THE CARBON WAR

Duty, bubbles and neuroscience 63
improvement. They described experiments showing how irrational we tend to
be in our individual and collective thinking: “predictably irrational”, is how they
talked of the typical human being. They also described how experiments reveal
our desperate preference for good-news narratives over bad-news narratives.
Viewed in that context, it becomes clear why a politician like David
Cameron can believe in a narrative of shale-plenty, and be in a majority compared
to a politician like Caroline Lucas, with her belief in shale as a road to
catastrophe. It explains why investors like those who backed Steve Williams’s
50-year capital-expenditure plans for Suncor in the tar sands can be in a majority
compared to the relatively few Jeremy Granthams of this world.
The mystery is why this state of affairs should persist, when Jeremy has
made so much money, and investors in shale have to date lost so much. Here
might lie one vital route to winnability in the carbon war, I reflect. If, as Jeremy
Grantham points out, two emerging trends continue – the cost-down surprise
in renewables, and the cost-up tendency in fossil fuel production – history
might at some point be perceived by a critical mass of key influencers not to
be destiny. If these trends turn into megatrends during the rest of 2014, and
2015, much might become possible.
There is something else. I scan the people flooding past me. So few smiles.
So many frowns. So many people walking solo through this great city. But in
the rest of their lives? Maybe not, in many cases. The neuroscientists have
discovered in people a marked tendency to favour community over individualism.
You can see why that might be, I reflect, people-watching on the streets
of London. Here may lie another strand in the renaissance narrative.
Of course, all this cautious optimism has to be tempered with the obvious
thought that we need the speed of physical climate change not to spin out of
control, and the speed of policymaking, nationally and at the climate talks, to
accelerate.
In her relentless pursuit of the latter, Christiana Figueres was in London
earlier this month. Her target was big businesses. She spoke to leaders and
laggards both. Her strategy is clear: she needs more laggards to become leaders
– or at least not be saboteurs – if she is to deliver in Paris.
Paris, she told them, has to reach a meaningful agreement because, frankly,
we are running out of time.
The Guardian shot a three-minute video of her while she was in town.
We need to understand we are in a transformation, she says in it, the likes of
which we have never seen before. It’s a transformation to a completely new
economy. And we have a ticking clock in front of us.