For most of human history humans have sat squarely in the mid-table of the food chain.
We think of our ancestors as spear-wielding masters of the animal kingdom, but in fact we were often prey ourselves. John Valliant’s The Tiger (1997), a truly compelling read, vividly describes how a man-eating tiger in Russia’s Far East embarked upon seemingly a targeted vendetta against its would-be hunters. This true story is wrapped up in the real history of people and big cats – tigers and lions actively hunting humans with extraordinary adeptness and cunning. The fable of the lion attainting a taste for human meat and then becoming a “man-eater” is not apocryphal.
We can glimpse our forebears, crouching in terror in gloomy caves, emerging periodically to scavenge what little food they could whilst avoiding the monsters that pursued them. This is the context within which we – our brains, our entire emotional landscape – evolved.
It is no wonder that we think of ourselves as short-term thinkers. When there is something very large, furry and with sabre-teeth stalking us it pays to be focussed on the here and now. But we are increasingly learning of the super-power we have in our unique capacity for long-term thinking. Roman Krzaric has described this beautifully in The Good Ancestor (2020) – how societies throughout history have conceived of ways of planning over multiple generations, how people have started to build cathedrals they knew would not be completed in their lifetimes. There are organisations dedicated to long-term thinking: the Long Now Foundation, established in San Francisco in 1996 (or, as it puts it, the year 01996) began its work by starting construction of an immense monument-scale clock designed to tick for 10,000 years, and is a fantastic resource for ideas, talks and projects on the subject.
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In recent years long-term thinking has crystallised into a more formalised “longtermism” movement, whose premise has been articulated in What We Owe The Future. MacAskill is a leading figure within the “Effective Altruism” (EA) movement. EA seeks to optimise how people give philanthropically, by systematic screening and ranking of charitable causes in respective of the positive impact created per dollar invested. Longtermism extends our horizons beyond this by arguing that we need to factor future generations into decision making.
MacAskill argues that we vastly underestimate the moral significance of those who will come after us. He illustrates with numbers: if humans survive for as long as the average mammal species then for every person alive today a thousand will live in the future. Consequently, anything we do today which affects the existence of our descendants has extremely important implications. Longtermists may substantiate their reasoning with detailed calculations rooted in the utilitarian objective of greatest-happiness-to-the-greatest-number-of-people, deriving “expected values” of taking particular decisions.
This movement has its critics, who assert that MacAskill and his longtermist philosopher and tech bro supporters prioritise lofty and esoteric quests at the expense of important issues of today, such as overcoming poverty and social inequality.
There is indeed a problem with placing too much weight on mathematical models of the future. Taking it to an extreme, if you were to assume that there will be infinite people in the future then you should prioritise anything that affects the long-term, no matter in how small, over even the most important near-term issues facing people today.
But the main relevance of longtermism to sustainable investing is its notion that we, as a society, currently face a number of truly existential risks. Some of these risks could cause full extinction of the human race, others merely a collapse of modern industrial society, and others still the lock-in of authoritarian regimes.
Sustainable investing primarily seeks to address the existential risk of climate change and broader environmental collapse. Other existential risks to our free society include pandemics (whether naturally occurring or engineered by humans), nuclear war, the possibility of Artificial Intelligence (AI) surpassing humans as the dominant force on the planet and the replacement of democracy with autocracy which becomes entrenched into the long-term.
It is argued that too much focus is placed on climate at the expense of economic development. This first charge is flawed because it ignores the fact that integrated low carbon energy systems anchored in renewable electricity are now the cheapest, most reliant and cleanest ways to power an economy, and that this is creating tipping point and cascade effects.
A second argument is that climate change is prioritised to the detriment of focus on other potential catastrophes. This may cause some introspection for anyone in the climate community. In the coming decades these other risks present genuine threats to our world, irrespective of climate progress: a full-scale nuclear war or truly devastating pandemic would render the problem of climate change obsolete.
But climate change has certain unique characteristics. To solve it we need to fundamentally re-build our entire globally economy, over multiple decades. And it has moral dimensions – in the pressure for individuals to change their lifestyles (though in fact, overwhelmingly, individual direct actions have will have very little impact; the real need to is to fix our underlying system), or in the asymmetry between countries which have caused the problem and countries which are suffering the consequences.
Climate change is a wicked problem. Unlike other existential risks – e.g. asteroid impacts or pandemics – it cannot be addressed by a number of discreet defensive actions or sensible planning. It involves a root and branch overhaul of our modern world in the space of a generation.
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The climate community can in fact contribute uniquely to the debate over longtermism.
First, it illuminates the flaw in the argument that spending time on long-term challenges is a distraction from current problems. Climate change is a long-term and somewhat theoretical problem (at least for those not yet experiencing its full affects). Yet it is also a now problem – the actions we take this decade, this year, will have profound implications in centuries to come.
When we think about climate General Maximus,[2] who as a gladiator fought tigers as well as humans, was right: what we do now does indeed echo in eternity. This point also applies to other existential risks – the risk posed by AI of a global takeover by super robots seems abstract and consigned to the long-future, but exponential growth in computing power and learning rates means that our ability to manage it depends on action immediately.
Second, we can see from the climate struggle the price we pay for bringing our emotional or intellectual baggage to the debate. Climate change is divisive because the stance we take on it is associated with political identities. Similar to pandemics, your attitude to climate change reveals something deeper about how you see the world – if you are a climate sceptic you are likely to be a vaccine sceptic. And there are deep schisms even within environmental movement, over the role of nuclear power, or whether technology or nature are the answer.
These divisions are extremely damaging to our ability to effectively confront an existential problem, because identities and tribal loyalties cause us to prioritise winning an argument over seeing the problem in overview and seeking solutions. This is a lesson that should be applied to all existential risks.
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Overall, longtermism is overwhelmingly a practical and useful framework to help us balance our approach to investment as society. When we are evaluating large infrastructure projects, for instance, we need to be consciously reminded of why we should factor in the impact on future generations.
Longtermism can be overly theoretical. A dogmatic mathematical approach to calculating expected values could end up in perverse decision making. But it is hard to see how we are over prioritising any long-term issues at present. Moreover, longtermism shines a bright light on the single most important fact we need to recognise – that our society is vulnerable, that we face genuine existential risks to our society and our lives.
The essence of sustainable investing is the ability to conceive of a society which is capable of existing into perpetuity and, as a consequence, allocating capital to accelerate the transition towards this. And it is critical we do so – now. We live at a crossroads in history and the path we take, the choices we make, will impact what we hope will be vast numbers of people in the future. Sustainable investing should be calibrated to push us towards the right path, one of continued progress to a future that could be far, far better than many of us realise.
Longtermism is at heart profoundly optimistic. To see a potential new, and radically different, history of our species stretching out far into the future is liberating and exhilarating. And at time when our society appears at times to be hopelessly enmeshed in short-sightedness, in selfishness and the pursuit of quick fixes, the movement reminds us that we do have the ability to quietly plan with selflessness and with a multi-generation perspective.
We may be stalked by tigers in the deep recesses of our subconscious. But we can also build cathedrals in our minds, and in reality.
“These towering tendrils of cosmic dust and gas sit at the heart of M16, or the Eagle Nebula. The aptly named Pillars of Creation, featured in this stunning Hubble image, are part of an active star-forming region within the nebula and hide newborn stars in their wispy columns.
Stretching roughly 4 to 5 light-years, the Pillars of Creation are a fascinating but relatively small feature of the entire Eagle Nebula, which spans 70 by 55 light-years …[and] is located some 6,500 – 7,000 light years from Earth.” [1]
Looking outward to space gives us perspective, of our own smallness but also our uniqueness. And we start to get glimpses of the foundations of our universe, what underpins everything.
Let’s return to that first question, the only question: how should we live today. In this world, right now, today. We cannot hope to answer this without understanding the world and ourselves; which in turn is something we cannot hope to do unless we understand how see the world and ourselves.
And now we have made progress. Because over the past four Essays we need have given ourselves a working framework, through which to see the world, through which we can employ to interrogate everything we learn.
There are, in fact, [seven] anchor points, broad but important assumptions, to conceptualise and internalise:
: Hardware: physically, mentally, as humans essentially we haven’t changed for 50,000 years.[1] This is our hardware.
Our brains are wired to survive in a physically dangerous world which no longer exists and our emotions are therefore often counterproductive if they are not understood and managed.
Tribes are our world. We long to be in groups, feel immense loyalty to those around us and are prone to innate distrust of outsiders.
We are wired for comfort and gluttony for sensible evolutionary reasons.
This is what we are.
Meanwhile the software upon which we run is a function of ideas and cultural foundations built over millennia impose mental straightjackets on us. How we evaluate the world is fundamentally different depending on our cultural heritage.
This is who we are.
the dragons upon which we ride. We can, at best, hope to nudge our dragons in certain directions and hope they take some notice. We often live in a delusion that our conscious selves are in control, a delusion reinforced by our day to day actions with others who appear entirely rational. But like everyone they are playing an act, refined over lifetimes.
This is how we think and feel.
: the physical and human worlds are connected between and within themselves in ways so deep we will always struggle to perceive. We delineate the way we view the world into subjects, into science and arts – divided into neat boxes, of biology or physics, of history or music. Many of us will dedicate our lives to living in just one of these boxes. These distinctions are artificial. We should endeavour to think in terms of systems.
The world is a system of which we ourselves are intrinsically a part.
: there is a continual tension, a balance between change and continuity. Certain forces act as glue, binding physical and human systems as they are, locking them in for extended periods. Others act as agitation, pulling elements apart and engendering change. When change occurs, it can be sudden and dramatic. The trigger for such shifts may be small, or the outcome of seemingly arbitrary conditions with profound consequences. Critically we must break the illusion that our particular reality, the state of the world as it is right now, is necessarily how it had to be.
We should think in terms of equilibria, and how equilibria can shift.
: waves run through the world and through us. They are the movement of our particles; of our thinking. By perceiving this we begin to understand that we are the function of the past. Our thinking, our behaviour is rooted in our evolutionarily and cultural heritage. It is influenced heavily by our direct family, our immediate ancestors – with their own personal life stories and baggage, that is passed down. And in turn we pass the waves down to the future, to our descendants. We can influence these waves; only in the form of subtle nudges, but such nudges will echo into eternity.
The world, and ourselves, arewavelengths.
: our perspectives are limited in space and time. We see only fragments of the world, and only caricatures of other people’s worldviews. We struggle to perceive change, or to understand the baselines against how we should measure change because of our limits in perceiving time.
We see only what is in front of us, and reference this against yardsticks of our own making.
The framework is by nature limited to being an approximation. We can only form an incomplete, patchy picture of the whole in our minds – and at any one moment we can only recall and consider a single element of this picture.
And here we have a daunting challenge. How, as regular people, can we properly and completely perceive this complex world when our information is so fragmented and our data sources biased. In this world of overwhelming information, how can we possibly form useful conclusions? How can we form views in the knowledge-limited domains of our own minds?
The answer is to construct models.
Models in our minds.
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Mind models are detailed visualisations of different possible explanations for a question. Once built we can turn over in our hands, feel their weight and texture, examine them from every angle. We can hold these models, these possibilities, to the mirror and perceive their reflections, their opposite. We can interrogate how we feel about the model. We can break down the components of the model and stress test it by asking what would need to occur for the possibility it describes to be true. Mind models go beyond simply making a particular argument. They must not only explain the specific point they are making but instead present an overarching construct which also explains counter arguments. Indeed, to hold particular validity a mind model will not only explain why counter arguments are wrong but why people believe in them.
Only once we have taken the time to create at least two or more of such mind models for any given issue can we make judgement on which is correct.
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A simple example would be gauging whether science or religion explain the universe more credibly. Take the religious view of the world – perceive this as a model; feel its shape, its weight. Do the same for science. Immediately we can see what has gone into forming both. The former is based on thousands of years or human wondering, of our desire to impose hope over fear, to place meaning on a seemingly capricious, chaotic world. The latter, a far more recently built model, based on a desire to seek truth and understanding via objectivity.
When comparing two models and one of them not only explains its own narrative of the world, but also plausibly explains the reason for the existence of the other model itself this is a compelling piece of evidence. Among many things it explains, science presents legitimate bases for the existence of religion. In evolutionary terms early societies strengthened by the inner skeleton of a guiding worldview and moral framework, particularly one which emphasised the importance of individuals subordinating their own objectives in the interests of the collective, would have possessed a profound advantage. Throughout history elites have been better able to ensure acquiescent populations through religion mand therefore control power structures. In psychological terms religion is indeed a powerful opiate to dull the pain and anxiety which stems from being self-aware and it allows people to keep going even in the face of extreme hardships. Religion in turn presents no such explanation for science.
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Now let’s take the example of climate change. We can discuss whether it is real, whether or not it is caused by humans, and, whether we should make it a global priority reverse the build-up greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The first two questions have clear answers and we need not waste our time considering. The third is more complex and, while still the consensus view is now that we quite clearly should allocate substantial time, energy and money to trying to mitigate climate change, or adapt to it, it warrants further exploration.
First, we need to explain why this is an important question when conventional wisdom now emphasises the overriding importance of action on climate change. Even asking the question is perhaps a waste of time we do not have or, worse, a dangerous line of questioning which gives oxygen to climate denial. The question is important, quite simply, because as a global society we will be allocating huge resources over the coming decades, resources which could be applied elsewhere in ways which could make a substantial difference to great sections of society. Millions of lives are at stake – so we had better ensure we have thought this through properly, and with an Overview mindset.
The exact choice is as follows: we should make it a global priority to reverse the build-up of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, to the extent that it takes precedent over other issues. Note the specificity of the point – it is not “should we subsidise renewable energy” or any one of another sub-questions – and its objectivity (greenhouse gas concentrations are either going up or down, and they can be measured).
[also: this is important because we have a lack of information – even if we think it is evident that it is a big problem etc. We trust in science – but unlike a plain ]
And now lets step out of the Overview way of thinking and into our model building mindset. We will get out our toolbox and construct the two most solid models we possibly can – one for and one against the motion of whether
So, to be clear we are now stepping out of our Overview mindset and into model building. We have our toolbox and we are going to go about constructing the most robust and multi-dimensional models we can in both respects.
Let’s start with the argument against making this choice. While it is undoubted that greenhouses gases affect the climate and that global warming is being caused by emissions caused by humans the consequent damage is a future problem that, translated into today’s terms, is dwarfed by other costs. Poverty, for instance kills millions [stat] every year, and anything that holds back progress to prosperity is therefore by definition a killer. Wealthier societies are much better placed to withstand the effects of climate change.
Furthermore, the adverse affects of climate change may be overstated [data – eg hurricanes not getting worse?]. While the scientific establishment has reached a consensus on then need to aggressively fight climate change groupthink and our need to conform has turned this into a religion. Anyone suggesting a need for moderation in our approach, or at least to better articulate the costs of action on climate, are accused of being a denier – a heretic, in other words. Likely in the pay of the fossil fuel industry; even when such people are demonstrably not [examples]. [also: scientists, politicians, clean energy lobbyists: they are actually incentivised to perpetuate the myth]. [and also the watermelons argument?]
And yet carbon dioxide is a trace gas in the atmosphere, with concentrations in late 2020 of just under 413 parts per million. Our society has formed an obsession with this single threat – this trace gas – which obscures the costs of many others – aside from poverty reduction we should not forget the possibility of a nuclear or biological warfare catastrophe, the risks to our specie’s survival posed by AI or increasing pandemics.
Psychologically we are prone to assume we are living in a time of extraordinary potency; a great crossroads and a life or death struggle. This is the basis of doomsday cults throughout time. The cause is part ego; we need to feel we are part of something, that we have a purpose that is aligned with something significant. Existential. It is part our evolution, our hardwiring to see threats to our life.
And we are attracted to things that seem “natural”, in harmony with the planet. This explains the backing for inefficient, marginal technologies such as wind and solar power. As they operate they produce no obvious dirty output – no smoke, hardly any noise – as well as no invisible emissions of greenhouse gases. And yet their construction requires huge quantities of resources – their environmental footprint is obscured from view but nonetheless real in the form of landscapes scarred from strip mining. Of lives ruined through the use of child labour in unlicensed artisanal production of the specific metals required for the vast fleets of wind turbines, solar panels and batteries the world demands. And these are power sources will remain expensive, unreliable – marginal on the grid, which needs to be kept live through the only real and reliable power source – fossil fuels.
So, how does this mind model look?
It is an argument that is precise in its practical dimensions – it is not denying climate change is caused by human activity, but it is specifically explaining that prioritising action to reduce emissions is extremely harmful because of the resources it sucks from other, more important ends. And it has deeper dimensions: it explains why a large proportion of the world’s population believe in and perpetuate a myth, because of issues related to groupthink, our tendency to assume we live at a time of great importance in history, our desire to do good and support natural solutions.
This mind model has some weight to it.
Now, stop again. You have looked at the model from various angles. Now sense how this mind model makes you feel.
Because most of us believe very strongly in the overriding need to fight climate change it might make us feel angry; perhaps bursting with counterarguments – the most obvious of which is that the model is contradicted by the vast bulk of current science. But consider that the model does present an explanation for this – that we have a psychological and cultural framework that can promote what are effectively large-scale delusions. As a combined society we have got things really wrong in the past – we fail to see financial crashes and have overestimated certain threats (those old enough will remember the “millennium bug” with perhaps some nostalgia.
Consider this also: if the model is correct, and we come to recognise this, that is really good news. Vast resources which would have been consumed with a needless repurposing of the world’s economy to reduce emissions can instead be allocated to lifting people out of poverty or making us resilient against the other multiple threats we face.
Again, however, thinking this through may create friction, a mild form of pain, inside you.
[alternatively it may make you feel comfortable, energised – if yuou are in alignment with it etc]
The point here is to be aware of that feeling. Log it and note it as evidence in analysing the model. It might actually be evidence of some level of veracity in arguments presented. If you find yourself looking to counter the model, to find evidence to counter it, to smash it, then perhaps it does raise some points about the quasi-religious nature of the fight against climate change. It might explain why there is such a body of evidence coalesced around the view that we should reduce emissions at all costs.
If you can suspend your judgement, engage your perception, then you will now not only understand how the model looks, but how it feels too.
Ok, pause there. Take a breath.
Because now we are starting over. We are going to build the counter model.
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The second model starts with this: climate change represents a potentially existential risk to us; its danger is primarily in the future and there is uncertainly on exactly what the consequences will be. However, as we have seen, systems can be inherently fissile, they can go through phase transitions to entirely new conditions. Life on Earth is a single, fragile system, dependent upon very precise climatic conditions.
As we saw in the System of the World Earth’s climate system appears to be characterised by more positive feedback loops than negative ones. This is crucial, and unfortunate. Ice melts and the world traps more heat, so the more ice melts. Tundra melts and releases methane, a greenhouse gas many more times potent that carbon dioxide. [2]
We are truly on a knife edge, and anything threatening this must be treated with the utmost precaution. [to add in: data on Venus or Mars, or other planets and a comparison to Earth]
It is demonstrable that a vast majority of the scientific community supports the need for urgent action on climate. According to NASA multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals1 show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities.[3] This in itself does not necessarily substantiate the truth of a position; groupthink is a real danger. But the fact that so many scientists in varied disciplines have independently observed the impacts of climate change upon their own areas of study is important.
[nb: need to make the link between a scientific consensus on anthropogenic induced CC and why this is a risk – data on cost to economy etc but make this more real by talking about people actually dying of heatstroke, in the shade. See Ezra Klein podcast].
Well informed sceptics will point to areas where the data are more blurry – establishing whether or not extreme weather events have got more regular or severe in recent decades is challenging, and positively identifying climate change as the culprit even more so. But such arguments are by nature backward looking; they ignore the stark reality of what the future is likely to hold if we stay with our current trajectory. Crucially, they ignore the fact that the power of compound interest will work against us. Any in any case the over-arching long-term trends are clear, unequivocal. [insert 100 year graph on temperature changes etc]
Investment should be undertaken now, even if it represents a sizeable proportion of our total budgets or it will be far more expensive – crippling in fact – in future. The power of compound interest can work for or against us.
Furthermore, many of the investments we need to make are not really costs at all because increasingly environmentally friendly technologies are the cheapest and best options available in any case. By 2019 renewable energy was the cheapest form of energy for two-thirds of the world’s population.[4] The enduring image of wind and solar power as a marginal, inefficient technology, a hippy dream that will provide only token amounts of power while blighting our landscapes is now a highly damaging untruth – a misunderstanding perpetuated even by well- informed and intentioned sceptics. In 2019 97% of net energy capacity additions in developed countries were renewable, and 3% were fossil fuels.[5] This fundamental truth about the singular fact or where we obtain our power has implications in much wider senses.
Indeed, this blows apart the whole myth of a perceived trade-off between economic development and environmental stewardship. This notion, that it is not possible for people to emerge from poverty and to prosper without pollution stems from one, specific happenstance: that that it was energy in fossil form that fuelled the industrial revolution, that phase transition which irrevocably changed our society, propelling us out of the daily toil of the agrarian feudal world and ultimately into the world of our own. Oil, coal and fossil gas: these are truly extraordinarily useful forms of energy but come at the cost of intense localised pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions. Two and a half century of well-funded interests have worked into our psyche the belief that prosperity can only be achieved through the potency of fossil fuels and that cleaning up has a cost.
This is similar to the domination of the agricultural world that chemical companies have based on the perception that we can only feed the world by dosing the soil with massive amounts of herbicide and pesticide. And because of our baselines, our limits of seeing change over time, we see this as how it has always been, how it will always be. In fact, to a large degree there is no such trade off – a clean energy system just represents better technology, that will bring cheaper reliable power, with no localised pollutants as well as no greenhouse gas emissions. To take a single example: solar power allows children who previously had no access to electricity to study at night without the health and safety issues of burning kerosene in their homes.
Spent wisely, every dollar spent on renewable energy will create multiples of this value to the economy and society. Investment in renewables will generate material value to the economy and society quickly, and with high impact. In 2020 The International Renewable Energy Agency (“IRENA”) estimated that such measures could stimulate global GDP gains of almost $100 trillion above a business-as-usual scenario by 2050, while quadrupling the number of jobs in the sector to 42 million, helping to reduce the energy industry’s CO2 emissions by 70% and leading to significant improvements in global health and welfare. [6]
Given the scale of the challenge it will be necessary to invest in some technologies which represent a genuine dead loss to society – for instance simply capturing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and locking it away underground may be needed at large scale. But the point remains that in many ways the investments required to mitigate and adapt to climate change are simply good investments.
So, how does this model explain itself. First, in respect of groupthink: science is based on the premise of seeking through, of objectivity. Scientists if anything are incentivised to seek to counter the consensus: if anyone could prove that the basis of the human-induced climate change argument was flawed they would earn great fame (not to mention have the happy status of being a bearer of really good news). Scientists are not paid or incentivised to perpetuate a global warming myth. Further, researchers in extremely varied disciplines are seeing the effects of climate change in real time across the globe [add in examples].
And how does the model explain the counter model? There is always an attraction to a certain type of person, an intellectual, to be the contrarian. This temptation is amplified because of the extent of the consensus position: given the vast numbers of people parroting the climate narrative it is natural that a motivated and well-informed sceptic will see multiple lines of attack, particularly against emotionally-based green arguments, or those that are genuinely simply a trojan horse for a left wing agenda. Such contrarians tend to be white, middle aged and somewhat backward looking – suspicious of the progressive movement, emphasising the importance of common sense, a hard look at the underlying science. They focus on whether the climate has actually changed that much, and also that the climate changes continually in any case. This misses the need to look to the future, to understand the nature of compound interest. It explains why such sceptics fundamentally misjudge the cost / benefit analysis of renewable energy against conventional forms.
OK, let’s step back and assess this model. Like the first it is sophisticated: it not only presents a deep, scientific basis in its practical dimensions it also explains itself, why it is based on legitimate foundations, and a credible explanation for the existence of a counter model.
And how does it make you feel? If it makes you feel relief, comfort, that it has validated your worldview then take note of this. Consider again, however, that if this model is correct it is in many ways very bad news – we do indeed need to re-wire our society from the bottom up (though as the model points out, in certain respects this may be easier and much less costly than people realise). In that respect be aware that perhaps your feeling of positivity is another indication of the power of the role that ego plays – we celebrate being right over something that is deeply worrying. Conversely, you may feel agitation because you feel that this model represents another manifestation of a damaging mass delusion. If that is the case then try to dig down to understand what is driving your agitation – does ego play a role? Do you want to prove yourself right against great odds? Do you feel uncomfortable because the drip feed of evidence supporting the climate thesis is proving harder to refute?
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In this case the second model appears persuasive to me.
Given that the great majority of people will agree and will not have changed their mind as a result of this exercise it is natural to question why we should bother. If you are already a committed and knowledgeable climate activist this exercise may have felt like a waste of time.
Let me explain why this example highlights the importance of forming mind models even for a question that appeared already settled.
First, it shines a light on the importance of questioning the effort to combat climate change because of the resources it will take and which has very real consequences. Second, you now have a much better appreciation of the complexity of the issue, the role that bias and our own agenda play, and what drives other people’s thinking. Third, your conviction now carries much more weight. You can take go forward knowing that you have examined the arguments objectively and have banished any niggling feelings you had that perhaps by advocating for climate action you were just going with the conventional flow. Now, more assure in your position and your motivation you will be able to react with less defensiveness, less anger to contrary views, in understanding of how such views are defined.
If you can feel with great certainly that you have examined something with objectivity and not only see how it is factually wrong, but also why there is a logical explanation for people wanting to believe it, then this gives credence to the view that the model is false. However, you should also check that there are no reasons why you would particularly want it to be wrong.
But by perceiving it, by externalising it, you have realised you are not it. Feel the relief of the unburdening. You might fight, might die for this model, but it is not you.
Become aware of your breath; its rhythm. Perceive and not judge. And start to achieve perspective.
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Inhale. Become aware of your surroundings; wherever you are, right now. Exhale, slowly. Note the noises; perhaps there is traffic, birdsong, voices. Expand your awareness outwards, into your environment. Breathe. Let yourself dissolve. Because when we get out of our own way we take away the biggest obstacle to our own perception. That mass, that calcified hulk of judgement of baggage, gifted by our ancestors via our parents, added to by ourselves over the course of our lives to-date. Judgement of others, or ourselves. Those great stalactites, grown drip-by-drip through emotion. Breathe.
And pictures, sounds, smells, emerge. We feel the weight of the world – not an encumbrance, but as how it is. Solid rock of a depth and breadth that defines the term “vast”. Painted with this film of life; teeming and chattering in a continual morphological flow. As our perception grows, as we get out of our won way, we let in more. Become more attuned.
We start to realise that the unnerving “extraordinary times” we think we live in are in fact perfectly ordinary times, when you consider the true nature of reality. The global pandemic of 2020 rocked society seemingly to its core. Yet such events in our globalised world, with the constant liminal interactions between humans and nature, are inevitable.
And perhaps we can start to elevate our perspective again. As we go on and begin to move into Part II, towards actually viewing the world, we need to take on a level of acceptance. Acceptance that we will be seeing a world as it is, not as how we want it to be. This will take us to difficult places. When we open our eyes, we realise that until now we have only been seeing what we want to see – that where we live is constant, has always been and will always be. But now we start to understand vulnerability in a way we did not previously. Vulnerability of our system, of ourselves as living creatures. The certainty that we will cease to exist as individuals, juxtaposed with the possibility that we could do so as a species.
Become aware of the anxiety this realisation provokes. Have no fear; in Part III we will learn not only to live with these feelings, but to use this understanding of vulnerability as a driving force in your life. But for now use the energy this sensation, this awareness creates. And understand that what we need to do right now is simply to perceive.
For now, just see.
See yourself; be aware of what you think, what you feel. Feel and weigh your biases; but have no judgement. You are what you are for a reason. See your life flowing around you. The orbit of your friends, family, community. See yourself passing through the seasons of your life, as your corner of the Earth passes through its. See ourselves collectively as a global society.
The Pillars of Creation, those towering tendrils of cosmic gas three times larger than our entire solar system, are so called because of the stars being born within them. But the NASA scientists who named them were also making reference to a deep Christian tradition and imagery of pillars that hold up the very foundation of the world. In an 1857 sermon the London pastor Charles Haddon Spurgeon referred to the birth of Christ in these terms: “And now wonder, ye angels, the Infinite has become an infant; he, upon whose shoulders the universe doth hang, hangs at his mother’s breast; he who created all things, and bears up the pillars of creation”. [insert footnote]
[1]Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond, Vintage, 1997, page [x].
[2] Methane is between 28 and 34 times more potent that CO2 in its global warming potential when measured over 100 years. However, given the timescale in which we have to reverse global warming is measured in a limited number of decades, it is more relevant to use a 20 year period for comparison – and on this timescale methane is between 84 and 86 times as potent. Refer to: http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/report/WG1AR5_Chapter08_FINAL.pdf.
Surviving, thriving and being happy in the twenty-first century is difficult. Here’s how to build a suit of armour to not only protect yourself, but to give yourself superpowers.
Image: Марьян Блан via Unsplash
One of the most enduring business ideas of Xander, our nine-year old son, is to build his own Iron Man suit, a task to which his bedroom has been re-purposed.
For anyone without either children or a personal interest in the Marvel universe, Iron Man is the superhero that Tony Stark, the billionaire, genius, playboy, serial earth-saver, becomes he dons the super-powered suit of armour that he has invented. Iron Man’s armour comes in many variants, but generally allows him to fly, posses super-strength and near-invulnerability. It’s most important components include a core energy source – an arc reactor – which produces seemingly unlimited power, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and a super strength exoskeleton. [change this to thruster propulsion system?]
The appeal of Iron Man is the idea that a human, weak and feeble, can construct for themselves armour which enables them not only to survives in a hostile environment but obtain superpowers. In the modern world, where we are safer than we have ever been and, on average, living standards are the highest in human history, the need for protection is less physical that is is mental.
When it comes to personal happiness and contentment, the modern world is actually a deeply hostile environment; for the health of our minds it’s as if we are in deep space with no protective suit
We are encumbered by the knowledge that our society is still exposed to existential threats such as climate change, pandemics or a large-scale nuclear war is frightening. For an acute period the 2020 COVID-19 outbreak converted the low-level humming of background anxiety into full-blown fear.
The way we receive our information about the world has fundamentally changed. The shift from tightly edited, mainstream broadcast media through a very limited number of channels – which perpetuated “lowest common denominator”, middle- of-the-road reporting – to the fractured world of social media bubbles has splintered society. This is unsettling; whichever end of any spectrum you sit on it is deeply disturbing to think that large sections of the population have a completely different viewpoint to you. And also probably think you are an idiot.
Meanwhile our scrolling smartphone addictions inhibits our ability to focus and think clearly; while social media gives us a perpetual view of “how life should be”. While our lives are clearly vastly better than say a medieval peasant (if you want to get a sense for the real historical short straw, do some reading on the 14th century), prior generations just went about their lives. They got up every morning, because that was all they knew. Whereas we question everything.
A final, and particularly insidious cause of anxiety, is modern guilt. We are told (correctly) that some of our biggest problems, most notably climate, are caused because of us, our consumer gluttony and our mundane, quotidian actions. Guilt and fear have quietly wrapped themselves around us.
If understood, managed and accepted anxiety can play a hugely positive role in life. Unchecked and ignored anxiety is debilitating and prevents us from living fulfilling lives.
The good news is that it is eminently possible to build yourself an impenetrable suit of armour, designed specifically for this world, and, unlike the $1bn price tag our son has estimated is required for his first Iron Man suit, you can do it for free – because you can build it in your mind. Built well, your suit will give you will incredible powers in terms of energy, perception and invulnerability.
The basis of your suit is how you view the world and your purpose, and how you go about your life on a daily basis. In constructing it you can draw on resources from the most cutting edge neuroscience to ancient philosophy. Over the course of these three articles I’m going to suggest components which have been remarkably powerful for you, along with some basic installation guidelines. But your suit will be bespoke to you, constructed by you to meet your own specific needs. You will need to feel comfortable in it so that you can where it everyday.
I would suggest that your suit will require three key elements:
A CoreEnergy Source;
An AI system; and
A near-impenetrable Exoskeleton.
Let’s now describe each of these components in turn. After we’ve done that I’ll then set out some Installation Notes, explaining how you can practically install them into your daily life.
Your Core Energy Source – it’s your Will
Image: Nike
Let’s start then with the Core Energy Source. Modern life drains your energy in several ways. We are permanently connected, and have to deal with the constant flow of information, requests to meet for coffee and a “catch up”; at the end of the day you may feel that you have barely scratched the surface of your to do list. Meanwhile those long-term underlying existential fears of climate and pandemics can be debilitating. When stress becomes genuine fear it can entirely rob you of your energy. Equally an ongoing feeling of “what can I do?” is discombobulating and equally paralysing.
Here’s the secret: your Core Energy Source is your will. Your will is your underlying intention, and your attitude, and it is something you can positively set. It is, in fact, the only thing in life that you can control: no matter what the situation is, no matter what is happening to you, or what is happening in the world (all of which you cannot control), you can choose your attitude. At any moment of any day.
You should set your intention based on your understanding of the world – in other worlds seeing the world as it is. And here I would recommend walking through a number of steps, which might be along these lines:
Step 1: mentally digest the vulnerability of yourself and our world, because this acceptance will set you free. You are a self-aware collection of atoms, which were once stardust, which will one day again be stardust. You are one of currently about 7.5 billion of these extraordinary entities and exist within a thin film of life wrapped around a rock flying through space, utterly dependent on the continued energy emitted by a nearby star. No matter how tough you are, any point your life could end through a chance event, and ultimately at some point in the not too distant future you will die. As the coronavirus showed us, we are equally fragile at a society level.
Step 2: recognise how lucky you are; you are alive during the greatest time there has ever been to be human.
Step 3:understand that because we evolved to look out for sabre toothed tiger round the corner your mind is programmed to have a tendency to a form anxiety which may not be useful in the modern world.
Step 4: separate the issues you into what you can control and what you can’t control.
Step 5: understand that the more you feel you are contributing, whether at a family, local community, or global level, likely the more happier you will be.
Step 6: recognise that by being content you can contribute more.
Once you have been trough these steps you reach an unavailable conclusion: that yes, there is plenty to be anxious about, and bad stuff will happen, but things are better for you and for our global society if you just get up in the morning, put a smile on your face and get on with things. If you have anxiety then interrogate it; how likely are the bad things you focus on to actually occur and, more importantly, what can you do to mitigate their risk or effects. Once you have taken all the sensible steps you can then you can do no more and you should instead focus on more useful things.
This then can set your will. Personally, as part of my morning ritual I will focus on setting my own will for the day ahead. For me this entails living my life in a bold and joyful way, with a growth mindset; and to appreciate each and every day on the planet. Including this one.
Your will is then your Core Energy Source. It is underpinned by the knowledge that whatever is happening, and whatever thoughts you are having, you and everyone else are better off if you just crack on. It is set in the context of understanding that it – your will – is the only thing within your control. But you can control it and over time you can learn the skill of recognising when it is waning or drifting, and re-setting it instantaneously.
If you want a single statement to live by it might be “choose your attitude“. Your attitude (ie. your will) is the one thing you can choose, because it is the one thing you can control, and your attitude, expressed over and over in moment to moment situations, over days, years and decades, will ultimately determine the outcome of your life.
Once you have truly absorbed this understanding, and learned these tools, your will will drive you forward as surely and consistently as Tony Stark’s arc reactor.
Your AI: its your Life Framework
Your AI system will give direction to this energy. In the modern world our senses our battered continually by messages competing for our attention through our smartphones. We are continually promised a better life if we buy something in particular, while being reminded of the perfect lives our friends and acquaintances appear to live. The saturation of (almost entirely bad) news feeds from traditional channels and new constantly give our brains something else to fix on, and worry about.
We evolved to live in small tribes, hunting and foraging, while trying in turn not to be eaten by something large and likely hirsute. Our minds therefore are programmed to be motivated by things which were critical to survival or progression then; such as being part of a group, or our personal status. Modern digital technology, weaponized by marketeers who can draw on the full resources of contemporary neuroscience, is designed to circumvent our reason and, in simple terms, push our most basic buttons – our fears, our desires.
Consequently in the modern world maintaining clarity of our purpose in life or even a basic road map for where we want to take things Much like whales assailed by the thumping cacophony of modern shipping, our navigation systems become scrambled and we end up beached; stuck on the sands of anxiety and confusion.
Unless, that is, we have a pre-programmed Artificial Intelligence, that is encased in impermeable solid lead and tamper proof. The secret is that your AI is really your life framework; how you view the world and the core principals, or life tenets, that you apply which allows you to filter your view of the world and guide your actions.
Having a pre-programmed life framework will continually bring you back to clarity. It is impervious to the sonic pollution of your daily life. And you can upload it right now, by incorporating these three key components to your life:
Gratitude: start each day by being thankful for whatever is genuinely important for you: for having opportunity in your future; for having friends, a family; for living in what for most people is the best time in human history; for being pain free, if you are. Or simply for having woken up this morning – that is always a good start. Gratitude, expressed quietly but regularly, will build contentment and repel the nagging sense of lacking contentment that comes from constantly being told we want / need stuff.
Humility: once we recognise that our ego can be our enemy we also recognise that a life spent in service rather than in the pursuit of status can not only give us more contentment, but also bring clarity. When ego is in charge we are in a constant state of anxiety, worrying what people think of us. Ego can also act as trap door, through which the marketeers can access us and our desires. Humility, and the pursuit of serving others, frees us from anxiety and from the risk of perceived failure, and focuses us on achieving what is important in life.
Love: by filling ourselves daily with a feeling of love, not only for those we know and quite demonstrably love, but also for humanity in general and perhaps this incredible planet that we have the extraordinary privilege of inhabiting as a whole, we provide ourselves with a moral compass. We no longer need to waste time trying to answer the question of “what should I do” in life; once love is at the core of your intentions then such questions go away.
Gratitude, humility, love: by layering these words into ourselves every day we have giving ourselves our Guiding Intelligence. In any situation – at work, in personal relationships, even in the most challenging of circumstances – if you can bring the words to your mind and act in accordance with them, you will not only be more content and happier, but you will make better decisions.
Your Exoskeleton: it’s your Purpose[change to Thruster propulsion system?]
With your Core Energy Source activated, and Artificial Intelligence engaged; the final component is the Exoskeleton of your suit. You can have all the energy in the world coupled complete clarity of purpose, but it is all for nothing if you, and your mind, are fragile. More than ever we are susceptible to having our mission and objectives thrown into disarray – once again the crowded and continual bombardment of social media plays its role here.
This is a simple one: your armour is your purpose. A purpose here is any kind of objective beyond your own achievements in terms of status or consumption. The purpose may be to contribute to society globally, or to help particular groups of people, or your community. It may simply be to look after and raise a family. The point is that once you have established a purpose you have decoupled your happiness and focus from events outside your control.
To put it another way: once your happiness is not longer dependant upon your own fate – ie. your success or failure, or how you are perceived by other people – then you become bullet proof. Having a purpose in life galvanises you, and puts the little slights we receive on a daily basis into perspective.
Who cares if someone in a meeting undermines you if, on a daily basis you remind yourself that your purpose is, for instance, to try and contribute to humanity surviving the century?
Installation Notes
These components I have sketched out are suggestions based on what has worked for me. Once you have an initial idea of what might be effective for yourself then you need to “install” the relevant components into yourself, as if they were software on a computer, such that they become ingrained in your thinking.
I find the best way to achieve this is to set a morning recital that you speak to yourself as part of a meditation – here is an example which would “upload” the components:
It is my will to live my life in a bold and joyful way, with a growth mindset and to appreciate each and every day on this planet.
I have a life framework. I feel deep gratitudefor my life, for my family and the opportunities this day presents. I seek humility and a life in service, not by status. I am driven by lovefor my family, my friends and for people I have not met.
My purpose is to provide for my family, to be an active member of my community and to contribute to society through sustainability and long-term thinking.
In case it is not obvious: the three statements above refer to each one of your components, which are in effect your superpowers: your Core Energy Source, your AI and your Exoskeleton. Together you might think of them as your personal mantra.
By repeating your mantra daily, or just pretty regularly (to be honest I don’t bother at weekends; I’m too busy lying in), and specifically by listening to the words and reflecting on their meaning to you, you will be ingraining your understanding of each component. Soon you will be able to conjure up each one at a moment’s notice, simply by repeating a trigger phrase (such as “my Will”). This is important because at various points in any day you might need to call upon different superpowers.
Here are three types of needs which will require your three superpowers:
Need for energy: you wake in the morning and feel flat, and a bit down. You lie there for an hour or two and your general lack of mojo is compounded by the feeling that you have already wasted some of the day. Let’s assume that a cause of your feeling is that you have been thinking about how you can contribute to solving global problems such as climate change. You have been learning more about it, having moments of optimism as you learn about technologies and solutions that can play a meaningful and positive role. But right now you feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the challenges, by the amount of information, much of which is contradictory. Maybe, to take a totally random example, you have been trying a plant-based diet to make a contribution, but you are starting to learn about the massive complexity of the food production system and appreciate the role that livestock may play.
Answer: bring up your Core Energy Source by saying to yourself “It is my Will” and this will give you an instant understanding that all you need to do is to swing your feet – swing them out of bed and on to the floor. Why? Simply re-read the steps above on how to install your Core Energy Source (which is your Will) and you will understand all you need to know. With your feet on the ground you can get on with the day.
Need for re-centring: you are about to walk into an important work meeting. There will be people senior to you there, as well as your peers. There will be polite jostling for airtime, attempts to make clever points and perhaps for claim credit for things. Your brain is working overtime to try to implement strategies. You feel stressed and skittish.
Answer: activate your AI by repeating your core words of Gratitude, Humility, Love (or your equivalent of them). This will then re-set your thoughts and actions in the context of what really motivates you. It will also instantly bring up your understanding of how our brains work, and the dominance that our sub-conscious has. You will not be able to completely master your primeval brain, and indeed you will still be able to think tactically about how to handle the meeting. However, this will free you to think more clearly on what your objectives are and set a strategy around that.
Need for resilience: you are working on a local voluntary project to raise funds for a new youth community centre. It is not something you have huge amounts of experience in, and it has been much harder work than you expected. You receive personal criticism from the head of the town council on how you have gone about things in a variety of ways, from how you have interfaced with the council and failure to adhere to agreed policies, to how you have engaged with local residents. The underlying implication is of incompetence and naivety. The criticism stings, partly because some of it is objectively accurate – but they are made personal by the council leader.
Answer: don your Exoskeleton; like for Ton Stark this can be done instantly at the push of a button; for you it is simply by saying the phrase “my Purpose”. Your purpose here is to contribute something of value to your community, something for young people at formative years in their lives. Something lasting. Maybe this is not bigger than you and your life – but its certainly bigger than your “career” as a project organiser, or your reputation and ego in this particular and extremely narrow context. When you focus on your purpose you are also able to see in context the smallness of the criticism. Who cares if a jobsworth at the council wants to score points? You take on board any objectively useful points and move on, thanking the person for their feedback. You are focused on your purpose and you are bullet proof.
Of course you can continually improve, refine and modify your suit as you go. Like Tony Stark you may end up with dozens of different variants.
In Summary
Despite fairly incessant requests to fund the our budding young Tony Stark’s prototype development his father has remained tight-walleted. Consequently e has had to get by using cardboard alone – which, though useful at deflecting nerf-gun bullets from his brothers, probably wont be much use when repelling an alien invasion.
You don’t need any money, however, to build Iron Man armour for your mind. The soft technology of philosophy is available for free for you to build a suit that will not only help you survive in modern life, but actually give you superpowers. And although most of us live lives which by historical standards are blessed with huge abundance in material terms, in psychological terms life these days is hard – so we need all the superpowers we can get.
Tony Stark originally built his armour simply to survive after a piece of shrapnel from an explosion lodged near his heart. The suit keeps his heart beating, but over time enabled him to become Iron Man.
You may set out to build your own armour in order to provide yourself with protection in this new world we find ourselves in, but in doing so you too may find you end up with superpowers.
[Add postscript: missing ingredient is self love and…don’t take life to seriously].
To achieve a sustainable society, where people can live fulfilling and meaningful lives, sustainable impact investing must target the three pillars of climate, poverty and health together.
Photo by Peng LIU via Pexels
COVID-19 is testing our hyperconnected way of life but it should also serve as a catalyst for a refocussing of our efforts in sustainable impact investing. While in the short-term a prioritisation of rapid economic recovery may to some degree obscure the green agenda, the longer-term outlook if anything is clearer in respect of the need and desire to mobilise capital at vast scale to finance the transition to a sustainable future.
New Electricity – astonishingly cheap but variable power produced from solar and wind energy – will change the world in fundamental ways. Long-term investors need to understand the consequences of this.
For over a hundred years oil has been the “master commodity”. It was required to produce all other commodities, from agricultural goods to mined metals and minerals. The emergence of “New Electricity”- cheap power produced from renewable resources – upends this.
A career in finance is rarely what we dream of when we are children. But forget being a rock star, a football pro or a contestant on Love Island. Here’s why working in sustainable investing is the best job. Ever.
The view from Dan Wells office’ in The Shard, central London. “Working in finance usually means a lifetime of feeling separated from nature. But working in sustainable investing allows us to spend time in fields, oceans and mountains, if not always literally then at least in our minds as we plan and execute investment strategies.”. Image: Dan Wells
In the year 2000 I was travelling in New Zealand, sharing a hostel room with two easy-going Americans who lived a permanent backpacker life. “I have friends who took a suit and tie job, but I’ve never regretted my choice,” said one, in between anecdotes of a life of freedom and spur-of-the-moment adventures around the world.
The problem with climate change is not other people, it is ourselves (and physics)
Photo credit: Stein Egil Liland, via Pexels
Previously I wrote about how Charles Mann has characterized environmentalists as either Wizards or Prophets. He described the inherent conflict between the Prophets’ approach of rejecting a consumerist society based on growth into perpetuity and the Wizarding belief in the power of technology to transcend natural limits. However, Wizards versus Prophets is far from the only fault line in our attempt to address climate change or other sustainability challenges.
