A Balancing Act: Sharing the Caring
Imagine a large, shallow, Perspex tray, floating in calm waters. Now introduce a mischief of mice – most likely, they’ll wander around somewhat independently. The tray will wobble, but the random nature of their movement keeps the tray broadly stable. Leave them there long enough and the random movement may eventually tip the tray and they’ll take a bath.
Now, scale this experiment up and replace the mice with people. In the absence of organisation, we would all feel the instability, react in the same direction, and be swimming in seconds.
I heard this thought experiment described on a podcast recently, attributed to the American psychologist and behaviourist B.F. Skinner – although I have been unable to find a reference – and it got me thinking.
We don’t all need to care about the same things – and doing so has consequences.
The Economist recently published a special report considering the consequences of central banks making climate action a priority – and found that it has impaired their ability and willingness to act in their primary function of providing monetary stability by controlling inflation. Remember that energy cost-driven inflation was well underway before Putin rolled into Ukraine, and they’ve all been pretty slow to act.
Yes, there are relevant considerations. The Economist put it thus:
“…climate risks seem more “mission vigilant” than “mission critical”: worth studying and keeping on banks’ radar screens, but not requiring drastic action today.“
Maybe it’s just me, but I’d like central bankers to centrally bank.
These folks are understandably influential, and their priorities impact the finance community – in the past, financiers were able to set their own priorities, and chose to prioritise different things – but now climate must be number 1. Thank you, Mark Carney. So now, the bankers and financiers are all running the same way.
The UN lists 17 sustainable development goals, amongst which Climate Action is number 13, affordable and clean energy is 7, no poverty is number 1. Officially these are not in a prioritised order, but attempts to do so places climate action solidly in the lower-mid pack.
So, there are many things we need to care about. We don’t all need to care about the same things.
President Biden has declared a “Whole of government approach to the climate crisis”. Sounds good doesn’t it? Who doesn’t want a whole government effort?
Well, me for one. I still hold the now-archaic view that diversity of thought and a contest of ideas are good things, particularly if high quality decisions are required – about y’know, important stuff like energy policy and energy security.
What happens with a monotheistic approach? You get a laughing energy secretary. Forgotten already? Way back on November 5 2021, Ms Granholm, with custodianship of US energy policy, had a good ol’ chuckle when asked what her plan was to increase US oil production, and instead waffled about OPEC. Last time I checked, cartels were illegal in the USA.
So who, in a whole of government approach, is advocating for energy security? For affordable energy? For local jobs? For fertiliser production?
Up here in Canada, the Federal Minster for Natural Resources – previously (and arguably still) the Minister for the Environment – pays lip service to the need to provide energy security, but lays down such onerous conditions and regulations as to stymie many projects. Minister Wilkinson said recently:
“We are wanting to help our allies with energy security, but we are also committed to fighting climate change… You can do both. You have to be able to be able to walk and chew gum.”
It’s an interesting choice of idiom. “Walk and chew gum” is generally used in the negative to describe the inability of someone to conduct two trivial tasks. Providing energy security and addressing climate change don’t really seem like trivial items to me. I’d rather have Environment and Natural Resources both coming up with their best ideas, followed by a process to weed out the less good and prioritise the best.
We don’t all need to care about the same things – and doing so impairs our ability to address other important things.
Perhaps the clearest indicator of the singular fascination with emissions is the push for accountability for so-called Scope 3 emissions. For the uninitiated, a simplified model is Scope 1 are your direct emissions, Scope 2 are emissions associated with the things you buy, Scope 3 are emissions associated with what people do with the things you sell.
I can’t pass my speeding ticket to Ford because they built a car capable of breaking the speed limit. I can’t sue Johnny Walker for my headache this morning (I’m writing on Mother’s Day, so believe me, this had a cost). If I shot someone, I couldn’t blame Smith and Wesson. So why is there this attempt to hold producers to account for what customers do?
We don’t all need to care about the same things – and we need to root out nonsensical attempts to force us to do so.
And so, we find ourselves in a situation where energy markets are in turmoil and – as usual – the poorest are hurt the most. The oil and gas industry has been demonised, over-regulated, under-financed and held to account for things well beyond its purview, and now we have to put up with media reports claiming that we aren’t doing enough. We’re being asked to charge in on horseback without bending a single blade of grass.
I can’t think better words to conclude than Doug Sheridan of EnergyPoint Research:
“This snowballing energy crisis isn't the oil and gas industry's responsibility. Nor is it within the industry's ability to fix. It's root cause is the unrelenting, unworkable energy policy instituted by myopic politicians and blinkered climate activists—cheered on by woke, superficial journalism—that has for years sought to demonize the production of oil and gas, encouraging producers at every turn to leave fossil fuels in ground. Now that the climate crowd has gotten what it wanted, it's panicking over the results. This mess is on them, not the industry. Period.”
Climate matters, but other things do too.
AB