I must have done something wrong to someone today because I feel like I’m in some kind of surreal dream. The day started well with a great event hosted by Xerox in Dallas, talking sustainability with some leaders in the field. Then I ended up in two bizarre conversations during my travels home. This post is my personal therapy session to work it out.
First scene: In a car to the airport with a senior exec from IBM who basically leads the company’s very successful “Smarter Planet” projects with customers (helping companies and cities with traffic flow, water management, carbon reduction, etc, etc).
The car service had provided us Ford Excursion — from a sustainability event — so that should’ve been my first tip on something being awry in the universe. Anyway, my colleague and I are talking about green, climate, the inexplicable vitriol and anger of climate deniers, Al Gore, etc. And the driver looks in the rear-view mirror and intiaties this conversation.
Driver: (Laughing): You guys don’t believe this climate hoax do you?
Me: (Also laughing) Are you kidding? You’re kidding right?
Driver: No, you know, it’s a hoax
Me: (Not laughing) Why do you think that?
Driver: There’s no evidence.
Me: Actually there’s massive evidence, decades of it in fact [see a cool video on the basics of the incontrovertible science and physics of it all here…]
Driver: (Arrogantly) What about those climate emails? Those didn’t happen?
Me: Yes, they happened, but they didn’t disprove the decades of science.
Driver: They falsified records
Me: Actually they didn’t. You should read some of the emails — they didn’t falsify records at all.
End scene.
I really had to wonder what kind of small, tiny bubble of friends and media consumption you have to live in to find it astonishing to meet people who believe the 95% of scientists that see climate change as a real problem. Disagreeing with that view is one thing, but laughing at people like they’re aliens is another and shows me just how divided we’ve become where we can surround ourselves with echo chambers…
On to conversation #2
I’m minding my own business on my flight home and right when we’re getting ready to land (I almost made it), my seat-mate decides to strike up a conversation (it’s always dangerous when they make you turn off electronics — so much silence to fill). Here’s conversation #2.
Guy on Plane (I’ll shorten that to GOP): What do you do?
Me: Work with companies on environmental issues, speak, write, consult, helping them with green business strategy (ya da ya da)
GOP: You mean recycling? (my first clue this was not going to go well most likely)
Me: No, a whole range of things from product development and innovation to c-level strategy to executive education and training what do you do?
GOP: I’m in the energy business. Private equity investments.
Me: Oh, what kind?
GOP: Oil, gas, coal — really diversified
Me: No renewables investments?
GOP: No, we don’t invest in things that need government subsidies. Wind and solar and such are so uneconomic. [here’s where I want to point to an article I just saw today about governments spending $500 billion on fossil fuel subsidies]
Me: Huh.
GOP: We do some work educating. We have a site, plantsneedCO2. We educate government people on what CO2 is. [It’s here where I discovered that at 10pm after a long day I didn’t even have the energy to ask, “oh, what does CO2 do?” — but check out the site. It’s real and informs us that we need MORE CO2 not less.]
The conversation went on, but that’s about all I can stomach to convey. I seem to have run out of steam to have a discussion with people who are this far gone. Bring on legitimate debate about what to do about the challenges we all face, or about the right policies and government action (or whether government or markets alone should do it). But people like this cannot have a real conversation. I just wonder what I did to deserve running into two in short order.
Thanks for listening. Deep breaths.
Onward…