Seth Scott

Seth Scott has lived in nine US states, spent a year in St. Petersburg, and moved to New Zealand from New York eight years ago. He's been a construction project manager for twenty-five years, hosts the Good Drinks sustainable networking group, and produces two podcasts exploring why climate action has been so hard - and what to do differently. He is, by his own description, interested in decarbonisation and the amazing world that's coming.

The moment that set him on this path came in 2008, when he read a small article in the New York Times about the first ice-free summer in the Arctic. The article was already months old, and no one was talking about it. "What else is the warming climate impacting that no one sees?" he wondered. That question has driven nearly two decades of work exploring and explaining what he calls the invisible - the slow, compounding consequences of a changing climate that most people haven't yet noticed.

Seth's thinking is shaped by a pair of convictions that don't always sit comfortably together in sustainability circles. The first is that climate progress requires intellectual honesty - grounding in science, molecules, economics, and human biology rather than what we wish were true. The second is that true believers can be just as detrimental to progress as deniers. "Humans pick solutions that work for them, rather than solutions that work," he says. The ability to get on the same playbook - something denialists do so well - continues to elude the climate movement.

His most urgent call is for a language shift. Sustainability has made it halfway on the vocabulary of environmentalism and social justice. To go the rest of the way, he argues, it needs to speak fluently in the language of balance sheets. Carbon emissions may mean little to an executive; cost savings from reduced diesel use mean everything. "The action and outcome is no different," he says. "It's the language that determines success or failure."

For Aotearoa, Seth sees enormous untapped potential in the fact that seventy percent of New Zealand's exports rely on natural capital. When New Zealand gets it right, it models possibility for the rest of the world - through cellular agriculture, precision fermentation, renewable energy exports, and nature-based solutions that strengthen rather than deplete what the land provides.

If his work could plant one seed, it would be a deeper understanding of the human animal itself - how we're wired, what drives us, and how that knowledge could help us build systems that genuinely nurture people and reintegrate humanity into nature. "It's possible, in the very long term," he says, "but only if we continue to learn."

He also carries a quieter conviction, drawn from the TV series Andor: that the work being done today may light candles for generations not yet born. "Be the voice of the movement to come after the crisis." It may be a century before they walk the path. But they'll walk it.

Read Seth's answers to Blooming Sustainability to explore why decarbonisation is as much a question of language and human psychology as it is of technology and policy.

BLOOMING  Sustainability Questionnaire

Name: Seth Scott

Title & Company: Project Manager, Infrastructure Sustainability Council

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethbscott/

Website for Replace Remove Recover podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EAuEq1lnUkILsLZH8DII3

* Guiding Values | Kaupapa

If sustainability were a flower blooming in your life, what would it look like? What nurtures it?

Sustainability is a Hydrangea, hundreds of tiny flowers on separate stalks that form a single bloom. The solutions to climate change are like this, diverse in origin but all working together. Best of all, the colour changes when you nurture its roots with coffee grounds.

A quote, personal motto or whakataukī that reflects your vision

Two of my favourite quotes:

“The world suffers not from pain but illusion.” – Buddha

Thes sky will always be blue because of chemistry and the properties of light. Sometimes we forget this. We fight tooth and nail for something that does not or cannot exist only because we choose to believe it should exist. When working in climate, I try to ground myself in the science of molecules, economics, and human biology. There are things in this world we can never change. It is incumbent on us to focus our energy on those that can. To make a difference, we must know the difference.

“We can’t love humanity. We can only love people.” – Graham Greene in The Ministry of Fear

When faced with resistance, it is easy to reduce swaths of humanity into an archetype of ill intent, but they are not working in tandem. Like cells, that body is made up of individual people, good people, walking the path that is the sum of their life experiences, working out of their own self-preservation for universal reasons. When you find yourself blaming a group, ground yourself by remembering the individual within it that you can love. Move forward with them in mind.

And two of my own ideas that I return to:

“The future is agnostic. It does not care who makes it happen.” – Remain active. The future you want to build belongs to those who build it. Let that be you.

“Be the voice of the movement to come after the crisis.” Cultural and planetary transformation is a long game. It will get worse before it gets better. Patience is your most valuable emotion. While you fight to survive the present, you are also lighting candles for future generations. Show them the path. It may be a century before they walk it, but they’ll walk it because you illuminated it today. Which leads to another great quote, this one from Andor ,“I burn my life to make a sunrise I know I will never see.”

If you could mentor a rising change-maker in Aotearoa, what advice would you share?  
I had the opportunity to be a Mentor in the RISE mentorship programme. Here is some of the advice I shared.

1. Be curious, read widely, learn constantly

2. Post. Comment. Write. Speak. Don't be afraid of putting your voice out there. When you’re right, the response will gauge how much work is ahead of you. When you're wrong, someone will correct you, which is often even more valuable.

3. Take initiative. Leadership exists in you even when you have no one to lead.

* Leading Change | Arataki

A key moment in your journey that shaped your path:

In 2008, I read a small article in the New York Times about the first ice-free summer in the Arctic. I knew the Northwest Passage had been the main impediment to global commerce for centuries. Because it remained blocked by ice, humanity ultimately built the Panama and Suez Canals or made long journeys around continents. An ice-free summer could revolutionize global shipping and international relations. When I read it, this article was already months old, and no one was talking about it. I thought, “What else is the warming climate impacting that no one sees?” That set me on this fantastic path to explore and explain the invisible. It’s been almost twenty years, and only now has shipping started to ply the Northwest Passage in larger numbers.  But it is happening… and accelerating. How will that play out? One more mystery of climate change.

What’s the main challenge you face in driving sustainability within your sector?

The main challenge in sustainable infrastructure remains a lack of familiarity with sustainable solutions. People imagine it too hard, untested, expensive. Infrastructure is by nature conservative, built on engineering and construction problems that have long been solved. Asking the industry to re-examine its assumptions has met understandable resistance. This can only be overcome by convincing one person at a time, a slow and laborious exercise which is as difficult as it is necessary.

The main challenge for climate activism as a whole appears to be staying on message while presenting a unified front. While most people seem to blame denial and the oil industry for slow action on climate change, I’ve often found that true believers are just as detrimental to the cause.

If you were to lock five believers in a room with the ultimatum that you’ll only let them out when they come to an agreement, they’ll ever emerge. We’re fond of telling each other, “We can’t move forward with x until we ensure y.” For example, rather than support EVs for their reduction in fossil fuels, we protest them because we’re fundamentally against a car culture.

Humans pick solutions that work for them, rather than solutions that work. As a result, we’ve spent decades arguing against each other rather than finding ways to work together. Early environmental resistance against hydroelectric dams, for example, had the unintended consequence of necessitating coal and gas power. Even today, you’ll see conservationists and naturalists fighting solar and wind farms.

That ability to get on the same playbook, something denialists and the oil industry do so well, eludes us.

An area you need more support with:

We’ve spent the last half-century speaking a language of environmentalism and social justice. That’s gotten us half-way. To see this through, we’ll need to translate those concepts into something the other half understands. I’d like to see us adopt more corporate and economic language, something that looks at home on a balance sheet. For example, carbon emissions may mean nothing to executives but cost savings in the form of fossil fuel energy reductions mean a lot. The action and outcome is no different. It’s the language that determines success or failure. We have a lot to offer, but we need to speak the same language as the people we’re trying to convince.

To that end, there is a big push to calculate the dollar value of environmental value. It’s not as hard as it sounds and there are multiple organizations making strides in this area. Seek them out and add this to your tool kit.

An Indigenous perspective you admire and want people to be mindful of:

I would caution people about adopting indigenous perspectives wholesale, a trend we’re too eager to follow. Those solutions were shaped by specific population densities, homogenous family structures and environmental conditions which may not apply to large, diverse populations operating within global supply chains.

That said, I’ve very much admired the initiatives to give personhood to natural features like rivers and mountains. Corporations enjoy many of the same legal rights as persons, so why shouldn’t nature?

Your best approach for engaging stakeholders in meaningful dialogue about ESG:

Approaching stakeholders with ESG solutions is no different than any sales pitch. Start by listening to determine their pain points. Then offer your solutions. Too often we go in thinking we’ll “educate” a stakeholder. Let them educate you first.

What do you think is Aotearoa’s superpower in creating a sustainable future?
The Aotearoa Circle notes that 70% of New Zealand’s exports rely on natural capital. Because those products feed and clothe so much of the world, we have an outsized impact on global consumption habits. When we get it right here, we get it right for everyone.

Our next step will be enhancing that natural capital with nature-based solutions. For example, we can dramatically increase our milk and meat exports with cellular agriculture and precision fermentation. This not only boosts our economy but shows the rest of the world what’s possible. Companies like Daisy Labs are working on this now. At the same time, we can attract new businesses to New Zealand with our abundant natural wind, solar, hydropower and geothermal energy. This will create energy and supply chain resilience while providing additional exports like ammonia and hydrogen. Best of all, these are all solutions going into play right now.

 * Surfing the Green Wave | Kakariki

Books, podcasts, courses or other resources that profoundly shaped your approach to sustainability:

I produce the podcast “Replace Remove Recover”. It asks the question, “Why haven’t we been able to stop climate change, and what can we do differently in the future?” It explores the economics, technology, and human psychology behind decarbonization.

I also produce the podcast “Infrastructure Connections” for the Infrastructure Sustainability Council. I interview a wide range of guests on sustainability, circularity, transport options, ecology, and economics. I love how infrastructure touches on everything in the movement because it is the web that makes our world work.

I am constantly reading. Architecture professor Stewart Brand wrote “A library doesn’t need windows. A library is a window.” I walk to the library almost daily to get my next fix.

Some of the recent non-fiction books that changed how I view the world include: the extraordinary aboriginal perspective in Sand Talk by Tyson Yunkaporta,  A New Green History of the World by Clive Ponting, Wilding by Isabella Tree, Building the Cycling City by Melissa Bruntlett, Crossings by Ben Goldfarb on road ecology, Burn by Herman Pontzer on metabolism, and Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt to see how fragile knowledge is, One of the best fiction writers I can recommend for the downtime you desperately crave is Julia Armfield and her novel Our Wives Under the Sea.

A sustainable initiative or project in Aotearoa that deserves more attention:

We have so many startups in New Zealand creating amazing solutions on tiny budgets. Seek them out. Get involved with Icehouse Ventures or find out what venture firms are backing now. These are world-changing products that need your support. Anything you can do to jump in, especially pro-bono, could change the world.

If your work could plant one seed of change for the future, what would it be?

I’d like to see us build a world for humans. You might think that’s what we already have, but it isn’t.

It’s called anthropogenic climate change for a reason. We did this. The more we understand Anthropo-, the higher the chance we’ll solve this. We have a long way to go.

Perhaps because our eyes look outward, we’re rubbish at looking at ourselves. Our social structures, our governance, our expectations, our religions, our beliefs were all formed in ignorance of how humans work. It was only in the last century that we started to understand our molecules, our hormones, our neurons. The more I learn about the human animal, the more I understand the inscrutable world around us.

With that knowledge we can build a circular system that nurtures humans, elevates them to their highest potential, and re-integrates humans into nature as we heal nature. I think it’s possible, in the very long term, but only if we continue to learn.

No matter what you’re trying to solve, start there.

 * One actionable takeaway for our readers to make a change today for a brighter tomorrow:
Learn how to speak another language. It’s easy to preach to the converted, but convincing others will take some new vocabulary on your part. I find that more and more successful organizations are able to translate sustainability into financial terms that would sound natural on a balance sheet. For example, instead of mentioning carbon emissions saved, point out the dollar savings from reduced diesel use. Everything we do in sustainability, including social policies, have a dollar value attached, and it’s almost always a net savings for the organization. Other helpful vocabulary words include supply chain management, assurance, business continuity, national interest, and competitive advantage. For example, instead of saying “You should care about the climate,” say “Your competitors are leaders in this area. This makes you less competitive.” Finding that traditional terminology can help sway those who have spent a lifetime on the other side of the tree.

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