Transcript

LARRY REYNOLDS, Speaker, The Academy for Chief Executives
Climate change and peak oil...threat or opportunity?

Climate change, you know about it, the world is getting hotter, we'll hit two degrees, all sorts of terrible things will happen.

Peak oil, half the oil on the planet is used up, from now on, production's going to go down, demand's going to go up, energy's going to become phenomenally expensive.

Different people have different views on this. I'm not going to talk - you've had two excellent talks - I can't match those, because I'm a facilitator, so I'm going to get you to do some stuff. So here's my question for you. How do you currently feel about this big stuff around climate change and peak oil.

One extreme is that you think climate change and peak oil - it's the biggest issue that's ever faced humanity and the world is going to change phenomenally in the next few years as we get to grips with it. No issue is more important. No issue has a bigger impact on business. That's one view.

Another view, perhaps the other extreme is, well, who cares. It's all been hyped up, the world's got hotter in the past, there's more oil if we look hard. Who cares? It's not really going to make any difference. That's another extreme. Forget about it. It's al hype. It's a conspiracy.

I'm going to ask you in a moment to get up and go and stand to one side of the room. If you think it's the really, really, big issue, we've got to tackle it right away, you're right over towards this wall.

This is hell for the cameras. I'm sorry guys.

If you're kind of in the middle 'it's fairly serious, but not that much', you stand here, if you think 'well, I want to take attention to it, but it's not that serious', you stand here, and if you think, 'it's a load of nonsense, forget about it, I don't care', stand down here. So you'll have to negotiate with your colleagues to move either towards that wall or towards that wall, stand in the middle. Stand where you are now, if you would please, according to how you feel about those issues right now - Go!

Technology to the rescue is - someone creates some marvelous thing that sucks all the greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Or, someone makes nuclear fission work, so we can have free energy forever. Or-or-or, some technological breakthrough which means that we can carry on much as we are, growing, growing, growing, and that'll be possible. The final scenario, green transition. This scenario says, we're going to have to make do in a world with very, very little energy. Every one of you has the equivalent of 150 slaves working for you full time 24 hours a day that's provided by fossil fuel. The green transition says when that goes away, you'll have to do it yourself. You'll be living in small communities, growing your own vegetables, cycling to work, still have the internet and all of that. That's the green transition.

Which of these will happen? Who knows? But isn't it worth considering that some of these may be possibilities.

And the question is this: if this scenario came to pass, what would be the opportunities for business? And you might think about your own personal business - a lot of us here run our own business - you might think of business more generally. I'm not worried about the threats. What are the opportunities? If this scenario comes to pass, what are the opportunities for business under this scenario? Two minutes, time starts now, go!

The squirrel of destiny has nibbled away the nuts of time that Nigel has kindly allocated to me, so by way of closing, I just want to say one thing, which is that nobody knows what climate change and peak oil will bring. There's a lot of agreement among the scientists that it will have some effect, but just what and how fast, no-one knows.

But it anyone thinks that the whole business environment of the next 10 years is going to be the same as the last five or ten years, they're mad! If anyone thinks they can predict what's going to happen, they're mad. But if anyone who runs a business starts to prepare for the future, maybe working on some of the scenarios we've looked at, maybe thinking about what are the opportunities in this, while my competitors are getting worried about the end of civilization, what about if I look at the opportunities, and as an incurable optimist, that's what I'm interested in.

Thank you very much.