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The climate capitalists
“We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.” Often attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, sometimes to Donella Meadows, it’s one of those quotes that’s so good, it seems to have multiple claims of ancestry.
Wherever it came from and however accurately it may have described the blinkered bookkeepers, Akshat Rathi wants you to know it’s not true anymore. “It’s now cheaper to save the world than destroy it,” he declares at the opening of his new book, Climate Capitalism: Winning the Race to Zero Emissions and Solving the Crisis of Our Age.
Rathi’s book might be described as a series of case studies highlighting progress against climate pollution but it’s equally a compelling collection of stories — some household names but many of them people we should know about and probably didn’t.
But we’d better deal with the title first. It’s certain to raise some hackles. You’ll be familiar with Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything. A book whose subtitle is echoed on placards at climate protests worldwide — Capitalism vs. the Climate.
Rathi wades into that debate without disputing the role of unfettered capitalism in warming the planet. “No denying that,” he writes, but we have less than three decades to transform civilization’s energy system and the agricultural system that feeds us in our billions. Climate change “cannot be addressed by the same form of uncontrolled capitalism,” Rathi argues. “At the same time, reforming capitalism might be the only practical way to get to zero emissions so quickly.”
It’s an argument you’ve likely heard before. But you’re unlikely to have run across such a wide-ranging case, nor such an honest account of the complexity behind the innovations spanning the globe.
Rathi is an unusually well-positioned tour guide and storyteller. An impressive career as a science journalist, he’s now focused on the intersection between energy and climate for Bloomberg (where he writes and podcasts the splendidly-titled Zero). He has a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Oxford and a degree in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology in Mumbai. He works for one of the world’s premier business outlets. But the complexities of climate capitalism snare him, too. He struggled for months to get his parents’ solar panels hooked to the grid at their home in Nashik, India. You can only imagine how the normies fare.
There’s a whole genre of techno-optimism out there and you probably know the script — solar panel prices have plummeted, and presto, the fossil fuel age is doomed. Climate Capitalism is, refreshingly, not one of those books.
We meet a farmer staving off desperation over his aridifying land in India by contracting with solar companies. And we’re invited into corner offices in China where companies are churning out EVs and batteries at mind-boggling scale. But we also trundle through stories of frustrating, noble failure and, most commonly, complex tales where progress emerged from a muddle of factors.
Even the most successful stories show that multiple actors have to interact constructively. There isn’t “one solution or one route that will get us out of this mess,” Rathi concludes. Instead, he distills the three major actors down to “technology, policy and people — that are continually shaped by money, power and politics.”
And so, we follow Farhana Yamin, lawyer, lead author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and an architect of global climate agreements, as she joins street protests and superglues her hands to Shell’s office (there may be hope for capitalism in Rathi’s telling but it’s gonna need a push).
And we roll back time to identify the crucial factors in Bryony Worthington’s campaign to land the U.K.’s standard-setting Climate Change Act — just this week, it was reported the U.K. has cut its emissions by more than half, to the lowest level since 1879.
We’ve all heard about Tesla, of course, and probably more than enough from Elon Musk. But the name Wan Gang is not widely known in the West. “It is the lesser known of the two who has had the bigger impact,” Rathi reckons. And it’s quite a story: sent away for “re-education” as a teenager under Mao, Wan got into university after the death of The Great Leader. Later, a PhD in internal combustion engines in Germany and eventually back home to drive government policy and disrupt the global industry for those same combustion vehicles. OPEC complacently assumed there would be less than five million EVs in the world by 2040 — that milestone whizzed by four years ago and the organization now worries there might be over 500 million vehicles not burning its petroleum.
If changing the course of a major global industry seems out of reach, you might take heart from the students at Tvind high school in Jutland, Denmark. With their teachers and some engineering help, they built the world’s largest wind turbine in 1978. It’s still operating today, powering about 500 homes. More consequentially, Tvindkraft directly inspired the era of modern wind power. In retrospect, you can trace a path from those teenagers to the world’s leading offshore wind company — Ørsted — the company formerly known as DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas). Ørsted, in turn, played an important role in that big drop in U.K. carbon pollution, supplying enough power for six million British homes.
“We now live in a two track world,” writes Rathi. “As long as we keep emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide, the world will see continued climate extremes leading to the loss of lives and livelihoods. That things keep getting worse however should not hide the fact that the scale of climate action is also growing.”
Whoever it was that coined that “not cost-effective” phrase, they would surely have relished Rathi’s poop story. In the mid-1800s, London hadn’t built a sewer system. The city was the seat of empire and also “a most head-and-stomach distending” place, according to Charles Dickens. Finally came The Great Stink of 1858. So awful that Queen Victoria and her court abandoned the city. The government finally dug up the streets and built sewers.
It’s estimated to have cost about two per cent of GDP, according to a professor at Columbia University. Far less than the looming impacts of climate change. “No one questioned whether that was worth it.”
Passing the mic
Last week, we had a look at the International Energy Agency (IEA) report that CO2 emissions from wealthy countries have been cut to the lowest level in 50 years — since the 1970s.
Barry Saxifrage emailed: “In your last Zero Carbon, you mentioned the IEA chart showing advanced economies are back to 1973 levels.
“I got that IEA data and created a chart with Canada on it.”
Saxifrage’s chart shows the change in CO2 emissions since 1973. As you can see, Canada tracks with the rest of the rich world until the 1990s. Then, in the early 1990s, Canada diverged sharply and the gap kept growing.
And when most wealthy countries began reducing CO2 emissions in the 2000s and 2010s, Canada’s climate pollution remained stubbornly high.
The current trajectory is tough to decipher because of the lag in data. There was a big drop during the pandemic, then a rebound. The IEA figures that wealthy countries overall bent the curve back down in 2023. But for Canada, we only have estimates through 2022 and nothing reliable for 2023.
If you’d like a deeper look at the drivers behind that gap between Canada and other wealthy countries, let me know at [email protected].
TikToffed about disinformation
Just 83 seconds. That’s all it took for the best (and funniest) disinformation-buster you’re likely to see about the carbon tax. Saskatchewan’s Karl Hren is a self-described "uneducated, white, blue-collar, oilpatch-working truck driver" clad in coveralls, ranting and swearing on TikTok from the cab of his Kenworth truck.
“While the setting and tone echo the social media accounts of right-wing influencers and conspiracy theorists who want to kill the carbon tax, it doesn't take long before Hren reveals himself as a disinformation crusader and comedian,” reports Marc Fawcett-Atkinson.
Most Canadians want Big Oil slapped with a windfall tax
A whopping 62 per cent of Canadians say Canada should introduce a tax on the oil and gas sector’s record profits. Only 21 per cent disagree, according to a new Leger poll conducted in early March.
The findings come about a month before the federal government unveils its next budget and advocacy groups are urging Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland to tax Big Oil’s record profits, reports John Woodside.
Endorsing the call for a windfall profit tax, Centre for Future Work director Jim Stanford said that “sky-high” oil and gas profits “were the biggest single factor causing recent high inflation in Canada.”
Alberta’s rules against renewables contradicted by regulator
When Danielle Smith announced new rules against renewable power, her government was sitting on a report from the Alberta Utilities Commission. It was only made public this week.
"It's an evidence- and reason-based wrecking ball that smashes the government's talking points and policies with respect to renewables," says Martin Olszynski, a resource law professor at the University of Calgary.
“The commission’s report concludes wind and solar power poses little threat to Alberta's agriculture or environment and concerns over reclamation and ‘pristine viewscapes’ can be largely addressed with modifications to existing rules,” reports The Canadian Press.
Big Oil vs Big Pipeline
Even the big oil companies are pissed with Trans Mountain these days, demanding an explanation for runaway costs. The most recent estimate for the federally owned fiasco is $3.1-billion higher than the $30.9-billion estimate last year — a lot more than the $7.4-billion quote in 2017.
Oil shippers, including Suncor, Canadian Natural Resources, Cenovus and PetroChina, are on the hook for higher tolls and want the Canada Energy Regulator to force Trans Mountain to explain itself.
"The stakes are high: billions of dollars at issue, with Trans Mountain's (costs) having more than quintupled since 2017 — and its costs are still growing by billions, seemingly unchecked," say the oil companies in their motion to the Canada Energy Regulator.
Shell backs off climate target
Shell announced a “strategic shift,” abandoning one climate target and weakening another. It “amounts to a bet against the world meeting its climate goals, with the International Energy Agency and others concluding no new oil-and-gas investment is needed on a pathway to 1.5 C,” writes Josh Gabbatiss for CarbonBrief.
“Both goals were intended as stepping stones on the company’s journey towards net-zero emissions by 2050, a goal set by the previous chief executive, Ben van Beurden, in 2020.
“The weakening of climate goals from Shell, the world’s second-largest investor-owned oil-and-gas company, comes after BP scaled back its ambitions last year.”
Danske Bank drops fossil fuels
Denmark’s Danske Bank announced it will drop fossil fuel investments in a multibillion selloff. It’s “one of the first large banks in the world to drop oil giants,” reports the Copenhagen Post.
Last week oil and gas majors lost millions of dollars! We at @ActionAidDK are proud to be part of this change in money flows. We have campaigned tirelessly for years to make the largest bank in DK @DanskeBank_DK divest. Now, it has become reality. Other banks need to follow, now! pic.twitter.com/fmI4XlmA42
— Katrine Ehnhuus (@K_Ehnhuus) March 12, 2024
Solar at the cemetery
The French commune of Saint-Joachim is installing solar panel canopies over its cemetery. “But an even more unusual aspect is the equal way the energy will be distributed,” reports EuroNews.
“Most energy initiatives take a top-down approach, but the Saint-Joachim cemetery project is co-built by the citizens… For an entry fee of just €5, they will eventually have a share in the energy it produces.”
1-in-4 Americans
With Chicago’s recent lawsuit against Big Oil, a quarter of Americans now live in cities and states suing oil companies for lying to the public.
In addition to city and state governments, “in December, the Makah and Shoalwater Bay tribes along the coast of Washington state became the first Native American tribes to take oil companies to court over the costs of responding to climate-related risks from rising seas, flooding, and ocean acidification,” reports Kate Yoder for Grist.
“Meanwhile, Hoboken, New Jersey, and a collection of cities in Puerto Rico have added racketeering lawsuits to the mix, alleging that oil companies engaged in a conspiracy of deception.”
From Canada to the Okavango
I’ll leave you with the twisted tale of The Oil Kingmaker, the Canadian “who helps oil-rich nations write their laws, then profits from them.” From the Okavango Delta in Namibia to Iraq and Somalia, you find the fingerprints of James Jay Park behind some of the world’s sketchiest oil deals.
Park is a key figure in the fight over drilling in the Okavango Delta but Andy Rowell and Jeffrey Barbee unearth a much longer history:
“So who is Park, the oil kingmaker you have never heard of? He may be London-based, but Park is a Canadian, born in Montreal…
“In 1980, the young lawyer went to work for the Canadian law firm Macleod Dixon, where he would work directly and peripherally in places like Russia for decades, helping that country as it sold off state resources to private firms.
“Our team has found many instances — from Iraq and Somalia, Mexico, Chad, Tunisia and now Namibia — where Park helped governments create laws while advising companies in which he had an interest on how to benefit from those same laws. Some of these scandals have been investigated by the United Nations or government agencies like the Serious Fraud Office in the U.K., and others have resulted in convictions for some of Park’s erstwhile clients. In three countries — Chad, Tunisia and Namibia — companies associated with Park have also reportedly been investigated by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”