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OPINIONBusinessApril 29, 2024

A tipping point is imminent, and it’s time for our boardrooms to get uncomfortable

Guest writer

Image: Getty Images/The Spinoff

Bad, bad records are going to be broken this year, and it’s time for business leaders to accept that the transition to a low-carbon economy is going to be spiky, writes business leader Dame Therese Walsh.

When I was on the board of the stock exchange, the NZX, a gentleman asked at an AGM: “When will the NZX get with the times and have a female on the board?”

I looked at one of my fellow NZX directors, Alison Gerry (also a woman – the clue is in the name) and said: “I think we need to wear more lipstick next year.”

This memory came back to me while at New Zealand’s first advanced climate change governance course, run by the Institute of Directors (IoD). I overheard a comment that most of the directors in the room were women, and that most chief sustainability officers (CSOs) are women.

It got me thinking. I chair the steering committee of Chapter Zero New Zealand, a climate governance group linked to a global network of climate-conscious directors. I don’t get paid for this, but I love it, and I am passionate about it. And, you should already have noted, I am a woman.

Am I involved with Chapter Zero NZ because I care about the climate, because I am a woman, or is it both? I don’t know. Perhaps I should ask Greta Thunberg.

Image: Getty Images; additional design by Archi Banal

In any case, the climate challenge can only be solved by all people. And that challenge is upon us. The World Meteorological Organisation says multiple bad climate records were broken in 2023. It was the hottest year on record. There was an unprecedented ocean heatwave. Glaciers retreated by record amounts. It goes on.

Here’s another headline, from the Cop28 meeting in Dubai last year. We are not going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels. Boom. Full stop. Done. We are charging towards three degrees of global warming by the end of this century.

Now, at 1.5 degrees we lose coral reefs. Ice shelves in Antarctica and glaciers start to collapse and or dissolve. At three degrees, I don’t really want to know what happens, but I’m pretty sure it’s really, really bad.

I remember sitting on the prime minister’s strategic risk committee, which Sir John Key set up at the end of his tenure. We reviewed the World Economic Forum Risk Report. This was about eight years ago and climate was only just starting to feature. Even now, only two of the top 10 risks for the next two years are related to climate. But looking forward a decade, half of the top 10 risks identified are related to climate. And they don’t include things that we understand like extreme weather or pollution. They include things like “critical change to earth’s systems”, “collapse of ecosystems”, things you can’t even get your head around.

So the widespread consensus at Cop28 is that we are not going to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. That should concern everybody.

Things are going to change, and they have to if we are going to meet the government’s target for all of Aotearoa New Zealand, which is net zero by 2050 (barring biogenic methane).

Illustration of a glass dome over a city skyline — Image: Tina Tiller

When Cop29 kicks off in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, this November, a key focus will be how we finance that transition to a low-carbon economy. What’s going to happen, and what is already happening, is that trillions of dollars are going to be allocated to climate transition, adaptation and renewable energy.

The issue for us in New Zealand is how do we get our hands on that climate finance and how do we become a competitive global player? We need to partner up with others and tap into those new capital flows that are moving around the globe.

At board level, we should adopt what works for others. Global research into companies that have managed to reduce their carbon footprints shows these commonalities: they set a target; they report and measure against that target; and they have a CSO or equivalent sustainability executive.

The idea of a CSO rekindles my musing on women. As previously mentioned, most CSOs are women. Here’s my take on how to get the best value from them.

Think for a minute – who is a person you work with who makes you feel uncomfortable? And I don’t mean in a creepy, report-to-HR way. If you chair a board, it’s really important to know who makes you feel uncomfortable. Chairs are the top of the pyramid and people tend to agree with you. (That’s kind of a good career move for them.) What needs to happen now, if we are to improve our climate governance capability, recognise climate opportunities and manage climate risks, is that chairs need to listen to the people who make us uncomfortable.

We don’t want businesses hiring CSOs and leaving the CSOs to feel uncomfortable on their own. We all must feel uncomfortable, and we must empower and support those charged with nurturing good outcomes.

Targets, reporting and responsible, empowered sustainability executives. That seems to be a starting point. I suggest that we also start putting a continuous disclosure lens on the internal reporting and disclosures we make. It will drive organisations towards integrating climate targets into the heart of what we do.

When it comes to climate change there are also a few new words starting to appear that you don’t normally hear. The first one is “spiky”.

No longer are the climate gurus of this world talking about a “managed” or “orderly” transition. They’re talking about a “spiky” transition. How many graphs have you seen in business that show a smooth line, a linear change? That’s not going to happen on our current climate trajectory. The graphs are going to get spiky. Thinking spiky, not linear, is now a boardroom challenge.

The second is “climate tipping point”. Now there’s a technical definition for a climate tipping point, but what I think it means is a point of no return for the planet. The experts believe a tipping point is imminent.

The third is “geoengineering”, which refers to innovation that impacts our global climate and ecosystems. Hopefully, for the better.

And finally, a question. How will we be judged when people look back and say, “they worked as if there was going to be a managed and orderly transition around climate”?

Bad, bad records were broken in 2023. Expect more records to tumble in 2024. The graphs are going to get spiky, and we need to get uncomfortable in our boardrooms.

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Lyric Waiwiri-Smith
— Politics reporter

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Pop CultureApril 28, 2024

‘Apologies to Dvořák’: How a serenade for strings cemented one of New Zealand TV’s strongest partnerships

Anna Rawhiti-Connell

Senior writer

(Image: Anna Rawhiti-Connell)

Appointment viewing has been lost to the mists of time, but memories of Montana Sunday Theatre can still be conjured by hitting play on a particular piece of classical music.

“You’re not going to be able to sell it.”

Over 30 years on, Karen Bieleski still recalls how the task of finding a new sponsor for TV One’s Sunday night prestige drama time slot was pitched.

The 8.30pm time slot had been known as Mobil Masterpiece Theatre after a 1988 sponsorship deal between TVNZ and the global oil giant. Bieleski, the general manager of programming for TV One between 1997 and 2004, worked in sponsorship for the state broadcaster before that and says that many have forgotten just how strong the association between Mobil and the Sunday evening time slot was.

It was the first corporate sponsorship of a premier drama series on New Zealand television, and the time slot was locked in as appointment viewing. The series launched with a BBC adaptation of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey.

Announcing the sponsorship, a Mobil spokesman said it represented “an exciting part of our ongoing commitment to the enrichment of the cultural life of New Zealanders.”

Company sponsors drama series (The Press, September 2, 1988, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0)

When the sponsorship ended, the need to find another sponsor for the jewel in the Sunday night crown and break Mobil’s association with it prompted a rebrand. Masterpiece Theatre became Sunday Theatre, and the New Zealand company that picked the sponsorship up was wine producer Montana.

Over its nine years, Montana Sunday Theatre brought British drama and period pieces into the homes of hundreds of thousands each week. It also gave New Zealand stories a primetime spot. Bieleski recalls Clare, which aired in 2000. The drama recounted the experiences of Clare Matheson and her unwitting participation in the “unfortunate experiment” scandal at National Women’s Hospital in Auckland. The titular Clare was played by Robyn Malcolm, fresh off her stint on Shortland Street as Ellen Crozier.

Bieleski also remembers how “bent out of shape” people were after the 1995 Peter Jackson and Costa Botes mockumentary Forgotten Silver screened. It was bad enough that a time slot usually reserved for fictional drama had been hijacked by what people thought was a documentary. Adding insult to the injuries of an aggrieved public was the revelation that it was all a very clever forgery and entirely fake. As Aaron Yap details, it prompted a deluge of hate mail. ‘I’m Not Laughing’ of Hamilton was “unable to trust anything that TV1 puts on again.”

Bieleski says they knew Montana Sunday Theatre had superseded the strength of association Mobil Masterpiece Theatre had when people stopped asking what was on Sunday Theatre and started asking, “What’s on Montana this week?” As a singular example of how inextricably linked the two properties became, I used to mangle the name as a kid, referring to it “Monsday Night Theatre”.

It’s incredible to think anyone was worried about breaking the oil company’s grip on the time slot now, but the success of the association was no sure thing and necessitated what Bieleski recalls as a creative and new approach to cementing it.

Sunday Montana Theatre opened with credits that integrated Montana into the start of every episode. That kind of brand integration might be something we take for granted now, but as Bieleski recalls, the approach was innovative back then. They were, by her account, the most expensive opening credits created for a programme sponsorship at TVNZ at the time.

The credits were refreshed a few times over the nine-year partnership but usually always featured the suggestive red theatre curtains that winked heavily at the highbrow fare about to be served up and a decent pour of something that referenced the bounty of the sponsor. One opened by panning across a table, past a bust of a wise-looking man and a wine bottle. No label is visible on the bottle which Bieleski says was due to alcohol advertising regulations, but the credits end on a bucolic vineyard scene as the Montana logo comes into view. The implications were clear, the connection far from subliminal. Other iterations got artier and more abstract, but the theatre allusions and piles of grapes remained.

Talking to Bielski about the art direction and iterations of the credits, it’s fair to say that time has faded both our memories. There is one detail, however, that people of a certain vintage can never seem to forget.

The second movement of Antonín Dvořák’s Serenade for strings in E major, Tempo di valse, was used as the theme music for the credits. Bieleski can still recall the first time she heard it in the context of watching the sequence. She remembers being down in the TVNZ art and graphics department and “being blown away and just going ‘this is amazing’.”

For the kids and parents of that era, there was an almost Pavlovian response to that theme music. In my house, the sound of lilting violins meant bedtime for kids, and it still has a soporific effect on me. For my parents, it signalled the beginning of the Sunday sweet spot; a blessed and childfree time served with a cup of tea and a sit-down.

For nine years and 20 to 30 weeks each year, bedtime and adults-only time would kick off with a waltz in C minor. For Bieleski, that repetition was integral to Montana Sunday Theatre’s success and the burning of the association into our brains.

“Apologies to Dvořák,” she says, but “that was a very strong piece of branding.”

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Anna Rawhiti-Connell
— Senior writer