THE CARBON WAR

48
The Winning of The Carbon War
difficult to do. Politicians on 5 year electoral cycles are too prone to go with
the latest opinion poll, he grumbles. He is in absolute favour of long-term
investment that generates value.
The event ends without a chance for me to offer a counter view to his. So,
as we leave our seats, I give it to Williams direct.
If you follow through on that fifty-year investment cycle, I say, and Lord
Stern and all the rest of us are half way right, aren’t you in danger of people
not saying thanks for managing my pension savings so well, but see you in
court for wasting them?
People who think that don’t understand, Williams replies. We’ll still need
oil 50 years from now. Nothing has the energy density of oil. Clean energy
can’t do the job oil does.
I politely explain where I come from, and how very bullish my alternative
view is.
Clean energy can’t be economic, he scoffs. You won’t get the investors.
But we are already in the process of doing that, I say. Investment in
renewables is around a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. Doesn’t that make
you worry just a little about your fifty-year plan?
The parties are something to behold. They begin at six and finish in the early
hours the next day. I begin my tour with Unilever’s, and rapidly discover that
such an occasion is a name-dropper’s paradise. The first three people I talk to
are the Kingfisher CEO, Ian Cheshire, the Unilever CEO, Paul Polman, and
Richard Branson. With the first two, I do my Carbon Tracker duty. They need
no persuasion: both are in the vanguard of progressive corporate response to
climate change. With Richard, I take that hat off and put on the solar one. He
knows all about SolarAid from previous meetings, and wants to hear how it
is going.
I resolve to pace myself for the long evening: to alternate water and wine.
By the time the Coca-Cola party finishes, that seems to be working. I can see
a good few people obviously more animated than myself. By the end of the
Time Fortune party, I am not so sure. I shuffle my way through the snow to
the Financial Times party, and find myself an early arrival. That wins me a solo
chat with Gillian Tett, the FT journalist who made her name by spotting the
financial crash brewing, and warning about it when the investment banking
industry was at the height of its bullying exhortation of mortgage-backed
securities as a route to fabulous new wealth. This is my opportunity, I figure,