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It is fair to say that 2020 has been disruptive, and nowhere is that more evident than in the acceleration of the climate crisis. 2020 was another year for the record books: the Artic is now 12 degrees F warmer on average than it was in 1990, an area the size of Connecticut was lost to historic wildfires in California alone, and global biodiversity is in freefall as the next mass extinction quickens. The list goes on and on but for all the bad news, there was some good too: 2020 saw Microsoft step forward with several bold new commitments, promising to leverage its vast resources to create solutions and drive sustainable change across the entire economy and we felt this acutely in the Worldwide Sustainability Community (WWSC) as new members and new questions flooded in.
As I look back at 2020, I see it as the year sustainability was finally elevated to its rightful place as an essential part of Microsoft’s corporate strategy and slowly but surely, its very culture.
On January 9, 2020, I walked up to the microphone at the company’s first all-team meeting of the year and asked our CEO Satya Nadella, “How will you make sustainability a core cultural value at Microsoft? How will you make sustainability the next accessibility?” He essentially replied, “Stay tuned – we’re gonna have a lot more to say about this soon.”
Satya was foreshadowing January 15th, a mere 6 days later, when Microsoft unveiled its game-changing carbon negative announcement. I was sitting in the front row in Building 99 that day, wondering what was about to happen. I watched as Satya, Amy, Brad, and Lucas took the stage to tell the world, “Those of us who can afford to move faster and go further should do so,” and that Microsoft would lead the way by leveraging its resources to make sustainable change happen faster, in line with the best available science.
Watching President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith give a master class in carbon scope calculations was a sure sign things were different. As Vox, put it, “Climate change has moved out of the public relations department, into the C-suite, and down to the shop floor.” It was a turning point not only for Microsoft but for the overall debate on what role the private sector could play in addressing the climate crisis, where so many governments had failed to act.
At Microsoft, this moment represented something even more important: the awakening of our company’s ecological consciousness. This was a moment many of us in the WWSC had been working towards for years.
The sleeping giant had finally woken. The number of customer requests asking how Microsoft could help them be more sustainable went from a slow trickle to a raging torrent in the blink of an eye.
In many ways, this represents a new beginning: the hardest work lies ahead, and the window of time to do it is rapidly closing. At the current rate, our global civilization will spend its remaining carbon budget in 7 short years, by 2027, representing how many more greenhouse gases we can emit into the atmosphere before we pass a tipping point likely to be a civilization ender. To put this in perspective: while Microsoft promises to be carbon negative by 2030 (pulling more carbon out of the atmosphere than it emits annually), the target date is three years after we’ve exhausted the planetary budget.
Microsoft’s total carbon emissions (16 million metric tons in 2019) represent .04% of the global annual total (40 billion metric tons). Even with the best of intentions, Microsoft is too small in the scheme of things to move the needle on our own. This is why such a big part of Microsoft’s strategy here is to empower customers, partners, and even competitors (we’re all Earthlings, after all) with new solutions themselves to create a wave of sustainable change across the entire economy.
Despite the grim reality that most things are moving in the wrong direction and we are running out of time, there are encouraging signs of progress. I can see interest sparking in other companies, companies that are looking to us for answers and for help. I see this progress happening every day from the conversations happening in our Worldwide Sustainability Community, watching as employees educate each other and point each other to answers to questions that weren’t even being asked six months ago.
2020 was, without a doubt, the year of sustainability at Microsoft. It’s fair to say that 2021 will be an important year for translating our corporate commitments into actionable change, something all employees have an important role to play in and precisely why we founded the WWSC.
We are now 10% of the way into our 2030 journey – the next 90% will need to be about education, innovation, and most importantly, action in rapid succession. It will need to happen at hyper-scale: any solutions we develop need to be highly scalable to address truly planetary sized challenges within the timeframe. I believe the fastest way to make this happen is culture change at Microsoft, the first wave of which has begun, initiated both from the bottom-up grassroots and now, the top-down leadership. Where we meet in the middle is where we get the most inertia.
In 2021, we will need to take action to translate Microsoft’s commitments into real change – and we need your help. The Worldwide Sustainability Community was founded on the belief that everyone has something meaningful to contribute and you don’t need sustainability in your job title to drive change in this space. This reinforces that it is incumbent on all of us to apply our growth mindset and be constant learners when it comes to sustainability. We must grow our knowledge in this area so that we can take full advantage of the opportunity that lies before us. Only then will we understand how to leverage the vast resources of a trillion-dollar technology company to help solve the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
Brought to you by Dr. Ware, Microsoft Office 365 Silver Partner, Charleston SC.
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