
Paul Dickinson, a pioneer in the field of sustainability reporting, speaks in early October at the first Convene 4 Climate conference in Barcelona.
“This is an event that needs to create a bigger positive handprint than it has a negative footprint,” said Felix Rundel when setting the stage for the inaugural Convene 4 Climate, held in Barcelona Oct. 3-4, and hosted by PCMA and the Strategic Alliance of National Convention Bureaux of Europe. Rundel, cofounder of strategy and creative agency futurehain, who served as the conference’s moderator, acknowledged the “advanced and expert level” of the curated audience.
“We are beyond the point of creating awareness — that would be preaching to the choir,” he said. “We have a limited window of time to effect the profound change in our landscape that is needed for the sustainable future of business events. But we also have a unique window of opportunity by being at this stage where we are now — by being ready, by being connected, ready to collaborate … and then grow the movement.”
Rundel noted that five or six years ago, we might have convened a conference on climate change with a singular approach: “‘We have a climate crisis. Technology can fix it — hurray!’ Now we’ve come further,” he said.

“We have a limited window of time to effect the profound change in our landscape that is needed for the sustainable future of business events,” said Felix Rundel, C4C moderator.
In order to “create a more holistic approach that reflects the multidimensionality of the problem,” he explained, the Convene 4 Climate program was designed with four complementary tracks: exploring how technology, data, and measurement, including the power of AI, can drive sustainability; skills, people, and mindset, “because we are the software that needs to change”; business models, risk and growth, “because we’re not an activist group — this is a business leaders’ group”; and innovation and collaboration to drive growth.
The opening Main Stage session consisted of four speakers, each presenting a 15-minute talk, addressing the question from their unique perspective: What does it take to transform the events industry for a sustainable future?
First up: Paul Dickinson, a pioneer in the field of sustainability reporting — he founded CDP, the Carbon Disclosure Project in 2000. This year, he co-founded consultancy Transition Value Partners to provide strategic oversight to help businesses in their transition to Net Zero commitments.
“If you only have a slight idea what the Carbon Disclosure Project is,” said Rundel when introducing Dickinson, “it’s the global climate change report and system used by over 23,000 corporations worldwide, covering about 60 percent of the global economy. Paul, more than anyone else, can talk about the way to build economic systems that work within the planetary boundaries.”
‘This Is a Very Important Meeting’
Dickinson began by letting the audience know that he understood the purpose of Convene 4 Climate and the work the audience does. “This is a very important meeting. You are very important people. I’ve had an ‘event experience’ since I came here. I wanted to learn about the industry,” he said.
The conclusion he drew? “Events are the thinking machine of the world. And you’re the thinking machine of the thinking machine,” he said. He advised the audience to take themselves seriously.
“Think about how critical your role is in the biggest challenge we’ve ever faced as a species, which is climate change,” Dickinson said. “How critical what happens here and how you go forward is going to be for the future of the world. I think political historians of 2100 would dream of being here with us thinking about how we respond to this challenge.”
Dickinson talked briefly about his background, and shared that he initially wanted to go into politics but then while working for a corporation, he realized that the relative power of national governments was declining while the relative power of corporations and investors was increasing — “and so it would be more logical to support political goals through the business system,” he said, when choosing his career path.
The main point Dickinson emphasized in his talk is to stop looking at the challenge of climate change as one that only involves sacrifice and hardship. The transition to clean energy and sustainable practices represents an enormous business opportunity — spawning new sectors and industries we aren’t even aware of, he said. And the events industry will play a pivotal role in influencing the response to climate change and driving meaningful action toward a sustainable — and profitable — future.
Scroll below to view his 15-minute talk and a slightly edited transcript.
Transcript
There’s two kinds of politics: There’s politics with a little ‘p’ and politics with a big ‘P.’ Politics with a big ‘P’ is should there be transgender bathrooms in schools in Texas. Should Xi Jinping have a fourth term as President of China. We don’t do that; that’s big politics. But politics with a little ‘p’ is consensus politics on global issues like sustainability. And that’s what we do do. There’s a big scientific consensus about climate change. Extreme weather has politicized billions of people in the world. There is an expectation that we are going to solve these problems. And you and the companies and investors that you serve have an interest in getting that to turn out right.
Sustainability is a funny word. Sustainability is kind of the name we give to problems the government can’t fix. So if you think of COVID-19, when I’m told this industry became “illegal,” the government acted very forcefully. Think of the invasion of Ukraine, and sending money and missiles to Zelenskyy. Government acts. But when you look through government like it’s not there, then that’s sustainability. And so how do we deal with sustainability?
The story of CDP, which is the main reason why I have the privilege to be with you, is we began by saying, “Well, how can companies respond to climate change?” And I think the word is “education.” In fact, CDP is a not-for-profit organization, and in the U.K., we are governed by something that is called the “Charity Commission” and our mission is one word: education.
But if you look into the word “education,” it doesn’t mean “to tell you.” If I’m educating you, that doesn’t mean I’m telling you. It actually means “to draw out from.” To bring out from yourself the learning. And that’s what CDP has done. We’ve presented corporations and investors with questions. And we’ve done this on behalf of investors and we’ve done this on behalf of purchasing organizations. So the reason why 23,000 organizations report into CDP is because they’re really reporting to their investors and they’re reporting to their customers. And over the 22 years that CDP has been operating, we see an evolution in the response of corporations and investors to climate change. We have 1,000 cities reporting through CDP also.
So what is that evolutionary process, because it’s very important — 22 years is a long time, so what’s happened?
[I do a podcast with my friend] Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac [both of who oversaw the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change] called “Outrage and Optimism.” [Christiana described] CDP is like the X-ray. Before the X-ray, you couldn’t see the inside of the patient’s health. So things like: What are your greenhouse gas emissions? What’s your strategy on climate change?
Let’s stick with the medical metaphor — you then get to what you might call a diagnosis. And what is the diagnosis on climate change? And many of your organizations and certainly most of your customers will have reached the conclusion that you need to set a science-based target or you need to have a net-zero commitment by 2050. Now there are some things with this medical metaphor the patient can do themselves. Things like buying renewable energy, invest in energy efficiency — these are so-called “lifestyle changes” in medicine.
But we’re also going to need a treatment plan. And that treatment plan is often manifested in a new piece of real estate in the corporate world — a transition plan. Transition plans are becoming increasingly important.
A great communications consultant recently told me a transition plan is a mechanism for your organization or your clients to explain how they’re going to deliver value from the transition. And this is important. How’s it going to work? And key component there — final medical metaphor — surgery or medicine. And the patient can’t do that themselves. We’re going to need government. It’s the next big stage. And it’s where we’re going to have to convene for climate. You need to calculate greenhouse gas emissions because they are the problem.
But let’s talk about the solution.
Milton Friedman in 1970 wrote an essay in The New York Times where he said the social responsibility of business is to make profits. I wrote a book in 2000 called Beautiful Corporations. [Corporations] are the most important institutions of the late 20th and 21st century. If you’re a student of corporate history, you will know that that was a very important essay because Milton Friedman was saying, above all, the purpose of corporation is to make a profit, and maybe that’s true. But when you have an enormous problem with climate change, then that truth [produces] another truth: The social responsibility of business is to make a profit, but the social responsibility of government is to make decarbonization profitable.
What does that mean? It means that we need to work with our governments to make this transition a source of enormous profit and growth for the industries you serve. People sometimes say to me, “Oh sustainability, it’s regulation, it’s tough, I don’t want to do it.” Whatever you think of [him as an] individual, the richest person in the world makes electric cars. There are fortunes, absolute fortunes, to be made in the transition, whether that’s in energy systems, food systems, etc.
Now here we are in Barcelona, where there’s an extraordinary case study. [He pulls from his pocket a cellphone] — the most successful product in the history of our species. And in 2006, Barcelona began to convene the World Mobile Congress here — 100,000 people came last time. The city of Barcelona has benefited from extraordinary economic advantage as an ecosystem of mobile-related industries that have grown up making this perhaps the most brilliant investment this city has ever made.
So I want you to think now about those new industries. My new company, Transition Value Partners, we work with boards, the C-suite, advising on this transition, advising about the relationship with government. We call this “geo-system strategy.” You need to make the rules of the game so you do the right thing and you win.
And it’s the same for your clients. Think of all the different locations you work with. Think of all the different clients you work with. And think of how each one is going to be transformed by the rational response to climate change.
You know about energy. You know accelerated permitting. You know about transport — the electric vehicles. But what about video communication.
What about systems you haven’t even thought of — food systems, food science. We’re probably going to stop eating meat without ever noticing. We’ve been doing cooking for hundreds of thousands of years — making the same things taste different. Food science is new — making different things taste the same.
I encourage you to think about the community you are, to think about these megatrends that are not going to go away and to think about how to ignite the intelligence of your convening power, your ability to create events, to be the thinking machine of the thinking machines.
To allow the population of this planet to do what they have no choice but to do: to work out how we are going to decarbonize our societies, efficiently and above all, profitably. That will require taxation, regulation — and it’s begun.
I’m going to throw out one last statistic. In 2016, investment in clean energy exceeded investment in fossil fuel energy. Last year, $1.1 trillion into fossil energy; $1.7 trillion into clean energy. Recognize that this revolution is underway — from the industrial policy of China to the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S.A., to the Green New Deal in the E.U.
We need to come together to help our clients, our cities, our locations, do what we need to do to get this to turn out right.