Want To Know Our Climate Future? Ask the Oligarchs.

Like everyone who's concerned about the climate catastrophe, I have friends who are rattled, too. Naturally, these friends give me materials. The most recent of these is a 2-part interview with Peter Thiel, conducted by Peter Robinson on his "Uncommon Knowledge" series (the first part is here).

Is there any doubt, as we prepare to ring in the New Year, that Silicon Valley oligarchs are bending the arc of history to an unprecedented degree? Historian Heather Cox Richardson summed up the situation yesterday, December 27th:

Civil war has broken out within the MAGA Republicans. On the one side are the traditional MAGAs, who tend to be white, anti-immigrant, and less educated than the rest of the U.S...On the other side are the new MAGAs who appear to have taken control of the incoming Trump administration.

If Peter Thiel is not as much in the press right now as Elon Musk, this is because he decided not to fund Trump's campaign this time, and so is not battling MAGA Republicans. But he is part of Silicon Valley's inner circle. He has influence and outsized wealth (15 billion, purportedly). And, whatever you think of his world view, at least he has one. This distinguishes him from Musk, who sees Mars as a plausible solution for whatever ails us, and Bezos, who has no solution of any sort to offer, unless it be purchasing a larger yacht.

I wish that last sentence were inaccurate and hyperbolic, but it is neither.

Sure, but how does this relate to Climate Change & Decarbonization?

It turns out Greta Thunberg holds a special place in Peter Thiel's heart. You can hear this in Peter Robinson's interview with Thiel, conducted just one month ago.

("Greta Thunberg?" I hear you saying. "Where's she been?" Well, alright, but Thiel clearly hates Thunberg, who just achieved her 21st birthday. She seems to represent to him something potent and someone worth bringing up in conversation, which he does. But, what is Thiel's complaint? Is it purely that Greta wants us all to be riding bicycles?)

Peter Thiel believes the capital markets need to be leveraged to make ambitious things happen in this world. He believes in dealmaking, as this is ordinarily understood in the world of business. His scorn and irritation, it seems to me, is not just about Thunberg's environmental concerns and beliefs. It's about how they each conceive of effective action, Thunberg and Thiel, conceptions which could not be more different. Furthermore, there is a chance, if a slim one, that the Greta Thunbergs of the world are going to get in the way of, or at least make more difficult, a number of Silicon Valley's pet projects.

Let's work first with the premise that Thunberg is a fool and incompetent, which Thiel clearly believes.

If one wants to say that Thunberg does not have a handle on how one gathers wealth and wields power in this world when compared to Thiel, Musk, and Bezos, there's truth to that. You could say that Thiel gets it, and Thunberg does not. You could say she is naive. You could say that choosing to sail to New York rather than getting a ticket on Scandinavian Airlines is not making a dent in our shared environmental problems, and so there is something conceptual missing. One could say that.

However, I have Thunberg's most recent book by my elbow. This is "The Climate Book." Like my other favorite environmental opus of this year ("What If We Get It Right," by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson), it is a collection of well-informed and persuasive essays from multiple authors and journalists. The Climate Book became a New York Times bestseller when its original English edition was published in October 2022. The essays in it are not naive. In total, they represent rigorous, intellectual leadership that the Left and the environmental movement is sometimes said to lack.

(In case anyone cares, I believe, like Thiel, that the capital markets need to be leveraged to make ambitious things happen in this world. I believe in dealmaking, too, as this term is understood in the world of business. Unlike the moguls and mongers of Silicon Valley, however, I think we need to address Climate Change. Like, now).

Who's Got a Handle on The Future?

Thiel says that it's hard to know who to support, and so he's not. Meanwhile, in the interview with him that I have linked to, we visit the Book of Revelations, and we get a dose of Thiel's Libertarianism along the way. Thiel, adding to a short list of "Existential risks" (AI, nuclear war, pandemics) adds one more: a totalitarian, one-world government.

We're told that this is what the Bible means by the Antichrist.

I do not have a Doctorate in Theology, and I am open to being corrected. But I do not recall warnings in the Old Testament as regards international treaties or the COP Conference or the Green New Deal.

In all seriousness, what is Thiel on about? Is Thiel warning us about totalitarianism, generally? Is he concerned about the course that is being charted by Trump, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and that crew? Not really. If you've not captured the current Silicon Valley POV as regards climate solutions, it is that

1. There's not really much to be done, and
2. To what extent we might do something, this should not constrain their business activities, or compel them to pay taxes.

So, like any good Libertarian, Thiel is horrified by the idea that concerned young people mustered by the likes of Greta Thunberg will reach critical mass, and may actually limit the capacity of billionaires (like Thiel) to operate unimpeded.

Thunberg is both a symbol and not a symbol. Presumably, Thiel harbors similar feelings for AOC, for Bernie Sanders, for the badly-battered Progressive wing of the Democratic Party here in America, and for a legion of values-driven nonprofits and foundations who view ameliorating climate change as the paramount challenge of our time.

Perhaps, reading between the lines, he is more rattled than anything by the State of California, which has actually been effective in forging business-friendly alliances that at the same time have made this state a clean energy leader. Governor Newsom has done so without asking Elon Musk (or Peter Thiel, for that matter) to be the head of governmental efficiency.

"Damn Those Swedes!"

Thunberg sees our future, and what she sees looks more like Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson's future than it does like that of Peter Thiel. It's collaborative. It's responsive to a shared challenge, rather than serving the interests of a lone actor who is taken seriously because he is wealthy and has made winning bets (Thiel was an early investor in Facebook).

Yes, Thiel likes to quote philosophers. But then, so does Greta Thunberg. She quotes economists, too, such as Lucas Chancel and Thomas Piketty:

Let's focus on the first milestone, the 2030 emission reduction target. According to a recent study, expressed in per capita terms, the poorest half of the population in the US and most European countries have already reached, or almost reached, the target ... Whatever the path chosen by societies to accelerate the transition — and there are many potential paths — it's time for us to acknowledge that there can be no deep carbonization without profound redistribution of income and wealth.

I believe it is this sentiment that has caught Thiel's attention. Whatever your view is of progressive taxation and electoral reform (or, good God, social democracies and Sweden!) we can at least agree that Thiel's complaint with Greta Thunberg does not really have much to do with bicycles.

Meanwhile, There Seems To Be a Problem

My colleague Joel Makower, in a recent essay, has summed up our year, in weather:

In Saudi Arabia, temperatures climbed above 125 degrees Fahrenheit during the Hajj in June, killing 1,300 people on their annual pilgrimage to the city of Mecca. Across the Arabian Sea, a prolonged heat wave led to hundreds more deaths in southern Pakistan. Hurricane Helene brought 30 inches of rain to an already-waterlogged western North Carolina in September, filling mountain valleys with mudslides and floods that surged through homes in one of the most destructive hurricanes in recent memory. Then, in November, a year’s worth of rain fell on Valencia and across eastern Spain in just eight hours. The floodwaters swept through towns, and flash flood alerts came too late for people already on the road or trapped in garages underground.

The climate mechanisms that are linked to these events are complex, but we know that a contributor is rising ocean temperatures, allowing larger amounts of moisture to be taken up, to be transported and dropped, as part of extreme weather events.

This is not all we need to solve for, but it's a significant wake-up call, and a good reason to sort out who has a viable plan to step down our shared risk. I will write more in the New Year about inspirational people who are helping this project along.

Meantime, enjoy your New Years Eve, and the holiday. Na zdrowie!

          Clark Suprynowicz · Executive Director · Energy Innovators Network        

#climatechange, #innovation, #sustainability