Materials Man

I don’t read newspapers, I get my news through the radio, I have a great little DAB radio that is first into my suitcase, when travelling. The business programme on Radio Scotland on Sunday got my ears fully tuned in. It was the prosaically named James Smith, Chairman of Shell, Shell UK I guess as I may have missed this point, however the reason I was listening with attention was, he was espousing the same doctrines for planet salvation as Tom Friedman in his book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded. The guy is no dumb red neck Texan, this Brit is fully switched on, he talked about Shell investing in sustainable biofuels, the opposite of what the Bush admin did and world grain prices shot up, increasing poverty and political instability. Shell are investing in the future, in carbon capture, carbon capping and echoing Friedman’s book terms for trade for energy. In other words use the market place and cost the environmental damage of carbon release and let the techies, scientists and capitalists sort it out. He did not actually use the words smart electrons but it was heavily inferred that IT can greatly assist in delivering electricity at the cheapest cost by balancing supply to demand with smart meters etc. I swear he has read, understood and taken on the solutions outlined in Hot, flat, and Crowded. I don’t care how he got there, I am mightily impressed he has.

Gives a person hope, gives the planet hope.

Just a chance remark on the opinion that the poor will lose due to climate change, brought a response from a colleague that it might be the case but it is evolution. It might be evolution but it is not nature’s evolution, it is enhanced fast track evolution that has no predicable outcome. That’s the point, what if the climate change moves the gulf stream south? It has happened in the past, perhaps we will be joining the poor of the planet like in Bangladesh, in India waiting for a monsoon that comes irregularly and with more force, in sub-Sahara Africa drought after drought in some places like Sudan followed by floods.

Here is an excerpt from the UN’s World meteorological Organisation on unprecedented weather extremes in 2007

Four monsoon depressions, double the the normal number, caused heavy flooding in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh…. England and Wales have experienced their wettest May to July period since record-keeping started in 1766. In late July, swollen rivers threatened to burst their banks…..Late last month in Sudan, floods and heavy rain caused 23,000 mud brick homes to collapse, killing at least 62 people. (were they killed by evolution? my words) The rainfall was abnormally heavy and early for this time of year…….In May, swell waves up to 15 feet high swept into 68 islands in the Maldives, causing severe flooding and damage…. Also in May, a heatwave swept across Russia…… Southeastern Europe did not escape the unusual weather . The area suffered from record-breaking heat in June and July…..An unusual cold southern winter brought wind, blizzards and rare snowfall to various parts of South America, with temperatures reaching as low as minus 22 Celsius in Argentina and minus 18 degress Celsius in Chile in July. In June, South Africa had its first significant snowfall since 1981, almost 10 inches fell in some parts of the country.

Excerpt from the book  Hot, Flat and Crowded by Thomas L Friedman a book I was reading (and still am) on my holidays as was Barack Obama.

Buy the book, even if you read chapter four on Petropolitics it will inform you, as it did for me reading the book the seven sisters  in the 70’s.

Capitalism rules, have you seen the latest RBS advert with the fisherman extolling the virtues of a mobile bank? that really gets me fired up ” we’re here for you ” aye right”!

“We’re owned by you” would be more appropriate cause we blew it. Have they no remorse?

And to my colleague, how do the poor evolve?

They can’t, and thats his point, because they are poor they are vulerable and the weak will not survive and that’s evolution.