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Welcome to AccelPro Audit, where we provide expert interviews and coaching to accelerate your professional development. Today we’re featuring a conversation with David Gelles, reporter on the New York Times Climate team and leader of The Times’s Climate Forward newsletter and events series.
Gelles is a journalist with many years of business reporting under his belt; with his move to cover climate, Gelles has a unique perch from which to view and understand the greater cultural context companies face when they’re doing ESG reporting.
In this conversation, he talks about the increasingly perilous political crosswinds companies must navigate, the rising risk of legal liability around environmental issues and why he still finds most companies’ ESG reporting lacking. Finally he tells the story of the framed rejection letter from the New York Times that sits on his desk.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and YouTube
Interview References:
David Gelles’ New York Times profile and personal website.
1:58 | Gelles, David. With TikTok and Lawsuits, Gen Z Takes on Climate Change. (19 August, 2023). New York Times.
6:58 | People of the State of California v. Big Oil. (16 September, 2023). Office of Governor Gavin Newsom.
9:12 | AB 32 Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. Assembly Bill No. 32, Chapter 488.
11:39 | Gelles, David. Grilling the world’s biggest meat producer. (28 September, 2023). New York Times.
Supplemental Materials:
Barnes, Brooks and Moreno, J. Edward. Disney Ends Its Fight With DeSantis Over Resort Development. (27 March, 2024). New York Times.
Gelles, David. Inside Corporate America’s Frantic Response to the Georgia Voting Law. (5 April, 2021). New York Times.
Hiroko Tabuchi, Ephrat Livni and David Gelles. S.E.C. Approves New Climate Rules Far Weaker Than Originally Proposed. (6 March, 2024). New York Times.
TRANSCRIPT
I. WHY COMPANIES ARE ‘DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON’T’
Jessica Stillman, Host: You lead the Climate Forward newsletter at the New York Times, and before moving to climate, you wrote for the paper's business section for many years. So you've done a ton of reporting and writing around the intersection of climate and business, and that's what we want to talk about today, especially how it's relevant for auditors who are working with ESG reporting.
This summer you wrote a piece about rising climate activism among Gen Z. How do you think changing attitudes towards climate change and other ESG issues are impacting what customers expect from companies?
David Gelles: There's no one answer to a question like that. The customer base domestically or even internationally is incredibly diverse, and even within a generation like Gen Z, you're going to have more engaged consumers, young activists and the like, as well as others who are less attuned to these kinds of issues.
All that said, there’s a growing number of them who care about the environment and are concerned about climate change, and I think it's fair to say that both the data and the anecdotal evidence suggests that when they're making purchasing decisions about which brands they're going to support and be loyal to, a corporation's track record on an issue like climate is increasingly becoming a part of those considerations. It can be relevant even when young employees are entering the job market and thinking about which company they want to work for.
I don't think we can say it's the dominant consideration in purchasing decisions yet, but I think every year we're finding it's more and more a part of the mix of things that young people care about, and what they’re choosing to make decisions about with their pocketbook.
JS: And are you finding that companies are sometimes facing a backlash when businesses fail to live up to expectations around ESG climate issues? Are there boycotts or other things going on?
DG: I've been covering for 10 years now this intersection of business and brands and social issues and increasingly the culture wars, and what I've seen is that with almost every news cycle, it gets harder and harder for any company, be it a startup or a big established multinational corporation, to take a stand, or even not take a stand, on an issue and not make someone angry.
Whether or not you're coming out in defense of an issue like climate change, or even things like stronger gun laws, or abortion rights, some of these most contentious issues of the day—whether you take a stand or not, whether you're silent or not, it's almost a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.
And I don't, as a reporter for the New York Times, have a lot of sympathy for CEOs innately. We try to report accurately and toughly and hold them to account to the best of our abilities, and yet, I am the first to acknowledge that when it comes to leading a big multinational brand, one that is respected and is trying to reach a diverse set of consumers, navigating these waters of politics and social issues and these hot button culture war issues is really tough today. It's almost impossible to do without alienating at least some part of the broader consumer base.
JS: I wanted to ask you about this “anti-woke backlash” that's coming from the more conservative side of the spectrum. From your reporting, how real and how big a phenomenon is that, and also what are the main forms it’s taking?
DG: If part of my job was paying attention to the political landscape, I would be pretty attuned to the anti-ESG backlash. ESG, of course, if that's what we want to call it, has been around for a long time, decades now, but it's really just in the last couple of years that a portion of mostly American conservatives, mostly in the Republican Party, but not exclusively, have decided that companies have become too progressive in their social views. They point to things like their stance on issues like abortion rights, voting access, and more, and say that companies have essentially gone too far in the direction of trying to sway social policy, public policy.
In response, what they're doing is essentially mounting a multi-pronged campaign to try to rein in the political, and I would even argue, cultural influence of big corporations. That's taking a number of forms. You're seeing Republican treasurers in red states pull their money out of fund managers who they say are too "woke," to use the term that they like. They are trying to do things like block the nominees of federal positions where those regulators would essentially have the ability to force the financial community and the corporate community to take things like climate change more seriously.
They're waging a loud and, I would say, somewhat effective campaign to try to make companies engage in these issues less. It's showing up in places like Florida where Ron DeSantis went to war with Disney, and it's showing up in many states where, again, Republican state treasures have pulled out billions of dollars now from companies like BlackRock over their supposed political actions.
JS: We've talked about the dangers reputationally from the woke and from the anti-woke sides. As if that's not enough for companies to try to triangulate and deal with, there's also legal risks that are coming up. You wrote about how California sued some of the world's biggest oil companies for deceiving the public about climate change and I think that's just one of the different climate-related court cases you've written about. Are companies likely to face increasing legal risk around ESG issues, particularly climate in your opinion?
DG: I would be careful not to conflate the ESG story with something like the lawsuits against fossil fuel companies. The lawsuit that California filed is part of a broader body of litigation that's targeting the biggest fossil fuel companies in the world over their decades-long efforts to mislead the public about the risks of climate change. That to me is very separate from some of the more opportunistic culture wars spats that we're seeing around a company like Disney or BlackRock, for example. So I'd be careful not to conflate those kinds of things.
But to the broader question of companies facing broader legal risks, I think inevitably the answer has to be yes. When you look at what Ron DeSantis was doing to Disney in Florida, when you look at some of the real flare ups I covered during the Trump administration around companies like Google and Home Depot and Coca Cola getting drawn into real fights over voting issues and immigration issues—undoubtedly the more rancor and the more vitriol, frankly, that we see companies facing, I think the broader the legal risks are overall.
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II. ON THE SHORTCOMINGS OF CURRENT ESG REPORTING
JS: Into this confusing and complicated landscape, companies are having to report ESG data. From your perspective as a reporter, how do you think companies are doing with their ESG reporting? Do you find the information many are putting out to be relevant, to be useful, to be trustworthy?
DG: No doubt that over the last many years, companies have tried to be more forthcoming in their ESG data, but I still find it lacking, frankly, for a number of reasons. For starters, I think as we've seen, especially over the last year, with ESG we're talking about three very separate issues: environmental, social, and governance. A lot of people would make the case that it's time to unpack, unbundle those three terms.
The governance side is one that the SEC has obviously been thinking about and trying to take seriously for a long time. The environmental side is getting more granular. We're seeing states like California, which enacted a law to require companies to be much more specific in their release about emissions data. And the social piece is, I think, the hardest to quantify. It's difficult to find standards that can be agreed upon by a large body of companies and regulators.
And so when you look at all three of those things, it's very difficult to say, “Oh yeah, a company's overall ESG reporting is good, bad, or somewhere in the middle.”
From where I sit on the New York Times climate desk, the piece that you can imagine that I'm most focused on is the E, environmental. And on that front, are companies reporting better? Sure, but is it enough? I would say not remotely. And the reason I say that is because there's been very little pressure on companies to actually get specific about basic metrics like their emissions. And even when they do report emissions, it can be so subjective. There's so many different ways to make it squishy that it can be hard to say which number is the one that you're going to go to the bank with.
Beyond that, I think there's broader issues about what should be reported. Emissions is relatively straightforward, but what about things like microplastics? What about things like PFAS? There are all sorts of ways in which, essentially, consumer products, companies, energy companies, even tech companies are having an effect on the environment that become very hard to quantify.
So, are we seeing more of it? Absolutely. Is it enough for me as a curious reporter who wants as much data as I can get my hands on? Not entirely.
JS: When it comes to climate, I know there's a lot of discussion about scope 1, scope 2, scope 3 emissions, and how far down the chain that people should be reporting. From where you sit, would you rather have them report to scope 3 and have the data be perhaps inaccurate and hard to get, or would you rather have them stick to scope 1 and really nail it down? Or do you think there shouldn't be that trade off?
DG: This is why I'm not a regulator because I don't have a good answer for that. I think the ambition is important. The California law will force companies to try to make their best estimate at scope 3. But again, as I said earlier with how difficult it is to try to take a stand on a social issue, it's going to be hard to report scope 3 emissions, especially for large consumer goods companies or large agriculture companies. How do you even begin to quantify that?
I had a testy onstage back and forth with the CEO of JBS, the world's biggest meat producer, where he really pushed back and said, “How are we expected to quantify the scope 3 emissions of millions or probably billions of pounds of meat that we produce and sell each year?” I recognize that we're talking about really quite complicated math problems at this point.
JS: Leading on from that, I'm sure you're aware the SEC is also considering new rules around ESG disclosures, specifically around climate and what companies are required to disclose. Do you have any thoughts on what you would like them to do in terms of changing the regulations there?
DG: As a reporter, it's not my job to take positions on what I do and don't want from regulation. I just try to report on the world as it is. But what I will note is that the SEC has been talking about scope 3 regs for quite some time now and it hasn't happened. In large part because Republicans, as we talked about earlier, are dragging their feet and have made it clear that's not something that they're in favor of. As a result, the SEC may not actually go that far with their final regulations. [Update: note March 6, 2024 NYT article on SEC Regulations.]
JS: Are there any emerging ESG and climate trends that you would urge auditors to keep an eye on that you think are going to impact companies coming forward that we haven't spoken about yet?
DG: There’s the liability issue, which is something we touched on earlier. We're seeing growing efforts from states and cities in some cases to hold big oil companies accountable for the climate damages that they have allegedly helped cause. And it goes beyond oil and gas and climate change. There are large issues of product liability around different types of environmental pollutants, around impacts to ecosystems, around things like the degree to which companies might be depleting groundwater that auditors should watch. You don't know until the lawsuit arrives exactly how the argument could be framed. For big corporations, I've seen time and again, they sometimes get blindsided by not thinking holistically about where they might be exposed.
That to me is certainly an argument to have good counsel and be prepared for that kind of thing. But much more fundamentally, it's an argument in favor of just doing the right thing and not putting yourself in a position where you are endangering the public, where you're depleting natural resources, where you're polluting the environment in ways that might come back to haunt you from a legal perspective five or ten or twenty years down the road. The more companies can stay on the right side of history in the moment, the less likely they are going to face potentially crushing legal bills in the future.
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III. WHY GELLES KEEPS A REJECTION LETTER FROM THE TIMES ON HIS DESK
JS: Usually we're talking to auditors or former regulators. But I think our audience will definitely find your career fascinating. Can you tell me briefly, how did you end up as a journalist on the climate beat for the New York Times?
DG: Sure, I did not think I wanted to be a climate reporter for the New York Times growing up. I didn't know what I wanted to be. I designed museum exhibitions for a while, and during that time, I got the reporting bug.
I found myself covering city council meetings for local newspapers during my lunch breaks and after hours at my design job. After a couple years of that I said, that doesn't make any sense. If I'm going to do this, I might as well get paid for it. So I went to journalism school, which not everyone needs to do or should do, but it worked for me.
First, it just gave me nuts and bolts reporting skills that I didn't have coming in. There's so many other ways to get that. You can work at your college paper, you can work at community weeklies, there's plenty of ways to get reps as a reporter.
The other thing it got me, which is much harder to get, unless you've got a way in, was connections. And I parlayed those connections as best I could. When I landed on a great story five weeks into school, I got it on the front page of the New York Times. That doesn't happen unless you know people who can call up, with trust and authority, the national desk of the New York Times and say, “I know it's crazy, but I got a kid here who's 25 years old and has a banger of a story that you need to take a look at.”
Five weeks into journalism school, I very quickly realized, ah, this is the business I'm supposed to be in. And I went all in, and right about at that time, 18 years ago now, I identified business journalism as something that I was surprisingly interested in. It wasn't something I grew up around. I did not have a background in business. My parents are arts and nonprofit people, but I realized a couple things. One, business stories were about people, not numbers. And when I thought about it that way, everything became interesting and everything became a business story to me.
Two I realized that there were going to be business reporting jobs, and I did not want to be an unemployed reporter. I wanted to have a career. So I went off and tried to be a business reporter. After school, I first was a business reporter at the Miami Herald, and then I was at the Financial Times for four years covering tech and media and mergers and acquisitions. Then, 10 years ago now, I joined the New York Times first covering mergers and acquisitions, and then doing a whole range of jobs on the business desk, including writing the Corner Office column where I interviewed hundreds of CEOs.
Then I joined the climate desk, and I still do a lot of our business reporting from the climate desk, but it became clear to me that of the couple biggest stories in the world, that are going to be big stories for a long time, climate, to me, was right at the top of the list. I was at a moment in my career where I was ready to go all in on a new, really challenging topic. And it's been an incredibly informative and exciting couple years of reporting so far.
I consider myself very lucky, but I also don't want to pretend like I didn't work my tail off. I hustled so hard. In my first several years as a reporter I would write absolutely any story I could get. I freelanced nonstop. I worked incredibly late hours, I pushed myself to find better stories, and I was willing to take relatively low paying jobs early on, and stick with them for a while, to try to play the long game. That all paid off for me.
The last thing I'd say is I sit right in the third floor of the big famous newsroom. I’ve got a couple of things on my desk; I’ve got my computer, a picture of my wife, a picture of my kids. And the only other thing there is my framed internship rejection letter from the New York Times.
Because even after I had a story on the front page, I had a story in the magazine and I had two other freelance stories in my first year in journalism school, I applied to the internship and I got a form rejection letter. I kept it and I framed it. Any day I'm a little unmotivated or I don't have the juice, I look at that and it's just a reminder. So many other people want this job and I'm lucky to be here. Let's go get it.
JS: One of the animating ideas of the AccelPro brand is that peers learning from peers can be incredibly valuable. So I'd love to ask you about how you rely on peers to deal with tough situations, to manage career decisions. Can you think of a time when advice from a peer was really critical for your career?
DG: It's so hard to find just one. I work in a collaborative newsroom and the year of reporting we did on Boeing after the two crashes of the 737 Max was the most collaborative stretch of work I've done in my career. It was me and a couple of other reporters essentially locked in a room every day for a year with one of the best editors at the paper, digging into the biggest investigative project.
I didn't know what I was doing. I was a good reporter, but I had never tried to weasel my way inside the boardroom of a big multinational corporation, but I was with other people who had. So we were sharing reporting tricks; we were harnessing each other's ambition. At its best, working with really good peers has allowed me to stretch and be better than I thought I could be.
I always feel so lucky when I'm around reporters and editors who just make me better. I didn't know I could do that. I didn't know I could get that kind of sourcing, write that kind of a lead, but with their inspiration and fire and guidance, you get it done.
This AccelPro audio transcript has been edited and organized for clarity. This interview was recorded on November 14, 2023.
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