THE CARBON WAR

Dallas, Kent 171
their twinkle toes in unison under the desks, drunk on their own devilment,
you keep going, you maintain confidence at all costs, as though completely
unaware. Life is, after all, theatre. So you act. You put on your best performance
for the one person in that room who might be wanting to listen to what you
have to say, or at least be open to it.
Full marks to the Financial Times for thinking that the commodities
industry might need to be shaken up a bit on energy. I will do my level best
to execute their brief.
I tell the whole story as a series of short stories, concentrating ferociously.
From the carbon bubble being popped on the horns of the bull on Wall Street,
to a President telling world leaders “we cannot pretend we do not hear” the
protestors on his streets. From the doubt about stranded assets at the Bank of
England in 2013 to a British Secretary of State talking fossil fuel crisis to an
entire national press corps on an embassy lawn in 2014. From Shell admitting
that they know there is an energy transition underway, to an Apple strategy
that suggests “way sooner than you think, man”. From the world’s largest
private bank predicting solar-and-battery prosperity for all-comers by 2020
to the world’s most respected furniture retailer announcing it is going 100%
renewable itself by then.
I take them back to Fifth Avenue at the dawn of the 20 th century, and
how it took just 13 years to go from 100% horse-drawn carriages to 100%
horseless carriages. Will it be much different this time? I invite them to Poznan
in December 2008 and the palpable fear of IEA officials about global crude
production collapsing from 72 million barrels a day in 2005 to, ahem, 28 in
2035, and on to the Saudi-America nirvana-rhetoric whipped up by the shale
drillers just a few years later. I try to worry them with the tale of the Monterey
Shale hype in 2013 and the – er, really? – 96% downgrade in May 2014.
I take them to Riyadh and the Saudis’ fears about their own soaring domestic
consumption. I tour the frontiers of the late hydrocarbon century: the trillion
dollars of zombie investments Goldman Sachs sees at an oil price $20 higher
than today’s; Kazakhstan and the Kashagan Cash-All-Gone loss-fest; Brazil and
the sub-salt requirement for – cue hysterical laughter – $221 billion dollars
by a company the FT calls “too big to fail, too corrupt to continue”; the Arctic,
and Total’s insistence that the danger of drilling is unmanageable versus Shell’s
blind desire to rush through drilling seemingly oblivious to everything, even
economics. I remind them that the first utility has jumped ship: a U-turn away
from fossil fuels, in search of profitability. How long, I ask, before the first oil
and gas company joins them?