Many of you in the industry may not know that I am a wordsmith by education. This particular education at North Dakota State was a bit different than others for sure. One of the main reasons it was different was Tim and Deanna Sellnow. This husband and wife team of communication professors had the greatest impact on me from my college years without a doubt. I heard the year after I graduated they were headhunted by the University of Kentucky to run their Communications Department. The reason was simple, I asked NDSU for a college education in communications, and I even paid for it, and they taught me how to reverse engineer language.
In other words, I asked Tim and Deanna Sellnow what time it was and they taught me how to build a clock.
Layer in my altar boy catholic school pedigree with Latin masses and learning language by osmosis, and you have forging and alchemy involved with making the parts to the clock. It’s finding the word’s meaning in the root of the root for this Libra mind.
That old school education evolved into many professional roles involving the use of language, from an editor-in-chief to a public relations marketing director to a new media advisor to even a publisher before I started Living The Crude Life. So when I read the latest public letter from BlackRock, it reminded me about how we are in the home stretch of the ESG structure and rules.
Allow me to explain. I am what some would call a word nerd. A sapiotexual kind of a guy. I adore killer context, tacocat and impeccable idiosyncrasies. Not much for alliteration though.
There was a time when I could get behind a good exaggeration, but now they are so amazing, epic and commonspeak that they literally make my skin crawl 10,000 times worse than anyone can ever imagine.
It does make me wonder if I am the only one left listening to the words leadership is saying on a regular basis. The smoking gun in that statement is that this ESG movement started over a decade ago and just now companies, states and organizations are having meetings whether they should have meetings or not to discuss ESG.
That type of meeting always yields multiple meetings of regulatory reactions when your company is given the new rules.
The use of language in the ESG Evolution has been quite interesting from a variety of perspectives and angles. This is one of the main reasons why the ESG movement caught my attention almost a decade ago – their use of language in a very technical science field.
I first became aware of ESG in 2013 when I stumbled upon a published paper in the Harvard Business Review. I was researching a story on flaring, emissions and natural gas when I noticed this article’s headline as a footnote in some technical innovation paper.
Many of the people who know me well have called me an environmentalist due to fifteen years of having a plant-based diet, building permaculture plots and cleaning highways without any corporate money or donations, so I investigated this ESG acronym further as I felt a connection to it in 2013.
Let’s back up a little bit more to 1997, a time what people would now call their “personal ESG Movement”. That is when I eliminated cow milk from my diet. This decision completely changed how I lived life. How I ate and drank in life.
Back in 1997, you know last century, there was one store in Fargo, ND, that sold almond milk. It was a little hippie shack health food store called “Tochi“. The owner was a legit hippie and environmentalist. He actually had his own strain of garlic called “Music” he curated over the decades on his organic farm outside of town.
Now when I say organic, that is what the hippies and environmentalists called it. This business owner didn’t use any pesticides or insecticides or GMOs. He was so organic, he even used the moon cycle to plant his crops. That’s right, he would plant them during the full moon according to his hippie planting chart.
I just can’t pass up making up a new title for someone who is the combo of a full moon, garlic farmer who plants while making music. He’s a Linguistical Lunar Lycanthrope Laborer. Remember I’m not one for any alliteration.
Needless to say my monthly trips to Tochi for almond milk and healthy snacks could and would quickly turn into a three-hour stand-around-and-listen to remarkable and weird stories event. Some conversations were so long and interesting that the hippie food I was purchasing expired.
I learned a lot about organic culture and language. I also saw first hand how the government reinvented the organic industry after they reimagined the agriculture industry for this environmental expert.
So when I saw yet another firm like BlackRock Financial tying retirement accounts into ESG and climate change, it caught my attention. When I read their latest public letter and saw the word “tectonic shift” it jumped off the page as if I felt their language. It reminded me this ESG movement has been going on for 10 plus years now and it’s almost ready to dictate and direct the energy sector in business and beyond.
That’s the new normal in ESG, it is a tectonic shift. A continental shift. A planetary shift. A shift back to one mental image of a Pangea Power Plant with an all the above energy world.
What’s the reality behind the hyperbole “tectonic shift”? Well here’s a little context for you with the paragraph used before BlackRock dropped the phrase “beginnings of a tectonic shift of capital”.
“Decarbonization is proceeding at different speeds across different parts of the economy and the world. The shocks we see in the energy sector today are one example of the challenges the transition poses. Increased investment in the supply of renewables outpaced the reduced investment in fossil fuels. Now, increased demand for fossil fuels in the restart of economic activity and impaired supply have driven up the price and use of gas, oil, and coal. There will be periods like this when traditional energy performs well – periods that should not be seen as counter to the transition, but as part of it.”
Without getting too political or deep diving into citing facts, I will use the rule of three I was taught in my creative writing classes.
- Most of the same leaders who have been managing the economy with regulations and public private partnerships are still involved today. Our President Joe Biden has been in office so long helping manage our economy, he was behind much of the regulation reinventing coal to operate in the 80’s, only to be behind the regulations to reimagine their shut down thirty years later.
- In the 1990’s California had mandates of 1% and 10% EV vehicles by the end of the 20th century. The EV vehicles didn’t catch on but the hybrid vehicles did. The government didn’t seem to care about that quasi-free market creating a brand new hybrid market, rather it doubled down into the EV market with more regulations and subsidies. Today many Californinians are leaving the state for Texas and Idaho due to CA’s high taxes, rising energy costs and insane gasoline (and cigarette) prices.
- The Government Managed Marketplace has businesses waiting for their round of financing, grants and banker approval loans. I know three people in corporate America who were let go this month due to increased sales or maxed out business. In a nutshell, the business has enough in the pipeline for the next one to two years they are laying off business development positions until they figure out what to do after that.
Get rid of the high salaried sales specialist for the less experienced order taker who can be groomed rather than critically think right now. Save money, kick the can of business development down the road and train a new sales person slowly. A hybrid.
Now back to BlackRock. Here’s the “tectonic shift” paragraph.
“In the beginnings of a tectonic shift1 of capital, investors have moved their money into sustainable investments at six times the growth rate of traditional investments, with assets globally now totaling $4 trillion across all ESG categories. And there has been striking change across carbon-intensive industries, from energy to heavy industry to agriculture, to decarbonize and remake their businesses.
The speed and shape of the transition are deeply uncertain, and it will take decades to play out. It is essential that governments, businesses, and finance work together to manage the transition in an orderly fashion, ensuring reliable energy supply and cost along the way.”
Public Private Partnership with Wall Street directing the ship. That’s the new tectonic shift in ESG.
Ask yourself what your industry’s or company’s leadership did last week. Because this past week there was the largest cancelation (1.7 M acres) of oil business involving off shore drilling leases in US history and also $1.15B in government subsidies to plug orphan wells.
Which one dominated the news? Orphan Wells are the new sexy thing in energy. Billy Idol gets it. Heck even Tito’s Fine Spirits is getting in on the Orphan Well cause with the Well Done Foundation.
The Well Done Foundation’s Chairman of the Board Curtis Shuck is a sharp man with decades of experience in energy, media and public meetings and I know he sees firsthand how the Orphan Wells have become the best way for oil companies to connect with pop culture and the people.
Back to these successful sales people getting laid off due to having too much business on the books… to me I see a similarity or perhaps a chapter to the COVID story when I heard these layoff stories. Some companies became seduced into taking on new debt without having any new business so there was some downsizing to match the new revenues. Some were given large dump trucks of government-influenced business and R&D money.
So what we have is a situation where some businesses are tightening ship or their belt because they got such huge contracts after a year of corporate mergers and acquisitions, while others are taking on more debt to develop new business and sales in a very controlled marketplace.
One could argue this is what expanding and contracting companies do in a free market, however, this is no longer a free market. It is controlled and managed by a public private partnership where decisions are made within the catered meeting rooms with the Acronym Alphabet Group of special interest.
Now, remember the paragraph before? The one where the government canceled the largest oil and gas lease in history a few days before subsidizing oil companies with orphan well money. If I were a betting man, I would bet in six months while the social media world is becoming saturated with orphan well pics from oilfield service companies competing with posts about how much they love the planet, someone somewhere will finally figure out that by accident or design, the trifecta of government, corporations and bankers working together may have just disguised “ESG orphan well money” as a severance package for a large chunk of the industry.
Last time I checked, approved oil leases produce future work, tax revenues and small business stability, whereas, plugging wells plugs wells.
Class dismissed til next week.
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