Dear Climate Activists, Please Get Out of the Way, So We Can Actually Work to Save the Climate

Watching this year's Wimbledon reminded me of an interesting moment lounging on my sofa last year. Back in September, I was enjoying a lovely evening watching some U.S. Open tennis when the most unexpected thing happened. Commotion from up in the stands delayed the evening match by nearly an hour. Several protestors had glued their feet to the cement in front of their seats as a protest that we are not taking enough action to save the planet from climate catastrophe.?

Two thoughts occurred to me immediately. The first was thanking the stars I didn’t attend that evening, as my long commute home to the Hudson Valley would mean not getting in until well after midnight thanks to that delay.

And secondly, I kept thinking that none of the protestors must have studied marketing research, because they would have recognized that the vast majority of tennis aficionados are center-left politically, and the majority in the crowd and watching at home?are?supportive of attacking climate change. I don’t know about you, but alienating the people you need on your side seems a bit counterproductive.?

?But this incident makes for a wonderful analogy addressing the core issue of climate change today– those who believe they are all in for climate are hammering down practical solutions in favor of the perfect when it comes to technology, regulation, and policy, even when much of the perfect answers are not ready for implementation. And that is setting us back from making progress on a national and global scale.?

One example that to this day makes me ponder why common sense is not more prolific within the sector has to do with a small General Motors car called the Volt. The Chevy Volt / Opel Ampera launched in 2011 as GM’s response to the marketing success of the Toyota Prius hybrid. This new ‘plug-in’ hybrid model by GM was able to operate fully as an electric vehicle for 43 miles (69 km), then a small gasoline (petrol) engine would power the car for another 200+ miles. At that time the average daily commute in the U.S. was 30 miles (48? km) round trip. Therefore the Volt was meant for an emissions free workweek, but if you wanted to visit grandmother on the weekends, you didn’t have to worry about range anxiety. Sounds reasonable, right??

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Yes, it did for many.? The automotive press loved it –?Motor Trend?gave the Volt its prestigious Car of the Year award. Owners loved it – to the point some went months before visiting a gas station for a fill up. But environments criticized it as greenwashing, and not a true solution. As a result, GM pulled the plug on the car three years into its second generation model.?

Hybrids work. I always felt it was a severe miss by the Obama administration to not have mandated all OEMs to have every model of their portfolio to have one hybrid or plug in hybrid version of their models. This would have increased consumer acceptance, eliminate range/charging anxiety, and lowered emissions faster as a result. It also would have bought time for the OEMs to improve battery technology so when EVs hit the market in masse, range could have been better, and the cars more affordable.? It would have given governments more time to build out a cohesive charging infrastructure.?

As we continue to fall behind our interim targets for our ultimate UN 2050 temperature cap, the same climate activists and their all-green-or-nothing arguments about power generation being their definition of renewable power only will not get us to meet our goals. We have to be smarter, and that also means engaging with? the Four Horsemen of climate apocalypse: the Oil & Gas industry.?

The growth of solar and wind on a utility scale level is commendable. Distributed solar is also taking hold faster than expected, and is contributing to the shaving of peak demand in this continually hotter climate. But to fully realize our dream of decarbonizing the grid, the interim solution of using gas fired capacity, especially when taking coal offline, deserves to be utilized (while eradicating methane release). And the improvement of small modular nuclear technology is now at the stage where pilot projects of these new reactors is imperatives for governments to permit and subsidize. Bill Gates’ venture in this field is ready to begin construction of its pilot – and using liquid salts to cool the reactor – thus creating a much safer nuclear model.?

In my former days of banking and economic development, most of the field operators I worked with in the oil & gas industry were honest, incredibly intelligent, and dedicated professionals. We need their expertise and their companies’ access to capital markets, to fund the next big projects in renewable energy. Of course their first climate investments have the tangential relationships to existing investments, looking at hydrogen, renewable natural gas, and even carbon capture. All of these technologies are essential to consider, so long as they are done in the relative context of not taking away from other essential? proven decarbonization technology investments.?

Climate activists aren’t helping their cause by spray painting Stonehenge, and they surely are not helping the cause by blocking innovations in technologies they vilify. In order to win a tennis match, you have to win your first set. Let us let the practitioners do so.

See my review of a 2017 Chevy Volt here!