Why the Climate Crisis Can’t Wait for Political Consensus
- Textile thought-leaders express hope for the climate and discuss the impact of evolving U.S. regulatory landscape on sustainability initiatives at the Future Fabrics Expo seminar in New York City.
Despite the current political climate , a few textile thought-leaders still have hope for the climate—environmentally speaking.
That was the sentiment during the final seminar of this year’s iteration of Future Fabrics Expo (FFE) in New York City on Wednesday afternoon. A standing room only audience gathered at the Metropolitan Pavilion in Chelsea to hear some words of hope, as well as a few hot takes, during a panel centered around the United States’ evolving regulatory landscape and how it’s expected to impact the industry’s sustainable strides.
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“I fear that sustainable, climate-minded projects that were on the table and started to get going will be put on hold,” Dana Thomas , author of “ Fashionopolis ” and former contributing sustainability editor at British Vogue, said. “Frozen: just like what the New York’s DA office did with its case against President Trump .”
But that also means that these initiatives weren’t in vain—the climate crisis isn’t going anywhere—and thus perhaps it’s time to start playing offense , Thomas continued.
“The Green Revolution creates jobs. As long as you know that and keep that in the back of your mind, the businesspeople know this,” she said, referencing the TED Talk former vice president Al Gore made before COP26 that went viral for slamming the fossil fuel industry . “They can keep milking the oil drilling because they don’t want to have to change, but they’re going to have to change because of the regulatory rules coming down the pipe.”
Tricia Carey piggybacked off of that, touching on Tariff Armageddon .
“It’s a lot of speculation; we can spend a lot of time talking about it or we can put that time into the doing,” the industry veteran , formerly of Lenzing and Renewcell , said. “And let’s remember: this is a global industry. With the regulations coming in…any of the global players will need to still make any kind of transition in material innovation.”
That’s especially true for California , considering SB 707 was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom this fall.
Besides, how likely is it that Bernard Arnault —the luxury conglomerate titan in a billionaire bromance with Trump—will adhere to the rules requiring Dom Perignon and Veuve Clicquot to pay tariffs, Thomas asked? Or that Louis Vuitton will pull out of Trump Tower—the building owned by the future president—after signing a five-year deal for the space with a rent of $20 million a year?
“Brands are not going to shut [innovation] down as they’ve already invested too much into it to get it going and they’re seeing that people like that,” Thomas said. “They’re going to have to continue with things like digital IDs in the European Union, that’s a done deal . So, they’re going to have to have digital IDs in the American clothes, too; they’re not going to do it for some markets and not for others.”
Considering Ecovative has been in the weeds of the green field since 2007—long before sustainability was cool, director of marketing communications Lacey Davidson joked—the mycelium bio-fabricator finds navigating these changes to be a net-positive.
“It was a really hard and slow uptick to [get] to where we are today as a company; having legislation and regulatory rules really helps these smaller brands and encourages stateside manufacturing , at the end of the day, [as] that’s where our innovation is happening,” Davidson said. “But really establishing what we’re offering as better and easier to adopt, instead of having to look back on their current supply chain, we can fit into their supply chain .”
Remaining nimble is necessary, climate activist and United Nations consultant, Saad Amer, said. Especially considering the “weirdly politicized doctrine” that the Paris Agreement has been reduced to.
“[The Paris Agreement] was never binding , right? Whether we were a part of it or not, it didn’t actually nominally change something that the U.S. was required to do by some international force,” Amer said. “At the same time, I think that is a very bad symbol .”
With that in mind, accepting defeat is the wrong takeaway. Gathering momentum, capacity building, mobilizing for the midterms is top of mind for Amer.
“We can’t just give up because of these hurdles—that’s what they would like us to do, to just sit here, paralyzed by what the consequences might be,” Amer said. “But the reality is, the paralyzing consequences actually go to climate crisis , right? That is the real enemy we need to be fighting.”
