March 26, 2024

I am on the look out for pastel shaded trousers. Don’t ask me why- I think they look cool, summery and somehow very offbeat. I am not even sure if I will be able to carry them- skin tone does play a part in this. But I care not. However, these are almost impossible to find at your friendly neighborhood retailers. I cannot get myself to but something like this online. The closest I got was at a Ralph Lauren shop which had a pair of lemon coloured trousers. I was not finally sold on it- it was too close to white. I had a pair of white trousers that I ended up never wearing.

 These days the mid-morning is a struggle. There is no nice coffee that was delivered to my office by the office-boy.  This counted as a real perk for me, believe it or not. Not that it costed the company anything ( well, those nespresso capsules aren’t all that cheap in Dubai)- but it just made me feel special. It was one of those moments where I learnt a bit more about myself. Given that in all my corporate life I had never had free access to Nespresso-level coffee, let alone access to the free delivery of it to my person, this counted for a lot I realized. Equally, upon introspection, it seemed to dawn on me that I did like to feel special, although I always thought of myself as a bit other-worldly and not bothered with seeking exclusivity. I think now that  while I may not be obsessed by it to the extent that I will not put in work especially to achieve it, I don’t mind if it occasionally happens free of cost. I think getting an exclusivity privilege, for free, is a good deal.  To offer an obvious analogy-a free upgrade to business class is always a good deal. Paying for it is decidedly not. Plus it is really bad for the environment when you fly business. But somehow for me thus far that has not prevented me from accepting a free upgrade- and rightly so. I used to think by flying economy I am saving the planet. I didn’t think this one through when I posited this to myself. The number of business class seats in a plane don’t change in the short term. Only by replacing a number of business class seats with economy class seats – thereby increasing the number of passengers on the plane, can the emissions per passenger be reduced. Hence an individual choice to travel economy is not likely to change the build of the plane unless everyone suddenly chose to fly economy out of this principle – then forcing airlines to increase coach seats at the expense of premium seats. That is never likely to happen. Even relatively stoic, spartan and virtue-signaling men (like Arvind Kejriwal, for example) often fly business.

On the other hand this whole emissions reduction business- as a measure to reverse climate change- seems to me to be possibly a hoax. Several people on the Conservative end of the political spectrum have often alleged this. I cannot disagree too much with them. Reducing emissions forcibly- will do two things. One, on a country level,  it will put the burden on poor and highly-populous nations to do this, which will mean increasing their cost to do it and thus making the nation itself poorer.  Secondly, the price of energy will increase overall, thus making each poor individual in a country closer to increased privation. The logic is that this is short term pain, because eventually the world will be cleaner and nicer for those that are still around. Which means that the powers that be are happy to sacrifice the ultra poor today such that their own grandchildren can thrive in a future utopia. When you put it like this, it sounds really evil. 

Now even if you don’t buy this morbid intention for trying to reverse climate change, you are still stuck on the more fundamental premise of whether there is climate change on exhibition to begin with. While it seems to be getting warmer each year, it is clear that in the history of our planet we have seen many temperature upheavals over millions of years.  So depending on the time horizon one chooses, a case could be made for the statistical existence of climate change or not. The null hypothesis could be rejected- or not. Many intellectuals are convinced that the science and technology behind trying to objectively measure for global warming is not where it needs to be. So at best, these claims are empirical and not rooted in any array of established facts that can claim this to be the case. Furthermore, it is not clear that moving to renewables because of a government mandate actually reduces emissions- there are a lot of external shocks that make these types of decrees irrelevant. I will offer two examples. While I was at Shell, right from around 2018 onwards there was a massive push to reduce emissions. Investments in conventional oil and gas were shelved and money was re-directed to Renewable Energy investments. The oil price was in the mid range during this period. Then there was a triple shock from 2020 to 2024. First the Covid outbreak, then the Russia-ukraine war and finally the Israel-Hamas conflict. All of this led to a supply-demand imbalance and moved the price of oil upwards. Now at this level of price, the new shell CEO signalled clearly that he would pivot back to conventional oil and gas because they were tremendously in the money. Shareholders of Shell would have it no other way. The profit motive would overrule the government decree in most instances, but certainly when the amount of income to be lost by moving to renewables is in the tens of billions, if not 100 of billions. So much for renewable investment and portended emissions reduction thereof.

Another example is for Germany.  Owing the Russia-Ukraine war, their supplies of conventional oil and gas were impacted from Russia. This then led them to have to increase their energy sources from elsewhere. In order not to create havoc of power scarcity in developed Germany, they had to mobilise coal-fired power plants in a hurry. And this was not just any coal that was being used- it was lignite- the most polluting version of coal ever. So much for emissions reduction.

All of this is great, I say, but then what’s to be done? Nothing?

And here I don’t have a conventional answer. We have to work on reducing demand. This is the only way. How can we reduce energy demand? By changing our lifestyles to be more sustainable, natural and not power dependent.  Another post where I will brainstorm what this could look like.