Thank you for having me.

I'm going to start from the perspective of what I'm not: I'm not a climate scientist. I'm not an expert on banking. I'm not a macro-economist. I'm not an academic researcher. I'm a dabbler. I dabble in lots of different things, and I've spent 40-plus years observing how businesses and investors behave. What I've discovered is that psychology and perception have a lot more effect on that behaviour than economic models.

As an outsider, I'm going to give you my perspective on what I've seen happen around climate change. This might not be diplomatic, but I might as well cut to the chase.

Here's what I've seen over the last 20 years: Climate change is the most publicized, the most warned about and the most discussed existential crisis that I've ever seen. You're saying that this is merited; that's fine.

Second, governments all over the world claim to care about climate change. In fact, every year they gather together, as in the most recent meeting, COP28. Hypocrisy runs rampant in this space, as in what was said in Dubai. They talk about how they're going to change the world. They set targets that everybody knows will not be met. I'll guarantee you that there'll be a COP29, perhaps in Riyadh, where we will repeat the whole process again.

Companies and businesses all claim to be green. They claim to care about the climate. I'm going to gag the next time I see the words “net zero” in a company's financial statement or an airline asks me to pay an extra $40 if I want to reduce my carbon footprint.

In this process, they've been aided and abetted by consultants and experts who fed them the buzzwords. Let's face it: ESG is an acronym. It doesn't even merit the notion of an idea or a concept—it's an acronym.

Sustainability is just as much of an acronym. These consultants have told these companies that they can have their cake and eat it too, that they can be green and be more valuable.

There's the same phenomenon with investors. They've pumped in trillions of dollars. Don't tell me enough money hasn't been invested in green spaces. There have been trillions of dollars, again with the promise that they can deliver higher returns while being good.

Consumers have been given lots of different ways in which they can show how wonderful they are. They can buy green products. They can invest in green funds. They can misbehave all day, come back home, buy an ESG fund and say, “I'm okay again.”

Here's, I think, the most sobering reality. After 20 years, trillions of dollars and all of this talk, if you look at how much of our energy comes from fossil fuels, it's barely budged. In fact, you know that our dependence on fossil fuels decreased more between 1975 and 1995 than it has in the last 20 years. The reason for that was the one alternative energy source that most green energy people claim to hate, which is nuclear energy.

Over the last 20 years, our dependence on fossil fuels has gone from 85% to 81.5%. We've reduced dependence by 3.5%, and we paid $10 trillion for that amazing fact. I'll let you do the math on that. If you really want to get the fossil fuel dependence down to 50%, you work out how much it'll cost. This notion that you can get good without sacrifice is the heart of why all of this space is in trouble.

I'm not in any position to give you advice on what you should do with your bank and your pension funds, but I'll tell you what I think. I think you've got to stop with this apocalyptic stuff. Do you really think that telling people that the world will end in 35 years is going to make them behave better? That's like telling somebody that they have 60 days to live and saying, “Behave healthfully.” It's not going to happen. Even if you believe that the world will end if climate change is not met, telling people that is the worst possible strategy psychologically.

Second, remove virtue from this discussion. This notion that if you believe that climate change is important, you're a good person, and if you don't, you're a bad person is contaminating the discussion. It's making perfect the enemy of good.

Let's face it: Much of the research on ESG and sustainability is not worth the paper is written on, but the research that takes a closer look has concluded that shades of grey are better than black and white, that investing in brown innovation is better than investing in green innovation and that accepting shades of grey, incremental change, is going to be much more effective than this: “Hey, if you don't do this, we'll die.”

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