What Zelda tells me about life
Climate: Invite to Chris Stark event (7 Jun). Zelda: agency, creativity and art Battle of Cable Street: A tiny slice of Tower Hamlets. Adam Matthews: climate engagement crossroads. Copenhagen.
Climate: Invite to Chris Stark event, 7 June
Zelda: agency, creativity and art
Battle of Cable Street: A tiny slice of Tower Hamlets
Adam Matthews: climate engagement crossroads
A tiny slice of Copenhagen
My biggest event coming up is my conversation with Chris Stark. If you are at all interested in climate policy or you’d like to come and say hello, you should come. 5.30pm for 6pm start, 7 June at Chatham House, London. Invite and Details here. Let me know if you have good questions, like:
What corporates and investors should be doing (and not doing) on their net-zero transitions?
I walked to one of the weirdest conferences, I know of this year. The EAG conference1 is filled with people trying be impactful. This year the venue was near Shadwell and Wapping in London, Tower Hamlets.
I love London. I learn new things every week about the city. The walk by the canal and river offers a glimpse of a type of London closer to nature, closer to water and of some housing and building types from over 100 years ago and more, mixed with very modern builds. Currently many new buildings are going up in east London.
I passed by a mural, I never knew about (see picutre above). And, a small ruins of a building. Here is the story of the mural- the battle of Cable Street. I knew a little of this story but hadn’t fully appreciated it.
“The Battle of Cable Street was a series of clashes that took place at several locations in the inner East End, most notably Cable Street, on Sunday 4 October 1936. It was a clash between the Metropolitan Police, sent to protect a march by members of the British Union of Fascists (BUF) led by Oswald Mosley, and anti-fascist demonstrators, including local trade unionists, communists, anarchists, British Jews, supported in particular by Irish workers, and socialist groups.”
•In 1936, the BUF led by Sir Oswald Mosley was planning to march through East London, an area with a large Jewish, Irish and immigrant population. The BUF wanted to provoke tension and recruit members.
•Local Jewish, communist and labour groups organized against the march, calling for people to stop Mosley and fascism from gaining a foothold in Britain. They set up roadblocks and organized demonstrations.
•On October 4, 1936 thousands of anti-fascist demonstrators gathered in East London to block the planned BUF march. Fighting broke out between demonstrators and the police sent to clear the route for the BUF march.
•The police were ultimately unable to contain or disperse the large crowd of protesters, estimated (by some at the high end) at around 300,000 people. The demonstrators successfully stopped the BUF march from going ahead.
•The Battle of Cable Street is seen as an important turning point, where fascism in Britain was resisted strongly and publicly by a united opposition. Mosley and the BUF never fully recovered from this defeat.
•The confrontation highlighted serious issues of anti-semitism, immigration and racial tension in Britain at the time. But it also showed the power of unity against fascism across social and racial divides.
I think about this when I contemplate what brings about social change (or not). What makes some ideas, moments, institutions persist and what makes others fade ?
What Zelda can teach you about being human and being in the world ?
“...I would set off from a stable to meet up with a village chief, spot a couple of people arguing outside a cave, jump off my horse to investigate and go spelunking. Then I’d come out the other side to see an as-yet-undiscovered sky tower in the distance, batter some monsters on my way towards it (with the help of a flame-throwing shield I spontaneously invented earlier), build a makeshift go-kart out of some parts I found near their camp, ride it halfway up a mountain towards the tower, start a fire to burn up the thorny bushes blocking the entrance, climb the tower, catapult myself into the sky, spot a glowing shrine on a floating islet, glide towards it and get caught up solving the puzzle within … Three hours later I’d somehow be halfway up Death Mountain on the other side of the map, the village chief would still be waiting, and my abandoned horse would still be pawing the ground outside that cave….” (That from the 5 star Guardian review)
Or, my impression as I look at the gamplay….You run up a hill chased by bokoblins. The vista rises on forest grassland detailed in a way that any passing viewer would pause to take the site in. You stick a mushroom on your shield, blow the bokoblins away and search for that faraway structure you had spied earlier to go and inspect.
Zelda: Breath of the Wild (BoW) regularly vies in gamer debates for best game of all time. A few days ago, the sequel Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was launched and initial impressions range from at least as good, to possibly better than the original. It sold over 10 million copies in 3 days (that’s more than the early days of chat GPT ?!)
One of the aims of creative art is to change your view of the world, your view of yourself and to somehow change you into a different better self. Great art enhances your sense of self, your sense of agency, your sense that what you can do can impact the world, impact other humans and make a difference.
I’ve come to believe that this sense of agency, this sense you can make a difference and the action that comes with agency is important in what it means to be a satisfied human.
Part of the climate challenge I observe in conversation with some people is that they feel powerless and hence anxious and upset. They feel they have no agency.
In animal behaviour there is a phenomenon called learned helplessness. Where animals learn that they can not impact something, they stop trying to impact that thing. They learn they are helpless and become helpless.
This behaviour applies to humans. We can learn to be helpless - even when we are not. And even if matters are out of our control, if you can not give yourself a sense of agency on the world, this lack of agency weighs heavily on one's psyche.
What Zelda BoW, and what Tears does (perhaps even more so) - gives you in spades is a sense of agency, along side a sense of wonder, curiosity and experimentation. (My friend’s game, Dreams - which I blogged on before also has this.)
The world is breathtaking, wondrous and inviting, but along side this you can make your mark on this world and your choices, your agency matters.
Actions and ideas in the digital and imaginative world may not translate into the physical world. Yet, to the extent that these magical worlds can teach you to make your decisions, to have agency and to open up wonder in the world. I am keen.
In that manner, this game sits along side other great art with its power to change. One of my lines of theatre practise influenced by my long association with Coney, Tassos Stevens and others is the art of playing and giving people agency via art. Listen here to Tassos and myself.
If we can teach people to use their agency for the better, then so much the better.
I moderated at a climate panel at the CFA UK conference. There were points made on continuing education and regulation, transition materials, incentives, alignment of asset managers and asset owners. Adam Matthews (CRIO at Church of England Pension Board) made some new points, which he sums up below:
1. We are at a crossroads in engagement with the oil & gas sector. We have engaged for nearly 10 years and intensely for 5 years as part of Climate Action 100+. The change in direction by oil and gas companies over the past year chasing short-term profit maximisation has caused a fundamental break with the long-term interests of pension funds. That pursuit will delay the transition and will negatively impact not only our portfolios but the chances of the world achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. The vote at Shell also exposed a gap between how fund managers interpret the long-term interests of their pension fund clients. This is something the UK Asset Owner Roundtable is intending to consider as a number of us have been in meetings where oil & gas companies have clearly said they are being encouraged down this short-term path by their largest fund managers.
2. Engagement with O&G should no longer be a top priority of CA100+. We should focus on demand side companies and how quickly they can exit their dependency on oil and gas. Alongside emissions targets we need oil & gas exit targets and plans we can finance. If big listed oil & gas companies no longer believe they can make a business out of renewables then the investor expectation should simply be they stop spending shareholder funds on the upstream and commit to wind down in line with the Net Zero Oil and Gas Standard.
3. Investors must work national up supporting emerging markets and developing countries achieve ambitious targets to transition/build their energy systems. Where there is any dependency on gas lets understand it in the national context. We need to support whole system transition from the assets that needs to be closed, workforces supported, to the new grids and renewable systems. Investors need to better understand transition debt and work collaboratively to finance EM. There is no Paris Agreement without doing so.
4. Time to get serious on public policy advocacy. Informed by the demand side and emerging market focus, lets explore what a phased moratorium on oil & gas looks like.
5. The Global Investor Commission on Mining 2030 is vital and key to how we can support this sector to provide transition minerals. We cannot have a transition that leaves a legacy of social and environmental discord but instead has benefited communities and countries to flourish.
This is an evolution (arguably even a break with) the standard view of climate engagement, so very much worth contemplating.
This would invite a parallel thought that (in extreme) leave brown companies alone to be most efficiently brown, ideally returning that cash to investors. Investors invest in new green start-ups or those companies that are already best placed to innovate green. The idea (debated) being that brown companies are not placed placed to innovate green. And so transition does not happen within a company, but within the system.
I also visited Copenhagen in the week mostly to visit companies. I caught up with a few sustainability people as well and a neuroscientist working on ergodicity (twitter link to his paper here). It was insightful to speak first hand to immigrants to Copenhagen.
The city is wonderful and I love it. But it is small. Population is about 0.6 million vs London at 9m. GDP per capita on average is rich (USD 90,000 vs London at USD 70,000; although note inner/central London has GDP per capita in the USD 200,000 range and a larger population than Copenhagen). Ideas are possible here that aren’t easy at a larger scale. Still, the buildings are lovely (and often well insulated)!
The spirit of the river and canals, the hygge cosiness suffuses the city and people. Yet, I sense the city is fairly homogenous as well. I see that in the people, in the dress, in the way of life. I think this homogeneity - which I assumes comes with high social trust as well - allows certain things to happen which I think also is harder with more diversity. Only a small thought.
In a couple of spare hours I had, I hung out at Barr (IG here). They were very hospitable (hygge) to let me hang out after lunch into the afternoon there. The staff suggested that the schnitzel was (probably) the best schnitzel in the world. It was very good, and the sauce uniquely a flavor I had not tried with schnitzel (butter and caper) although I have had its equal in the Japanese katsu versions in Japan. (And my Mum’s version is very good too!).
The open sandwich (smoked garfish, I tried) was extremely good. At a push, I would go for 3 of those (or varying types) for the calories = to the one schnitzel. The kombucha from a local place was very light, much lighter than anything I find in London. Some would prefer that. I like both light and stronger.
I judge the food is a little more expensive in Copenhagen ( in the mid to high end) than London, and alcohol a lot more expensive. Low end about the same on food.
I’ve read the biography of Derek Parfit and hope to podcast with the biographer, David Edmonds, soon. If you’ve read it, let me know questions you might have. More on this anon.
Be well.
(It’s an Effective Altruism conference - although is it weirder than competitive yo-yos or competitive hot dog eating? More on this another time, as I myself, am not an effective altruist. If anything, I guess I’m a pluralist altruist.)