The Importance of Learned Sustainability - Sebastian Pasion
Hello everyone! My name is Sebastian Pasion and I’m working with the lovely people at RyeStrategy as a Carbon Consultant. I’m a rising junior at the University of Washington studying Economics and Informatics. Throughout this summer I interned at Deutsche Bank remotely with their New York City Sales and Trading division. Living on the West Coast, I witnessed many of Mother Nature’s gorgeous sunrises as I woke up for 8 am EST market updates.
Throughout my experience with Deutsche Bank, I furthered my understanding of how large renewable energy projects are planned, analyzed, and financed through the Energy and Infrastructure team. Outside of work, I love to go on hikes with my family, walk with my French Bulldog London, and exchange classical music playlists with friends (I’m a big Tchaikovsky fan).
During the summer of 2019, I had the opportunity to intern as a teacher with Life Skills Camp, a philanthropic education group in Shanghai, China. The ages of my students ranged from five to fourteen years old, depending on the content. The curriculum I developed for my students mainly focused on ecology, other natural sciences, and engineering. I was eager to pursue this opportunity as I’ve always been passionate about education and environmentalism. To make the experience more digestible for my students, the curriculum focused on three main stakeholder groups: the environment, society, and the economy. It should be noted that in reality there is a more granular breakdown of environmental stakeholders, including environmental injustice.
I was astounded by how well the students were able to synthesize their personal experiences, such as their parents driving them to school, and the carbon consequences of their own actions. Some of the class projects included nature walks to garner appreciation for biodiversity, and experiments with soil preservation to ensure agricultural sustainability. Asking young children to go play in the countryside was probably the easiest and most fun part of my job.
When I returned to the U.S., I knew I wanted to maintain momentum with sustainable initiatives. In the fall of 2019, I worked with our CEO and Founder, Cooper, on a consulting project with IdeaScale, a software provider, to help them reach carbon neutrality. This experience confirmed my desire to integrate sustainability into the technology sector.
The core similarity between my teaching and carbon consulting experiences was the act of learning itself. I myself had to learn more about anthropocentric climate change so that I could communicate insights to students and to clients. While it is imperative that children be taught to recognize the inherent value of the Earth, businesses themselves must be constantly learning as well. If commercial stakeholders don’t opt into the social contract of sustainability, then global carbon emissions will never decrease substantially. Business leaders can further their understanding of sustainable practices with resources such as the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the Software Industry Carbon Neutrality Pledge, and B-Corp guidance. Resources like these can aid businesses in developing a framework of how they can feasibly improve their sustainability practices while remaining competitive in dynamic and volatile markets.
If we want the Earth to last for the duration of our lifetimes and beyond, we must constantly learn how we can better sustain the environment in our personal and commercial lives.
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About RyeStrategy
Based in Seattle, RyeStrategy is a CDP-accredited, mission-oriented company specialized in carbon accounting, mitigation coaching, and climate disclosure solutions for organizations at any point in their sustainability journey. Learn how RyeStrategy helped Salesforce, Ideascale, and Wazoku achieve their sustainability goals.
From exhaustive carbon footprinting and mitigation coaching, to setting science-based targets and reporting climate data to CDP, SBTi or custom reporting platforms, RyeStrategy acts as a hands-on extension of the team, custom-tailoring services to fulfill climate disclosure requirements easily and accurately.
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