Reuters

The Atlantic’s website picked up this story about one of the world’s largest chocolate companies, and its approach to the future with regard to climate change:

…Now—in response to all this bigness, all this complexity, all these diversified models—it has prepared for a changing world. The Hershey Company is hiring a futurist.

That’s not what companies call it, exactly. Hershey’s is hiring a “Senior Manager” in “Foresight Activation,” someone with experience converting “existing foresight (trends, forecasts, scenarios) into strategic opportunities (SOs).”

The company’s posting never breaks down just what “foresight” means, though it does specify applicants should be “collaborate with and align multi-functional stakeholders.” But let me be clear, foresight means trying to understand the future. Hershey’s is hiring a chocolate futurist.

Of course, this is not an outlandish position, even if it will require regular excisions of jargon. Companies everywhere analyze trends, try to figure out what imperils their business, and make plans accordingly. If they depend on products of the land, they specifically try to plan for the big, amorphous future risk of climate change.

Little wonder: A 2011 Gates Foundation-funded study found that even small amounts of climate change could ravage the cocoa market, sending “yields crashing and prices soaring.” And Starbucks has long insisted that climate change, more than anything else, threatens the global supply chain of coffee, and, thus, its business.

Read the whole post here.