President of Asia Insurance Co. Ltd
Bernard Chan has been outspoken about corporate social responsibilities as well as the importance of environmental protection. Coming from the financial industry which is reputed to breed jet-setters and car-lovers, Bernard is keen to take on the challenge and make a real difference. Often faced with the "to fly, or not to fly" dilemma-Bernard discusses with us the potential the business world has in reducing flight emission.
I am very aware of the fact that climate change is an important issue and have always want to do something about it. Learning about the issue is not enough. We must build awareness so that it becomes part of our daily life. But I believe that people's lifestyle is not going to change overnight. I want to take part to help make this gradual change possible.
I see that the dominant part of my footprint comes from my flight. Banking and finance executives do tend to be flight-heavy. There are a lot of meetings where you just have to attend to establish personal contact with your business counterpart. In some cases you have to fly to events to 'give face' to the host. It is amazing to count how many hours I spend in the air and traveling to and from airports just for these gatherings! And come to think of it, my flight frequency is not even comparable to those real top flyers in the industry!
Yes. I do not know what kind of target I can set just yet but in a perfect world of tele/video-conferencing, I can possibly cut a quarter of my flights. For example I could minimise the flights I take to attend face-giving only ceremonies, or communications I can deal with by teleconferencing. I'd like to see how far I can go.
There will be difficulties sometimes. Not only do cultural differences come into play, you also have to deal with counterparts who do not want to do teleconference or videoconferencing. But there are incentives, too, to reduce flights apart from climate-saving. I can have more time to spend with my family and waste less time in airport queues.
Frankly, no. It is not the kind of technology that lots of companies have. Renting facilities to do videoconferencing can be unjustifiably costly. But I think for multi-national companies there are good reasons to have it in place for internal communication. Overall videoconferencing has a lot of potential that is yet to be realized.
Give us more solutions. For example you can help make video-conferencing and other technology more available. Tell people where they can get services to improve energy efficiency. It is always essential to give people more choices.
We keep that in mind!
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