THE CARBON WAR

128
The Winning of The Carbon War
In the afternoon, a call from the special advisor to the UK Secretary of State
for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey. Davey, head of the British government
delegation in Lima, is looking for a story to hit the UK press back
home, where he has so far found it difficult to attract attention. He is thinking
of doing a speech on the carbon bubble that evening, at an event at the British
Ambassador’s residence. The Spad, as special advisors are known, wants my
opinion. He is very specific. What can possibly go wrong if the Secretary of
State majors on this?
That is code for will Carbon Tracker support him.
I can’t think of anything, I respond. Rather, he would surely look statesmanlike
on a cutting-edge issue.
Thank you, says the Spad. Your invitation to the event will be in your
e-mail in-box in just a minute.
I take a taxi to the residence, in the hills above the city. It is a modern
mini-palace. I drink champagne and chat with luminaries of the Peruvian
business community. Ed Davey sits in a corner of the luxuriant garden, surrounded
by the entire British media corps – more than a dozen of them. They
are all scribbling in notebooks.
Later he gives his speech. The theme is “from carbon capitalism to climate
capitalism”. It is one of those titles you wish you had thought of yourself. The
content is all about the carbon bubble. Carbon Tracker is the only organisation
he namechecks other than the Bank of England.
The Secretary of State tells his audience that he has written to the Governor
of the Bank of England asking him two things, essentially. First, what will the
Bank be doing, during the course of its investigation of the threat that the fossil
fuel industries might pose to the global financial system, to safeguard British
pensioners’ investments? Second, what will the Bank be doing to engage other
regulators around the world in its enquiry?
The Secretary of State does not leave in the balance the question of whether
or not risk exists, the way the Bank carefully does when talking about the
enquiry. He clearly assumes that it does.
I am granted fifteen minutes talking with him solo afterwards, uninterrupted
in the dark behind a tree. I have a few thoughts about the role of
shale, I tell him, in the context of all the excellent points he offered in his
admirable speech.