Life Archives - Page 3 of 64

Who is the enemy?

Is it fossil fuels or the fossil fuel companies?

Biomethane (or upgraded biogas) has a challenging reputation in some markets. It is chemically indistinguishable from natural gas which is a fossil fuel. It burns identically and emits carbon dioxide when combusted. However, it is considered a low-carbon fuel because the carbon content from biomethane is actually the short-cycle carbon dioxide. It is great because you can combust and generate power or heat using a conventional gas turbine or other gas appliances with it without having to retool or change the equipment.

Biomethane is a clear pathway to support decarbonisation of gas and yet it is being shunned by critics. Part of the reason is that the fossil fuel companies are getting involved and could extend the lifespan of their fossil fuel assets and infrastructure using it. And some people are unhappy that they even receive low-carbon funding for the gas infrastructure.

When we see fossil fuel companies as enemies, then anything they do will be wrong and things that continues driving their asset base even tangentially related to fossil gas seem like a problem.

But if the enemy is carbon emissions, then those companies need to be given a chance. We need to demarcate some boundaries: for example, they could set a profit margin cap on themselves and commit all the funds above that towards clean energy investments. Or even better, they could funnel those funds into a ring-fenced facility which then dole out the resources towards anything proven to be low-carbon.

Migration of site

After having kevlow.com domain and plan on wordpress.com for 3 years, I’ve finally decided to uproot my site and migrate it to a self-hosted system. Existing subscribers might realise you are not getting email notifications. You can go back to your WordPress Reader settings to enable it.

With self-hosting, I’m going to be able to run a lot more things on my website itself including some of my digital product e-commerce as well as my mailing list. I might start managing it out of my own system very soon. So stay tuned while I try to figure all that out.

The backlog of entries should be coming back soon – apologies for all the hiccups during the migration process.

Good professional versus good employee

Sometimes I wonder if being a good professional can be different from being a good employee. After all, what is being a good employee when you’re over-delivering or serving your customers better than your employer expects? Is that “stealing” from your company? How about when you are over-worked by trying to be a good employee – does that set a bad example as a professional?

There seem to be some tension between doing good work and being a good employee. And it has to do perhaps with the actual business culture and character of the firm that you’re in. Or it comes through from the self-interested capitalist identity of what a firm stands for. It is strange though, that the firms that would persist tend to be the ones who have been able to uphold their values and commit to them.

So all the short run success factors and metrics turn out to be pretty poor indicator of long-run success. Yet people feel like they have no choice but to stick to these short term metrics because people can’t patiently wait for results or their fruits.

Sunny day will come

I chanced upon this brilliant letter penned by Stephen Fry to a fan named Crystal who wrote to him for help in a bout of depression and with no one else to turn to. It was kind of Stephen to have thought through it and replied, kindly and lovingly.

You might enjoy the letter as well as Stephen’s public reading of it in audio form nicely captured in this website stewarding all sorts of letters.

Virtue & values

Virtues are qualities of excellence that may be moral or intellectual; and once, the pursuit of virtues was the making of a purposeful and good life. Yet increasingly, as we welcome new cohorts of adults into our midst, the pursuit of a good life had become more material – especially in the culture amongst the newly developed countries and markets. Despite all the talk about ‘woke’ cultures and all, there is this foundation of material that underlies the material ability (or even authority) to criticise. To the extent that virtue itself is even criticised as ‘bigotry’.

Yet if you really reflect upon what virtues really are, they can hardly be considered bigotry. Someone who values certain character doesn’t necessarily have to judge the lack of it. One who is constantly in pursuit of that excellence and tries to uphold a high standard knows more than anyone else how difficult it is. Bigotry is more the sense that high standards should come easy for everyone and hence look down upon those who do not exhibit those standards.

To those who quietly recognise that the good life is meant to be lived and not ‘earned’ through material possession or collecting achievements. Thank you for soldiering on and showing the way.

Making the contribution

For first time in history but it’s already been a while, the world collectively seem to have abundance. The total amount of food produced could feed the entire world one and a half times over. If energy is used efficiently and excesses trimmed, the entire world should have decent amount of power to live normal modern lives. Of course that depends on what you mean by normal but I’m covering the same point that there’s enough in the world but the problem is distribution.

And distribution is not just a physical problem of course. Distribution can be an economic problem in itself. The fact that the market doesn’t really care that much about the distribution of resources, buying power / puchasing power is actually a problem. It skews the global economy towards what the people with means needs rather than producing for the best outcomes of the world. And this is perhaps why energy continues to be skewed towards the developed, high energy consumption countries or markets.

So making a contribution to this world isn’t really about production. If the world continues in the same fashion tomorrow, you can really make a greater impact on someone’s life – from an incremental perspective – by improving the distribution in the system. By bringing access to higher quality energy, better nutrition, bringing critical and vital knowledge to the communities which can use them properly. That sort of contribution is of unparalleled value. Probably not the kind of contribution involving helping companies break into new markets or keeping fossil fuel businesses alive to emit more carbon.

Greenwashing label

Is the whole notion of ESG disclosure a massive distraction? In 2021, Tariq Fancy of Blackrock called it a distraction for climate action. And I tend to agree because it tries to pass on the responsibility of climate action into the hands of the market, that had continually proved incapable of generating endogenous climate action. Sure, you need the market to scale solutions, and drive the expansion of some of the good things that will benefit the climate. But to think that the market can drive change just purely from the realisation of climate change as a problem is naive.

By leaving the type of climate action and the labelling of what counts as green to the market will simply generate greater confusion and inaction as we have seen from the proliferation of funds that tout sustainability or impact, or both and often still trying to pair that with financial returns, etc. The extra cost that goes into reporting, emissions accounting and massive resources around disclosure standards and all simply drives activities for the big consultancies without diverting energies towards the direction of climate action.

The issue is that greenwashing is real and pretty easy. And that can take the form of superficial disclosures that tosses buzzwords around. Yet there are corporates taking genuine action drowning in this sea of sustainability marketing and PR nonsense, being accused of greenwashing when they are trying to make a difference. If it was all going to boil down to rules, regulations and laws, then there won’t be ESG funds and non-ESG funds or government having to regulate disclosures. There won’t be accusations of greenwashing because you are either green or just illegal/non-compliant.

Regulation is of course a complex topic for another day but it has to be worked on. Regulating disclosure is unlikely to be enough.

Incentive to ignore

In 1977, more than 45 years ago, James Black, a senior scientist from ExxonMobil delivered a sobering message to the company:

In the first place, there is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels…

And in later warnings, he was clear about the need for action

…present thinking holds that man has a time window of five to 10 years before the need for hard decisions regarding changes in energy strategies might become critical.

And if you want to know more about this you can check out the article published 8 years ago in Scientific American. What I’m trying to say here is that incentives are important guide to corporations, businesses and while they are operated by humans, we cannot trust them to follow moral principles or human values that are not captured within regulations, rules or laws. In fact, we already cannot quite trust them to follow rules, regulations and laws to begin with, especially when they are at odds with profit-making.

The market is designed to act in certain ways that do not necessarily promote the greatest general well-being of the society. The conclusion that Adam Smith came to unfortunately doesn’t apply to the extent that market incentives rule so many aspects of our lives.

If ExxonMobil had been not only incentivised to ignore the climate problem but potentially contribute to confusion in the subsequent decades, how can we expect shareholder pressure, financial reporting and disclosures to help? And at the same time, putting all of these burden on the companies are probably going to make more enemies to decarbonisation. Disclosures are more about self-regulation and expecting the market to bring the whip. That’s hit and miss; and when there is incentive to ignore the problem, the market would, as we have seen for more than four decades.

It is time for governments to wake up and lead the mission on climate change. Businesses, consultants, NGOs, activists can only go this far and no more.

Market society

From the last couple of blog posts, I’m clearly revisiting the pondering of my youth in college about the role that market ideas should take. As I learn to live in a different society – this time as a working adult – from where I grew up, I begin to become more conscious of the way we structure our societies and how that reflects our values.

This talk by Michael Sandels is still relevant today if not more so. And especially for Singapore during this time with the recent saga from a certain social media post.

Remembering Tim Keller

More than 10 years ago, when I was exploring the Christian faith, my housemate got me to read ‘Counterfeit Gods’ by Timothy J Keller. It was a relatively easy but not quite comfortable to read. Tim Keller explained eloquently how we live diminished lives pursuing counterfeit gods who promise much but never delivers; and the deepest needs of our hearts are never satisfied by the things of this world. For me, it helped me desire more to explore the bible for myself and the gradually, as I delved into the riches of scriptures, I discovered more of how the gospel really changes our understanding of life and the world and is capable of shaping our response to it. I recognised the meaning of what good news it is for Jesus Christ to be my Saviour and God.

I went on to read the more difficult ‘Reason for God’ and went through a lot of Tim Keller’s sermons before I came to accept the faith. Of course, there was the help of my local church community, friends, not forgetting prayer and the scriptures. He came to be my favourite preacher and when I started dating my wife in college, the contents of ‘Meaning of Marriage’ both challenged and excited me as I come to appreciate more and more what God intends in the relationship between man and wife. As I learnt to navigate my work and career, I continued to draw upon the lessons from the scriptures with the help of Tim Keller’s preaching – which I would listen to during times when I did laundry, am alone running long distances or go on walks.

God had certainly reached out and enriched my understanding of His word greatly through the teaching by Tim Keller. Today, Tim Keller has gone to be with our great Saviour. And I want to remember his intellect, strength and wisdom enabled by God and used to do the good works that he has been prepared for. My heart is truly heavy at the loss of such a great teacher but I have full assurance that Tim is rejoicing with God. And I am challenged to grow and develop further my knowledge of God and my spiritual life, having seen how the richness in God works itself in the life of Tim Keller.