Mapping the Carbon Cost with Lisa Stanley — How Spending Impacts Geography

Twenty-one times

Switching your bank or pension is 21 times better at reducing carbon emissions than giving up flying. That is the research, and it is the sentence that made me want to do this episode.

People don’t realise that money has that power, she said, and that where you bank matters. Nobody teaches it at school.

You cannot build a business nine to five

She was honest about what building two businesses actually took. You can’t build a business nine to five, she said. If it’s your own business, you can’t shut off. She also ran one of them from Thailand for four years, which she mentioned as though it were unremarkable.

Going with your gut

Her advice was about moving forward and going with your gut, because if it feels right you can make it right. And that it’s all about creating your network, and just being really, really hungry.

She went from zero to the first twelve thousand users after fifteen years in public relations. It was not a straight line and she did not pretend it was.

Money can be a force for good and nobody teaches you that at school.

We learn about supply and demand and market failure. We don’t learn that the bank holding your savings might be lending them to fossil fuel extraction, and that moving them is the most effective climate thing most people could do.

I’m going to ask my parents who they bank with. I suspect they don’t know.