Sustainability will not be sidelined

On the ideological debates about large v small government: “What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works.”

On the role of markets: “Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control - and that a nation cannot prosper long when it favours only the prosperous.”

On decades of apathy and outright resistance: “But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed.”

The meaning for business

The core implication for business strategy is that this is about value and survival. It puts “corporate responsibility” and “corporate citizenship” into a whole new context.

We will have a new ethic in business where purpose and contribution to society become integrated into corporate culture or become enforced by regulation. Whereas over recent decades this issue has largely been defined by a focus on doing good things while you make money, it will now need to become about making money by doing good things.

Pursuing profit at the expense of the broader public interest was previously seen as “it’s legal so it’s OK”. This will cease, either through a shift in business values and culture or because the heavy hand of government will ensure what’s “legal” becomes a narrow and more constraining framework for business. Clearly, the former is a better outcome.

It means we are going to transform the economy to close to zero net CO2 emissions. This will create massive growth in many sectors and the collapse of others.

It is key to not just think about solar panels and electric cars but the whole supply chain and across all sectors. Windmills need ball-bearings, putting solar hot water services on every home needs a lot of plumbers and a lot of pipes, agriculture will transform to become a net CO2 sink with new farming practices, new biological materials and fuels and massive reforestation - new tractors, new water infrastructure and new measurement systems.

We will see closed loop systems for packaging and drink containers that will require widespread changes in infrastructure, new materials and very different marketing strategies.

We will see extraordinary technological breakthroughs that will deliver surprising and rapid change in many sectors - algae farms as oil refineries, petrol stations as battery exchange points, plug in hybrids and houses as peak power producers.

This is all good news. It is an economic, technological, political and social revolution far greater than anything we have imagined to date. Because we’ve left the change so late it will require a level of effort comparable to waging a war. But this we can do. A large part of US industrial capacity was shifted to the war effort in just nine months after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

In fact, the reason I quote Obama so broadly is that he could well be the Churchill figure of our time. We can’t fight them on the beaches as they’ll mostly be underwater, but we can win this war and “victory at any cost” is certainly the mindset we now need.

For business, the consequences are clear. The change is coming - the question is how you respond it. To quote Charles Darwin and what he actually said about evolution: “It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones who are most responsive to change.”