Book Review: Steyer, T., (2024), Cheaper, Faster, Better, Spiegel & Grau

Tom Steyer, a former corporate investor, has written a persuasive book about the climate crisis. He points out that world pollution is worse than ever before, with probably more dysfunctional developments to come. Steyer blames the oil and gas industry for not doing more to halt this. Yet as an eternal optimist, he highlights many current, positive developments for combatting emissions, pollution and climate temperature growth, mostly thanks to technological advances.

To reinforce his arguments, Steyer has written 11 short descriptions of what climate-committed people do to pursue a cleaner world. All of these examples provide doses of optimism, consistent with the way Steyer handles this issue, as we shall see!

Steyer is not only good at analyzing today’s setting when it comes to the challenge of combatting climate decay, he also provides us with many insights on how to manage, in general, and for how organizations should work. All in all, this is an extraordinary book. Although serious in his analysis of today’s climate decay, Steyer is indeed optimistic about a reasonable outcome. He is confident that we shall win the climate war.

This reviewer welcomes the optimistic tone of this book. This is in sharp contrast to the many doomsday-orientated discussions on the topic. It is perhaps Steyer’s background as a successful investor that allows him to make a more optimistic assessment of it all.

As already mentioned, oil and gas companies generally do not seem to care. While they now appear to have reached a similar conclusion as the rest of us, namely that burning fossil fuel releases a significant amount of CO₂ into the atmosphere, the industry now seems to be following a tactic of delaying societal countermeasures as long as possible, in order to benefit from additional years of high profits. This is quite analogous to the behavior we also saw from the tobacco industry some decades ago.

There is an additional paradox at play. Only in the US does the oil and gas industry receive an estimated USD 7 trillion in government subsidiaries! From a tax-law perspective, investing in oil and gas in the US today is one of the most advantageous investments one can make.

Steyer sees winning this battle as getting to a net zero, namely that emissions would be balanced out by the amount absorbed (primarily from oceans and forests). Clean energy tech could be much further ahead than most people realize. Victory is in site!

This means that we might have a fair chance to prevent the worst effects of climate change before it is too late. We shall of course never be able to wind back to the “good old days”, but to cope with this new situation, based on net zero, might still be fine.

The oil and gas industry is largely out of sync, seeming to rely on the assumption that status quo will persist forever. This industry clings to the way things are, even though things today seem to be getting increasingly worse at a relatively moderate rate. Steyer predicts that at some point in the not too far future, there could be a rapid acceleration. He has reached this conclusion by analyzing other settings, such as whaling and tobacco. It is new technology, Steyer predicts, that will bring energy prices down so significantly and rapidly so that fossil fuel-generated energy shall be out!

Steyer makes the strong argument that the so-called bridge-fuel argument does not work. Gas pollutes less than oil but there are large leakages of gas from pipelines, sending significant amounts of methane gas into the atmosphere. Leaking is such a big problem that neutral gas might be a bridge to nowhere.

The oil and gas industry are using a persuasive marketing campaign. They seem, in essence, to be playing for time, to be able to extend their high stream of income a few more years. But can we trust their arguments? They have lied before!

Steyer suggests five areas in particular where we need to cut down carbon pollution:

-       Electricity generation: burn less fossil fuels; more solar, wind, water, and nuclear-based electricity generation.

-       Transportation: use more electric cars and trains – less fuel inefficient ships and planes.

-       Manufacturing: make things with less heat.

-       Agriculture: produce the foods we need without emissions. New fertilizers!

-       Buildings: build fewer leaky buildings, more retrofitting.

All excessive greenhouse gas emissions cannot be taken out. This is a reality we need to accept. Therefore, to take greenhouse gases out of the air, so-called sequestration, must also be done. Processes to do this tend to be very expensive. To store such gases in emptied oil wells can be difficult. These gases are quite voluminous, also relative to oil. Thus, the storage capacity would be limited, when these gases get deliquified, and also excessively expensive.

Generation of electricity in ways that do not pollute is only part of the equation that needs to be solved. The other part relates to our power grids. AI can help optimize the capacity of power grids. New ways of covering power generators in the grids allow for transmission of higher voltage, i.e., opening up much more capacity on existing grids.

An issue that is related to CO₂ emission has to do with the mining of rare earth metals used in mining practices of rare metals. So, while electric cars, for instance, pollute less, mining practices to secure the necessary rare earth minerals to build the batteries required might cause considerable social and ecological problems.

Banks and other financial institutions are still, to a significant degree, financing the oil and gas sector. Even though here are more regulations on such new oil/gas projects, many banks still commit to financing this type.

The question is, what do you do? More than to passively agree with new regulation? This debate also illustrates the dilemma that many manufacturing firms face. They may have developed ways to produce clean products, while, at the same time, their well-established polluting products are on the market. How can they deal with both simultaneously? How fast can the new be phased in, at the expense of the established, especially when the cost of new, non-polluting, products is higher than the old?

What is a carbon footprint actually? This term was invented by BP as part of their rebranding into a more environmentally friendly firm. Yet this company has not invested in alternatives to oil/gas. Incredibly, no such repositioning seems to have been done in more than 20 years!

It gets worse than this. Leading academic institutions, such as Stanford (quite left leaning), maintains investments in oil/gas firms as part of their portfolios. There may be another dilemma here. While Stanford’s researchers appear busy in coming up with ways to combat excessive CO₂ emissions, how good are their efforts when another arm of their university invests in ways that support oil and gas?

There are also health considerations. We know that parts of this world are becoming so hot that they may soon be no longer habitable. Are we foreseeing massive human migrations to colder parts of the world? We know that toxic insecticides used in farming find their way into drinking water, and that this may lead to cancer.

Steyer refers to the 1962 book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. This book has been widely acknowledged as the launchpad for the modern environmental movement. Many of the harmful pesticides that Carson warned us about, DDT included, are now gone. But the basic argument, made by the chemical companies in 1962, is still there: “regulation is socialism!”. How can one argue with this, especially when we know that innovations are not being stifled? Good new rules seem ok. For instance, automotive safety was dramatically improved this way. But, to label rule-making as socialism may not get us that far.

So, as a key element to win the war on emissions, we clearly now have better technology. With firms, universities and research laboratories doing excellent work, we have better policies, better rules. And we are mobilizing! We must focus on people, to understand how much climate change is also the story of human suffering. Pollution is already taking a terrible toll on our quality of life. It is essential to remain climate optimists.