I thought swashbuckling days were over. Guess I was wrong.
In Windfall: The Booming Business of Global Warming, author McKenzie
Funk shows us how economic opportunities can be found in all negative aspects of climate change. He states “the climate is changing faster than we are [but]… Life will go on.
Before it does, we should all make sure we understand the reality.” These are
true statements. But when Funk states “…these pages reveal something important:
In an unfair world, rational self-interest is not always what we wish it would
be,” he’s not being clear which side of the dike he stands upon. He admits seeing
the environmental movement as being misguided, employing “magical thinking”
that will not produce results in the developed world. That also may be so. But
does it mean that we give in, wholesale, to the altering of the world’s
ecosystems just because the current approach is “naïve?”
Here’s a representative take on the issue, from the introduction:
“'What are we going to do? We have
to change the way we live!’ Instead of working for Greenpeace, which he’d
considered after graduation, he [Mark Fulton, Deutsche Bank’s chief climate
strategist] became a stockbroker, then an analyst, and he’d eventually helped
Deutsche Bank identify global warming as a ‘megatrend’ that could generate
profit for decades. ‘It’s always helped me, climate change, in my career,’ he
joked.”
I’m not laughing, and to be honest, I know McKenzie Funk, for all his
objectivity, is careful not to, as well.
A pirate is a plunderer, a strong-arm who takes from the defenseless for his
own gain. A pirate is a man like American investor Phil Heilberg, who
negotiates with General Paulino Matip of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army for
farmland in war-torn Sudan. Matip is happy to lease the land, even though he
does not have ownership of it, officially. And it’s all okay, politically;
Heilberg tried negotiating with the Dinka leadership but when they tried to get
him to bribe them, he switched to the Nuer faction. Heilberg’s idol is Ayn Rand, who he says
“believed pursuing profit was itself a moral act, a kind of enlightened
selfishness: Place yourself above all else; get in no one’s way, and let no one
get in yours; give no charity, and expect none.”
Sounds a lot like what got us here in the first place.
Not all of Funk’s research lands us in such murky polluted waters. He also goes
to the Netherlands, land of the medieval dikes, who are builders of the $7.5
billion Delta Works, “the world’s greatest coastal defense network”. Potential clients include the Marshall Islands
and Bangladesh as well as river delta cities like New Orleans, Jakarta, Ho Chi
Minh City and New York City. Land reclamation
innovation comes in all forms in the Netherlands; research into ‘smart soils’
with bacteria to create strong bonds to seal cracks in levees and dikes is one
concept, another is floating cities.
This is a fascinating book, made more compelling by the thin line between
economic innovation and moral indignation that Funk treads upon. Being an environmentally-conscious consumer,
I do mourn the damaged state of our world, wrought by our cumulative hands,
just as many folks do. I’m not sure I can wholeheartedly support this
shoulder-shrugging stance to embrace droughts, floods, and storm-damages as
economic opportunities. It’s giving in,
offering credence to the sins; it’s a very pirate-like approach. But, to let
Funk have the last word: “[t]he hardest truth about climate change is that it
is not equally bad for everyone…For the most part, we are not our own victims.”
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