IBM’s Summit? Well, It’s A Start….

The IBM Start sustainability summit started yesterday. It’s in the plush Lancaster House in London. It’s backed by the Prince of Wales, currently facing media criticism for a clumsy and environmentally-damaging train tour designed to promote cycling.

In other words, this summit has all the hallmarks of Green Grandstanding. Despite that, will we get something of value from it?

This summit will be hard work

Looking at the first day, “Cities for a Sustainable Future”, remotely, I can say it will be hard work. IBM wants this to be very Social Media 2.0 (or whatever) and is throwing around blogs, a Twitter stream, and a “live” video feed.

On the first day the video feed put out an undifferentiated and unlabelled mix of recorded press conferences, live footage and adverts. With a bit of cross-referencing, it was possible to eventually identify the people from an agenda, which doesn’t have running times, and is available only as a downloadable PDF.

On the second day, videos carried an informative ticker label, so viewers knew what they were getting, and it became easier to navigate.

The first day’s keynotes – what we could see of them – came across as people filling time, I’m afraid, apart from the Mayor of London’s advisor for the environment, Martin Powell, who had a number of practical things to talk about, namely how to get a green agenda into London’s Olympics, and a nugget of information – a plan for 25,000 charging points for electric cars. That was so conctrete, it caused a frisson in the Twitter stream.

Eventually, though, the day settled into a final panel session, and suddenly seemed to be doing what the initial press launch promised: providing debate, and not answers.

Business vs. sustainability

A highly-qualified panel started to interact and take its time over issues. Do cities really need to grow? How can transport be provided? And why are the rents in central Liverpool so high that is it impossible for a creative business to get a start there? The answer, apparently, is that insurance companies won’t reduce their rents, even if properties are empty – because it would lower the book value of their properties.

That may be some way away from a technology agenda, but it’s actually closer to the core question that IBM’s UK chief executive Stephen Leonard promised on Monday, about the conflict between business and sustainability. “People have said that capitalism and sustainability don’t go hand in hand,” said Leonard. “We fundamentally disagree. Appealing to the conscience of organisations is not having enough impact – we will appeal to their enlightened self-interest.”

That is indeed a big issue, that goes beyond technology, and solving it would be a major step forward. Because, even if Leonard wants to believe enlightened self-interest will get us there, there are in fact real cases where the profit motive genuinely does conflict with doing what is in everyone’s best interest.

Those insurance companies don’t get anything back if they do lower their rents, so why should they? Companies don’t fundamentally get anything back if they cut their emissions, beyond the power savings which may or may not offset the cost of the changes in technology or business practices that provide them.

If we want to appeal to enlightened self-interest, we have to make sure that the ways in which that self-interest provides benefit are made very clear. And if necessary, governments have to intervene to change behaviour. Britain’s leading stance on things like CRC and the “carbon tax”, has given it a top position in a world green IT ranking put together by Fujitsu.

The strength of an open discussion, like the one that closed the first day of IBM’s summit, is that this kind of issue can emerge, and participants can start to work towards genuine answers. Without the talk, they are bound to fail utterly.

In other words, if this is the pattern for the rest of the IBM at Start summit, we’ve got a pretty good picture of the way the green debate goes – and a decent, high profile forum to have it in.

Will it sort out green technology? I don’t know, but it’s a Start….