THE CARBON WAR

Not responsible 25
“if it works, we will increase our exposure so that hopefully it will be a much
bigger part of our portfolio. We want to do this on a global basis.” He explains
his rationale purely in business terms. “In 10 years’ time, carbon will be priced
and valued in a different way so that companies with a high carbon footprint
will perform worse. This sustainable approach isn’t about charity, but about
enhancing returns.”
I increasingly wonder whether it is good tactics for Carbon Tracker to
have a known long-term climate campaigner as chairman, especially one so
regularly accused of hyping the climate problem simply because he wants to
sell more solar panels. Perhaps a City of London grandee, one with a closet
desire to see action on climate change, might provide better optics. But the
analysts seem happy enough with me chairing them.
I do my duty for a long day in Oslo. It would be far more time efficient if
I could do a single two-hour Q&A briefing for all the politicians, rather than
a repetitive series of one hour briefings one-on-one. But, my hosts tell me
that if they had gone that route, none of the politicians would have turned up.
I suppose that would be the same in every country.
Three days later, the former foreign affairs minister announces that the
Norwegian Labour party will support the national pension fund’s complete
withdrawal from coal, and put oil and gas under watch too. Combined with
minority-party support, this gives a voting majority in the new Norwegian
parliament in favour of extracting the oil fund from coal.
WWF are over the moon, amazed at the success of their briefings.
A day later, the new Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg speaks at
a climate conference for the first time. The Zero Emission Conference, in a
historic Oslo theatre, is packed with the youth of Norway: stalls and balconies
of fair hair as far as the eye can see from the stage off into the gloom.
Chelsea Clinton is the keynote speaker. She does a good job trying to
walk in her parents’ footsteps, pressing all the hot buttons of climate change:
the roles of cities, communities, solar, youth, and so on.
Erna Solberg does not mention the oil fund in her pedestrian climate
debut speech. But afterwards, she is surrounded in the foyer of the theatre by a
media scrum of TV, radio and print journalists. I watch from the fringes of the
scrum as impossibly young journalists fire questions at her about the Labour
move on fossil fuel investments in the national pension fund.
She says that ahead of any support for withdrawal by the sovereign wealth
fund she will look at coal companies to check that they aren’t investing in
renewables.