and lag on this issue, because it will be seen as being on the wrong side of history, you will find that it is over time, harder to attract and retain employees. And that puts the company's business at risk."
So I think there are ways in which employees can raise this issue internally, where they can speak from the heart. "This is an issue I care about. I care about my future. Our political system has stuck and companies have enormous influence in it and can help unstick it. I want my employer to have my back, much like it did in the fights around LGBT rights or voting rights," or you name it. Climate is a similar fight and powerful influential companies need to be willing to get into it and help protect the future of all of their employees. And that's gonna be important for the employees, it's also going to be important for the company and its future.
Jason Jacobs: Intactically, how do you reach and mobilize these people? And then tactically, for the people that are of this profile, working in one of these big companies that do lobbying and could play a more active role in this area, tactically, what should they do to help the cause and push their companies on the right direction?
Bill Weihl: Right now in COVID, you know, I mean, this is somewhat of an organizing and outreach effort and it's all virtual right now, which has the advantage that in some ways it's easier to scale than you know, sort of in-person grassroots street corner, you know, at the company headquarters effort. But also, there's so much going on online, that we need to kind of break through the noise. So we have a digital media campaign, which is both just our own social media and organic viral social media posts and paid advertising, which is primarily targeting tech employees. So that's part of how we are trying to make sure we get this message in front of people. And we're asking people to sign the petition and also then help spread the word, share our posts, reach out to their friends, fellow employees, et cetera, and encourage them to sign and spread the word.
And we're beginning to see some real uptake. I'm hopeful that people listening to this podcast, they'll go to the website. They can go to ClimateVoice.org, and they'll see a banner. At the top, they'll point submit the 1 in 5 for 1.5.org website and petition. You can also go to any of our social media accounts, and you'll find tweets and posts about the campaign. And we're at ClimateVoice Org on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. So that's the combination of organic social media and some amount of earned media, which we had a great article on Fast Company last week at the launch. And I just had an op-ed published this week jointly with Dr. Professor Michael Mann from Penn state.
Definitely he's the bigger name on this op-ed, but we co-authored an op-ed that was published by Newsweek earlier this week. Really about why the silence or as Michael Mann calls it, the enactivsm of big tech and other pro-climate companies is contributing to the problem. It's not neutrality, it really is enactivism is actively promoting inaction and complicit with the efforts by the fossil fuel companies to drive delay. And so, combination of social media, earned media and then paid advertising, we hope will continue to reach lots and lots of people.
Jason Jacobs: And maybe just, if you think about the key stakeholders, at least ones that I've heard and feel free to add any if I missed them, but it'd be great if you could just address specifically the, let's say they're CEOs from these big companies who are listening to this episode, what message you have for them, same question employees at these companies. And then last is around a big philanthropist who might be listening or a small philanthropist for that matter, who might be looking at where to allocate their dollars to help address climate change.
Bill Weihl: So the CEO's I think we've heard from CEOs of a lot of the big tech companies and many other companies they've been saying increasingly climate is a crisis. They're talking about like a crisis, they're talking about, "We are mobilizing in our business, to do everything we can." What that means is, buying clean energy, tedding net zero goals, setting science-based targets, pushing their suppliers to decarbonize. But when it comes to public policy, they are still mostly engaging in a pretty tepid manner. They engage reactively when they get asked by some outside group like [Series 00:33:31] or AEE comes to them and says, "We need your support on this bill." And then they evaluate it. And often the answer is, "We're not gonna speak up on this one."
Occasionally they do. They are not engaging proactively, they're not engaging strategically, they're not engaging really vigorously. They're not saying to the governor of a state or the Senator from a state where they do business, "We need you to really step up on climate policy or we're going to have to reconsider our investment in your state."
Jason Jacobs: What is your message to the CEOs?
Bill Weihl: If you really believe climate is a crisis and our priority, then make it a priority in everything you do, including public policy. Treat it like a crisis, treat it like an existential threat to your business and engage in public policy with all the influence you have with the campaign contributions you make with your decisions about where to site new facilities, data centers, factories, offices, with your decisions about where to grow, all the ways in which you exercise, influence, the lobbyists you send to Capitol Hill or state capitals, use all those like this is an existential issue. Don't just sign a letter or make a phone call and feel like you've done your part, because the other side is in there with every weapon at their disposal to try to weaken, delay, prevent useful climate policy.
And, uh, you know, an occasional letter or phone call or public statement, isn't enough to counter that. A lot of times people say, and I think this is important. They say, "We need CEOs to speak out, so that the American public hears that business cares about this and [inaudible 00:35:18] as a real issue. And I think that's true, but at the same time, 70% of the American public, more or less, will use climate as an important problem, and that both business and government need to do more. There've been numerous surveys around that recently.
So there's broad bi-partisan support across the country for much more aggressive action, including government policy. There isn't broad bipartisan support on Capitol Hill or in many state capitals. And the reason for that, is the influence of one part of the business community. To change that, we need either to get that 70% of the American public to 90%, I think that's worth doing, but I think businesses can much more directly change it by using their influence with policy makers.
That's my message to CEOs. They have influence, they know how to use it when it's a priority, they need to make this a priority in getting in there and push really hard. To employees, it really is about raising their voice internally, sign our petition, but don't stop there. Speak up internally, talk to your fellow employees, Katharine Hayhoe, who's a famous, conservative evangelical climate scientist. So she's not a left wing liberal, but she says, one of the most important things we can do about climate, is talk about it.
That silence, whether it's in the political sphere or in your living room with your relatives or at work with your fellow employees, not talking about it for whatever reason you think people are tired of hearing about it, or it might be controversial and they might not wanna get into yet another argument is a big problem. So talking about it with fellow employees and with management.
Jason Jacobs: And then what about potential funders?
Bill Weihl: So funders, I think the corporate voice in favor of climate policy, is I think an untapped resource. And there is funding going to organizations that work with companies when they are motivated to engage. There isn't much funding yet going to efforts like ours, that are working to motivate the companies to engage in policy. So I would encourage, there's sort of a gap in funding and in this ecosystem of groups working to drive public policy, that I think I would love to see more funders step up.
We've got some funding, we need more, we could really scale this effort and reach many more people and shift the thinking of employees and companies much more quickly with more money. So I would encourage funders to look really hard at how do we get companies to get off the sidelines in these debates, and I think one of the answers is the kind of work that we're doing with the ClimateVoice.
Jason Jacobs: So if people wanna learn more, where should they go?
Bill Weihl: ClimateVoice.org, is our main website. They can reach out to me. I'm on social media, easy to find, maybe a little too easy to find, but you can find me on LinkedIn or Facebook or Twitter. I'm on Instagram, but I honestly almost, I think I've posted once. So that's not the best way to reach me. And we'd love for people to spread the word about the 1 in 5 campaign, sign the petition, then share on social media, share with email, talk to your friends, your colleagues, your management, and help us drive some change.
Jason Jacobs: Sounds great. Any parting words for listeners?
Bill Weihl: I think, we are at a moment where, especially after the last four years and I'm sitting here in California, in San Francisco where the last several years have been really depressing in terms of climate, both looking at what's happening nationally and the fires in California have been horrific. We think of our rainy seasons, our, our rainfall from a July through June year here in California, this year has been pretty dry and we've had the worst years, but it's still been pretty dry.
So we're looking at what could be another really bad wildfire year here. And last year, bad enough that we had COVID that was keeping many of us at home, isolated. And then we had about six weeks in the Bay Area where you literally did not wanna go outside because the air was not safe to breathe. So it's easy to look at a lot of things going on and feel scared and depressed and pessimistic.
I think we are at a moment right now where we have a lot of the technologies that we need. We could decarbonize much of our economy with the technologies in hand today, with wind and solar and batteries and EVs and heat pumps, and a few other things, we can get 60 to 80% of the way there over the next decade. And all of those technologies will get better as we continue to scale them. And we are, you know, there's innovation. I know you're involved in a bunch that are a lot of startup companies, there's great stuff going on at universities with new technologies that will help us decarbonize the hard to decarbonize sectors.
So I think there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful, including the fact that in DC right now, we've got an administration in the White House and a swim majority in the Senate that seems committed to climate action, not just sort of narrow way around the technical aspects, but including around equity and justice. I think there are a lot of reasons to hope that we'll see real action in Washington, but it does require everybody who has influence to help make that happen. Being hopeful is great, but don't sit back and feel hopeful. Lean in and really help drive action.
Jason Jacobs: Well, awesome point to end on. Thanks so much for coming back on the show Bill and for giving us an update on everything you're up to with ClimateVoice and best of luck with this important work.
Bill Weihl: Thanks Jason, really good to see you.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at My Climate Journey.co. Note, that is .co, not .com. Someday, we'll get the.com, but right now, .co. You can also find me on Twitter @JJacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that, thank you.
