Can Starbucks Save the Climate?

By Eric Letsinger, CEO, Quantified Ventures

Last week, I joined hundreds of fellow travelers to fly across the country to California from Washington, DC for client meetings. Everything was going smoothly until my plane touched down for a quick layover in Charlotte, North Carolina. Minutes after deplaning, I found myself moving towards my next gate with my head down and eyes focused on my phone that was populated with missed calls, emails, and texts. 

As I walked through the airport, already on my next call, my phone suddenly made alarming sounds and my screen blew up with instructions to run, not walk, to the nearest bathroom for safety. Apparently, a tornado had just touched down nearby.  Trying to maintain a normal conversation with the person on the phone, I looked around to see how others in the airport were reacting to the warnings that I assumed were also being broadcasted to their own devices. But no one flinched. No one looked up. No one moved. I assumed my phone, perhaps, had not yet registered that I was in North Carolina, not DC, and continued my phone call. For a moment, I thought it was odd that DC was experiencing a tornado and thought about my family there. My call ended smoothly, and rather than listening to my ongoing phone alerts to run for safety, I began my usual search for a phone charging station. 

That’s when the announcement came over the airport speakers. “There is a tornado nearby and you are in danger. The glass windows here at the airport are not shatter proof so move away from them immediately. Move quickly to the bathrooms for your own safety. This is not a test.” I looked around again, bewildered, and as before, no one moved. No one reacted — including myself. Instead, I successfully located a phone charging station (near a window!) and joined the huddled masses charging their devices while on calls. 

 And then it happened — a Starbucks employee walked right out of her store and pulled the metal gate down behind her, closing up shop with an audible, visceral bang. Once caffeine in its various shapes and forms was no longer available, we all looked up from our phones and woke up to the reality of the emergency. One after the other, the vendor gates were pulled down and consumable commerce was no longer an option. And that was it — that’s when the people around me acted and finally stampeded into the crowded bathrooms with protective cinder block walls. It was only then that we looked around, almost on top of each other, and openly discussed the impact that the warnings had on each one of us getting to safety.

 Thankfully, our time in the crowded bathroom was mostly uneventful. The tornado passed, and as I walked back to my gate with my fellow passengers to obediently address our missed flights and connections, I couldn’t stop thinking about my slow reaction to the warnings. As a species, we seem to have invested heavily in “fail safe” alert systems, each one of which worked perfectly in this instance. But I -- we -- ignored all of them until coffee and steamed milk and sugary drinks were no longer available. Until the infrastructure and luxuries around us began to change before our eyes. 

 What if Starbuck’s didn’t close?  What is it going to take for us to wake up, look around, and move towards a more sustainable world?     

 Our climate is changing. We broke it, and we know it. Yet,  here we are again — slow to act even when the consequences to our actions are clear. The climate crisis is impacting the world economy, human health, water stress, mitigation, and the survival of other species on Earth. The list of destruction goes on. Large corporate companies like BlackRock, Apple, and Microsoft already acknowledge that climate change will not only reshape finance, but must fall under the responsibility of the private sector to elicit lasting change. Additionally, cities like Buffalo,NY, Athens, OH, and Washington, DC are working with Quantified Ventures to build outcomes-based, scalable projects to generate social, environmental, and economic solutions for our planet. 

If the human race is going to survive, cities and companies must align with each other and other industries to establish sustainability commitments and relocate capital in a way that prioritizes environmental, social, and health outcomes.

And the time is now to join us in the fight.

Quantified Ventures