The Climate Crisis: A Moderate Approach to the Energy Debate

237 Pages·2021·4.221 MB·English

by  Miguel Angel Rondon Segura

MIGUEL A. RONDON SEGURA
THE
CLIMATE
CRISIS
A MODERATE APPROACH
TO THE ENERGY DEBATE
Copyright © 2021 Miguel Angel Rondon Segura
MARS Publishing
Cover and Book Design by Jonas Perez Studio
All rights reserved. Not for quotation without permission
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise
without the express written permission of the author.
To my mom for unconditional love.
To my family for always supporting me.
To my friends for keeping me in check.
To everyone who has supported me along my career.
And, to you—the reader—for spending
your precious time reading this book.
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
—Plato
INTRODUCTION
I am 30 years old, I attended boarding school in New England, I am
Ivy League educated, I live in Manhattan, and I work for an energy
giant in Stamford. From this one sentence alone, you may already have
a preconceived opinion about me—and a negative one most likely, just
like almost everybody does for the modern energy industry. In the
current environment, who wouldn’t?
But beyond this material and preconceived characterization, I am
an individual who is primarily driven by a desire to give back to my
community and become a positive force of change. In other words, I
want to make my existence on this planet meaningful.
So before telling you my story, let me be clear about my values: I
love fossil fuels—they are packed with energy, are cheap, are easy to
transport, and are plentiful. In simple words, they have great utility
to us: they are in the cars we drive; they are in the homes we live in;
they are in the foods we eat; and they are in the clothes we wear. But
besides this love for fossil fuels, I also care deeply about our planet
and this is the challenge I try to address by titling this book The Climate
Crisis. Ultimately, this is what climate change and the energy debate are
all about from my perspective: How do we keep our lifestyle without
risking the habitability of this planet?
From a material point of view, one could argue that the Industrial
Revolution is the period in modern humans’ 200,000-year history that
has brought the most progress in the least amount of time. And following
this material logic, and purposely ignoring other anthropological
variables for the sake of the discussion, one could also say that things
are not getting worse—only better for the average person.
In general terms, the average person today in America has a higher
life expectancy than the average person during any other period in
history. I believe this idea alone is something to celebrate and something
we can vastly credit fossil fuels for, as I will discuss in depth through the
book. At the same time, however, never have modern humans created
so much potential for self-harm in such a small amount of time, and
this should worry us all.
As I write this book, according to NASA, carbon dioxide levels are
at the highest level they have been in 650,000 years. Nineteen of the
warmest years have occurred since 2000; Arctic summer sea ice shrank
to the lowest extent on record; ice sheets are losing around 428 billion
metric tons per year; and global average sea level has risen nearly seven
inches over the past 100 years.1
But, like most other urban millennials, I am not willing to give up on
my daily disposable Starbucks coffee cup, trade my Uber pass for a bicycle,
wash my shirts by hand rather than dry clean, or minimize my electricity
consumption by waking up in the middle of the night to unplug either
of my two iPhones. Disclaimer: modern phone batteries don’t need to be
synchronized with your sleeping patterns for a full charge.
However, at the same time, I do not want my birth town in the
Canary Islands to be underwater, or my future penthouse in Manhattan’s
Billionaire Row (I dream a lot) to become the building’s ground level.
Industrialization has given us the railroad, the telephone, penicillin, and
much more—or to put it in today’s context: Uber, texting, and cancer
drugs. And in one of humanity’s greatest achievements, industrialization
even put a cute little dog named Laika into space. She came back dead,
but that is a different story.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the
United Nations’ body responsible for assessing the science related to
climate change. Every six to seven years they publish their findings
in extensive reports which are referred to as Assessment Reports.2 In
other words, the IPCC represents the official science on climate change.
One of the most consequential of these reports today is the Fifth
Assessment Report, published in 2014, which serves as the basis for
the Paris Agreement. According to the Agreement itself, “the goal is
to limit global warming to well below two degrees Celsius, preferably
to 1.5 degree Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels, and to aim to
reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible
to achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century.”3
The harshest climate scenario in this Assessment Report indicates
that our planet could be on average six degrees Celsius warmer by the
end of the century. To put this in colorful context: the last time earth
was on average six degrees Celsius warmer than today, instead of polar
bears, we can jokingly say that we had crocodiles at the North Pole.
However, there is certainly disagreement and incertitude among
the scientific community about what the impact of exceeding a two-
degree Celsius target could imply for our current climate patterns. In
fact, the two-degree-Celsius target was only picked as a consensus figure
among the scientific community. The reality is that we do not know the
exact impact of exceeding this target, and we can only estimate and
predict the impact based on our best understanding and interpretation
of how climate systems respond.
Around us, the subject of energy and climate have become so
mainstream and intertwined with politics that today’s discussion on the
subject has, in my view, literally been split into two antagonistic buckets:
you can either be climate denier or a climate believer. And there seems to be
no middle ground.
This book is about trying to bring those two sides together and
analyze the energy problem from a systems and business perspective.
I try to show that renewables and fossil fuels should not be viewed
as mutually exclusive sources of energy, but instead as compatible
forces that are part of a complex energy system. The discussion is
structured as follows. Part I of the book, “Setting the Stage,” looks at
the larger picture, introducing key aspects of the energy debate. Part II,
“Defining the Problem,” focuses on the climate crisis and how we got
where we are. Part III, “Searching for Solutions,” presents my view on
the potential scope of solutions.
Many people wait until the end of their career to write a book, but
I’ve decided to write mine at the beginning. Recognizing that my ideas
will evolve with time and experience, I’ve tried to frame the discussion
in terms of open questions rather than narrow answers. In a way, we’re
taking this learning journey together.
The foundation of the book is my formal education in the energy
field as well as my experience working in the oil and gas industry. I
provide extensive documentation—consisting of publicly available
data—as the basis of my arguments and as sources for interested
readers to follow up on.
But before I get into the story, I would like to share two personal
things about me: First, my ambitions are my own and I would never
cause any harm or foul play to achieve them. I believe in honesty and
hard work. And second, only big dreams lead to big things, so I think
we should encourage this way of thought and not shy from it. It’s the
only reason why I might share some of my ambitions publicly through
some parts of this book: to try and encourage everyone to think big
and loud. So long as you don’t hurt anyone or think you’re better than
anyone, why wouldn’t you?
So now that you know a little more about me and my motivation
and what this book is about, let me take you back a couple of months.
It’s the fall semester of my second and last year as a graduate
student at Columbia University’s School of International Affairs. By
May, I’ll be graduating with a master’s degree in public administration
with a concentration in Energy Resource Management. In other words,
a nexus between policy, energy, and business.
The fall is probably my favorite season to be in Manhattan; it’s not
too hot or cold and tourists seem to fade away like leaves from trees.
But the fall semester has an even more important meaning when you
are in graduate school: It’s recruiting season! Stress and tension run
high, and competition with your peers is palpable in every personal
engagement.
Every conversation starts the same: “Hey, how are you?” “So,
where are you applying?” In my case, following the pack, I submitted
applications to Bain, BCG, and McKinsey & Company. The former two
didn’t even call me for an interview, and the latter rejected me after the
first in-person interview based on my apparent inability to do simple
math without a calculator. This chain of failures occurred in the span
of a week. I was devastated. felt tremendous pressure and even dismay.
The day after the McKinsey debacle, I woke up at 5:30 a.m.,
popped open a Diet Coke, put a slice of leftover pepperoni pizza in my
mouth, and began to shape my destiny. For some reason, I have always
fantasized myself as becoming the next Big Energy executive (with all
the power, but without the gut and double chin). I also want to start an
energy hedge fund before I turn 50, but that continues to be my stretch
goal. As a heads-up, I already mentioned that I do fantasize a lot, right?
So, I opened my school’s career website and there it was: my
dream energy company. I immediately registered for the on-campus
information session. For the days leading up to the event, all I could
think about was the company. The feeling best compares to when you
first meet a person and are so excited about them you can’t even sleep.
You know it turns into obsession when you keep looking purposelessly
at your phone in the middle of the night in anticipation of a text
message. In my case, my text inbox had become the company’s website.
Twenty thousand employees, operations in over 20 countries,
expanding aggressively into renewables, and one clear business strategy:
commitment to long-term value creation in a low-carbon future. A
match made in heaven, as I felt my personal beliefs align entirely with
the company’s strategy.