E, S, and G can’t always peacefully coexist. Reporting on the downsides in a regulated world probably doesn’t seem sensible. Without honest discussion, ESG will continue to be more about reporting and less about impact. Let’s use one example to make the point.
Oil and gas get bad press. Juliet Samuel, in The Times, has an alternate take.
In the UK, windfall taxes and an opposition pledging to stop all new investments in fossil fuels. The result: 90% of new projects are on hold in the North Sea. Big energy firms are now switching to “more stable political environments, like West Africa”. Why might this be shortsighted (🚦 for Juliet’s analysis, 💣 for mine):
🚦 150,000 people are employes in O&G in the UK.
🚦 2/3rds of our energy comes from fossil fuels, much from the North Sea. If we stop producing, we’ll have to buy European gas, which means Europe will “burn more coal and import more carbon-intensive gas by ship”.
🚦 The government knows this is a mess, but helping “evil oil firms is a no-no”.
💣 Petroleum products are used in everything from the keyboard I’m tapping on to the “clean” transport and tech we’re moving toward. We still need (some) O&G.
💣 Pushing activity out of markets with flawed but generally sound regulatory and stakeholder frameworks is a NIMBY move (not in my backyard). We’re making the “dirty bit” someone else’s problem.
💣 More renewal energy is coming onstream every year. So should we not focus more on transition with a plan rather than a lurch (not least for 150k people’s livelihoods)?
Let’s talk about the ESG trade-offs. Here, the UK looks to posture on the E topic while pushing E and G risks to other nations and increasing S (and G, when we rely on other nations) risks at home. Working through the grey of risk and trade-offs requires moral courage. It also might lead to better impacts and outcomes… 😬.
Language
What do these words have in common?
Apple, egg, fink, Mr. Bates, savage, winchell, chump.
They’re all terms used by confidence tricksters in the US during the 1980s (found in a pithily titled paper, “The Language of the Underworld and its Sociolinguistic Significance”).
Understanding the language of skullduggery (another example) in your markets and risk areas matters.
It can get intense, be warmed. For instance, the Kolkata underworld had (by one BBC article’s count) 41 words for police and more than 20 for bomb.