Some weeks ago, I was sitting on stage with an economist from the World Trade Organisation and a banker from UBS. We were opening a small, one-day conference for the private aviation industry, and I had been invited to challenge the prevailing macro-economic forecast. I had been surprised to receive the invitation, to say the least, and asked the woman organising the event if she was sure she wanted me there. She laughed: “Hell yeah!” So off I went to the Swiss Alps—by train, of course—to calmly and assuredly explain to a hostile audience that the excellent economic forecast provided was awfully narrow in scope when you factor in resource scarcity, geopolitical instability, nuclear war, climate tipping points and the illusion of material decoupling. In sum, we’re heading for economic collapse by 2050, I said.
The banker disagreed. I told him perhaps he should look at the data before forming an opinion. He recoiled as if I had slapped him, and I wondered how often he is around people who disagree with him. The economist from the WTO offered a middle ground, focusing on the necessity of economic development, and using it as a reason to warn against the injustice of degrowth. I smiled wanly and gave the correct definition of degrowth as a redistribution mechanism to develop the majority world whilst reducing the output of the global north.
Then someone from the audience, fed up with my negative outlook, shouted out that he didn’t necessarily disagree with everything I was saying but he wanted solutions! He’s a capitalist, for god’s sake! What, did I just want to throw away capitalism?
Well, yes. “I agree that capitalism provided benefits last century, but it’s time for something new, and I think that’s exciting rather than limiting.” He shrugged, and the host took the opportunity to close our panel. We left the stage and a woman grabbed me: “You were great, I agree with everything you said!” I listened to her analysis of the state of the world while watching the banker and economist swap business cards.
Strangely enough, lots of them wanted to swap cards with me, too. I spent the next fourteen hours speaking with a range of attendees and was shocked to learn that most of them agreed with me. They applauded my “bravery” for facing a hostile crowd, and thanked me for speaking with them calmly: “You really know what you’re talking about.” I tried patiently to explain that it is simply my job to know this and speak of it and that I was equally grateful for the invitation. But the men insisted on my “huge balls”, whilst the women rolled their eyes at the industry’s “macho dick-swinging”.
The man who had shouted at me from the audience apologised, and spent ten minutes with me lambasting carbon credits. Another, who earlier onstage had, to my horror, called aviation “the life-blood of Europe”, told me he’d been gassed by the police for protesting against Exxon. One told me he’d been so disillusioned after studying international development that he felt the only thing he could do was make a lot of money to protect his family and then buy some influence. None of them felt empowered, and all of them blamed the billionaires. Frankly, the conversations I had were not that different to the rhetoric of my peers, except these were backdropped by the most glorious view over the Swiss Alps.
The conference became a dinner and there was live music and dancing. I love live music and dancing, so I sang and I danced. Some attendees looked confused, others looked relieved. One took me outside and, dragging on her cigarette, said: “Could you imagine if women ruled the world?” We talked about addiction and misogyny. Later, someone high-fived me as I passed and shouted: “I’m five years sober!”
“Congratulations!” I smiled.
The richest man at the party had avoided me all day because “my team told me nothing is off the record”. He was swarmed all evening and I let him be, preferring to sing ABBA with the musician who’d been flown out from Barcelona. We had exchanged nothing except that terse introduction hours earlier, but, when he left, he grabbed me and shouted over the music: “Let’s talk about the environment!” A kiss on each cheek and then he was gone. I figured there were three possible reasons he had changed his tune, one of which was that he hadn’t. But still—wiggle room.
People are people. We like people like us. We like to be right. We like to be seen. We like to enjoy ourselves. We don’t like to be shouted at. We don’t like to be dressed down. We don’t like to be villiainised. Throughout the evening, I learned the biggest reason I had been accepted by the attendees was because just months before they had been shouted at by activists at another industry conference. There had been a moderated discussion between industry professionals and eco-campaigners, who want to ground every plane. Half of the audience walked out.
Someone explained to me: “They didn’t listen to us. They said we provide no public good. We explained why that wasn’t true, but even afterwards they still said simply that they just want to ban us. They weren’t listening.”
I thought of Andreas Malm’s theory about the radical vs moderate flank, and was deeply grateful for the activists. By being radical, they made me look moderate, and because I looked moderate, I was approachable. It’s true I didn’t say anything about banning private jets all day. I even said that I wasn’t here to tell anyone to ban anything, “I’m just here to explain why if you don’t look at the bigger picture none of your investments will mean anything in thirty years.”
Isn’t it funny—what I was saying is radical. It’s not something you hear discussed in the mainstream, and most economists would laugh at me given half the chance. But because I didn’t yell at the private jet industry and because they had been admonished not six months before, they perceived me as someone worth listening to. Had I been the first person they’d heard discuss ecological and economic collapse, no doubt I would have been written off, too. It is only because of the network of activism and the diversity of campaigns that someone like me can walk through the door as a journalist and hold court. Equally, I can only walk through because of the foresight of certain industry professionals to hold that door open and invite me in.
In my interview with Jay Griffiths for Mongabay I asked her what she would do for the world if she had a magic wand. She responded beautifully, saying she would have everyone stay exactly where they are and just focus on changing their niche in the world. It’s why community energy projects like Bristol Energy Coop are critical, and particular activist groups like Lawyers Are Responsible, and pioneers in accountability journalism like HEATED and Drilled. It’s why gathering on the streets to protest genocide is necessary, and activists who organise BDS campaigns. It’s why environmental campaigners in the Amazon are vital, and businesses who are helping farmers in the EU transition away from meat and dairy. It’s why the Danish building industry lobbying the government for tighter climate regulation is as important as the IPCC report they used to figure out what needs to be done.
Collaboration is critical, and allyship may be found in the most surprising corners of the world: on the streets of Monaco, placard in hand, running from the police through gas-choked air.
As someone who began working in the international wealth management industry in Zurich out of desperation some 30 years ago (in B2B sales, no less), fresh out of university with no qualifications and in a foreign country where I did not speak the language, and who in recent years has been volunteering in climate change and making sure to no longer be associated with any of the typical BS of this industry, I really loved reading this piece. I have often wondered how on Earth people in my industry can claim to be masters of the future for the benefit of their clients, when they seem to do nothing but continue to consider our multiple looming disasters as investment opportunities, as challenges that nevertheless offer amazing opportunities for wealth creation, as they make no changes whatsoever to their investment portfolio construction except to continue to hunt for the right combination of exposure to "safe" investments and the newest growth markets. Your piece has shown me that what I had imagined to be true about many of my colleagues seems about right, that many of them realize that something is amiss but feel compelled to continue with business as usual to be able to continue to support their families at the very least. The financial markets are much broader than investing alone, but investments are the carpet under our feet. So much of what needs to be done today is not answered by investing, but rather needs action and capital that is not expecting a reward other than a chance at a future, but that is not how any of this works, is it? I also very much appreciate your point about how to make progress with those we may perceive as the enemy. Of the many events I have attended similar to the one you write about here, I have never attended one that gave me any reason to feel hopeful about a better future. I hope you realize that your presence is the ONLY reason that many of the attendees at this event can possibly have emerged with something exciting to talk about and a reason to perhaps feel some hope for what is to come and also to how they might just be able to help to achieve it.
"make a lot of money ... and then buy some influence"
This is gold.
A simple, real life statement of the truth no one is telling: in the world as it is today, if you don't have lots of money, you don't have any real influence.
Money matters.
And theories of social activism that don't include money, and it's importance to how we, as society, make the social choices that shape our enterprises that shape our technologies that shape our choices that shape our economy that shapes society and our shared future, end up impotently raging against the machine, Occupy Wall Street-style.
One reason that social activism doesn't talk about money today, except to vilify it - "They have money. We have bodies. That's the fight." says Bill McKibben - is that society does not have today the words we need to talk collaboratively and constructively about the institutions of money, their agency, their authority and their accountability.
Money is missing from our current social narrative about being social as humans together.
And yet, how much money needed to be aggregated and deployed for Rachel to have the experience she writes about so powerfully in the article she shares with us through this post?
Money matters.
We need to talk about it.
Rachel is a worker in words. Every journalist is. So is every lawyer, advertising executive, public relations professional, novelist and poet.
Every artist is a worker in words. Painters only paint what cannot be expressed in words (Edward Hopper).
These workers in words need to help us invent the new words we need, to talk about money.
Not to vilify, but to mobilize it.