‘We live in a changing world, but we need to be reminded that the important things have not changed, and the important things will not change if we keep our priorities in proper order.’

S. Truett Cathy (American businessman, author, and philanthropist [1921-2014])

We are all familiar with the process of juggling with priorities: we do it all the time with family and friends, and it's a constant feature in business. Communicating priorities is one of the most important aspects of getting things done: we can think and say what we like but, unless we can communicate that sense of importance to others, those ideas have very little prospect of scalability.

It's not made easier by uni-directional contact: in the old days, we could pick up the telephone and a conversation would take place. Now we rely on sending an e-mail, which more often than not disappears into the ether.

So much of modern life seeks to drag us in all sorts of different directions, and the huge distraction of social media doesn't help. A consistent thought pattern requires concentration, which is not easy when there are so many competing demands for our attention.

In centuries past, the Church and other religions provided a constant thread: but over the past century, governments and competing political parties have tried to instil a common sense of direction. However, governments of western democracies have found that difficult to deliver, being so short-termist in character themselves.

But there are some really important issues facing humanity now, which depend on a real consistency of priority. The most important of these is the environment, where we know that the future of humanity and the natural world is at stake.

The multitude of matters vying for our attention undoubtedly contributes to these shifting priorities: the huge swings in political alignment that we've seen this year in both the United Kingdom and France bear out the fact that allegiance is often short-lived these days.

Shrewd business operators see this pattern, and their marketeers build strategies around it. Hence it was no surprise to see a new report from the environmental think-tank New Weather Institute (NWI) showing how fossil fuel companies are using sponsorship of sport in order to drive our attention away from the need to address climate change. Their report shows how Saudi Arabian oil giant Aramco has paid almost £1 billion across ten active sponsorships, followed by Ineos (£588m), Shell (£355m), and TotalEnergies (£257m).

NWI co-director Andrew Simms said, ‘Oil companies who are delaying climate action and pouring more fuel on the fire of global heating, are using big tobacco’s old playbook and trying to pass themselves off as patrons of sport.’

It's easy to see why marketing strategists use sport to shift perceptions and priorities. Sport captures people's attention, and it provides a really enjoyable escape route from the trials and tribulations of everyday life. But Andrew Simms is right to draw attention to the deliberate manipulation of priorities that they are seeking to achieve, and the extent to which public alignment with environmental priorities fluctuates is testament to their effectiveness.

If you watched Chris Packham's BBC programme ‘Earth’ last week, you would have been left in no doubt that we need a real consistency of priority to take on the challenge of climate change. We are increasingly seeing it in weather extremes throughout the world, and more recently in Europe: but still we discount the future so heavily, preferring to focus on everyday matters and the incessant reports of tension and conflicts across the world.

Environmental change is creeping up on our children and grandchildren, and we ignore it at their peril.

Of course, tackling climate change is not the only long-term concern which suffers from shifting priorities. Over the past two centuries there has been much focus on trying to find economic solutions for a more equitable but also free society; but that too has proved elusive, being continually hi-jacked by big governments which have promised the earth but delivered little, apart from colossal public debt.

In our Share Radio commentaries, we have consistently put forward the need to find a more egalitarian form of capitalism, using inter-generational rebalancing and participation for all, but it often feels like pushing water uphill. We’ll keep on trying.

At the heart of these issues is the balance between self-interest and care for others. In centuries past, it was the Church which sought to maintain this balance, putting emphasis on the need to love our neighbours as ourselves. In those days, the context was entirely in the ‘here and now’, but it's changed dramatically over the past few decades.

Our ability to impact the lives of our descendants is now greater than at any time in human history, so that our neighbour of the future is every bit as important as our neighbour of the present.  So, if we really want to give them a quality of life and a standard of living to which we would aspire, we must learn how to maintain consistent priorities in order to achieve it.

Something worth considering as you're watching the next football match or Formula One race.  

Gavin Oldham OBE

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