This past week I spoke at a luncheon for the Natural Gas Energy Association of Oklahoma regarding ESG topics and issues. After the luncheon, I presented a three hour class on ESG along with a 12 Question ESG Internal Audit for companies.
The acronym ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance, and it’s the hottest thing for people to talk about in oil and gas. And everyone knows everything all about it. You don’t even have to ask them, they will just post and shout about it now.
During the class we went over a number of topics from potential Climate Labels on food to your company’s Water Usage to Public Relations and Marketing. It was the public relations thread I would like to discuss today in this Classroom Column. I believe I had one of those “lightbulb meets grabbing the brass ring” moments in life.
I would like to point out at this time this ESG stuff is not for everyone. ESG University does not represent either political party, nor do we regurgitate ESG propaganda from the government. Incidentally, that last sentence was grammatically accurate and not political. Propaganda used to be the correct word until the 1920’s, at that time it was changed to Public Relations. And I believe “regurgitate” is a more accurate description than “repeat”.
The collective impact Public Relations has had in transforming our cultural mindset as individuals, publics, and societies is remarkable. Popular Culture is one of the most influential places for propaganda, public relations and marketing. So are the mass psychologies and social engineering in pop culture.
My senior year in college, I wrote my 50-page thesis on The Simpsons. It had to do with their social commentary on our hegemonic culture. Basically, in a nutshell, it showed how we live in a society where Homer is a white male and can do no wrong and say no wrong. The more “wrong” he was, the more power he seemed to get too. It was a cutting edge and thought-provoking essay for the University System at that time. I got an ‘A’ too.
This ESG University Classroom Column will be taken along the same path as I revisit a couple books from my childhood. Keep in mind every other kid in America got these too. Not every kid, just every other. Some kids got juice and others got grape drink… it’s purple.
I think many forget there was (and is) a weekly book club our government and appointed leaders participate in. This is a huge responsibility and no one ever talks about it. The psychological imprints and suggestive seeds are quite remarkable actually. Let’s take a look at two weekly children’s books from my childhood.
Ever since I was a wee young boy, there are two Children’s books that have left their social and cultural imprint on me still to this day. This has been validated a number of ways from memory recalls, situational stereotypes and even which books I chose to read to my son.
One of the two books is my fun, skip-and-slide-in-life children’s book called Oscar The Otter. This book connected immediately on a personal level. It was about a young Otter who pushes his luck and defies his father’s rules and instructions.
Oscar even got the curiosity itch like me and went exploring way too far and too long. It’s like looking in a mirror with this little otter.
Eventually Oscar reached the top of the hill and couldn’t explore any more so reality smacked him hard. There he was all alone, in the cold unfamiliar snow with no one around to lend a hand. Literally just a bunch of wolves and predators. So what does Oscar do?
Trust your instincts and take the plunge. Oscar did what otters do and jumped on the side of the hill and carved his own path. Well in this case, otter slide.
This slide jumped over fallen trees, avoided wolves and even got a little help from a beaver who Oscar slighted earlier. Just when Oscar needed a little nudge of help, the beaver stepped in and nudged. Just like a good neighbor and true friend will do.
Oscar learned many lessons that day. At least I did. And that book involuntarily resurfaces in my mind often when I am outside enjoying nature, or getting into mischief or even faced with stressful obstacles.
Extra TMI Confession, Oscar The Otter is actually kinda my Catcher in the Rye for weirdos to calm down. Nama-Otter-Ste
The other book that has continuously entered my mind for the past 30 years is Harry The Dirty Dog. This book, on the other hand, always left me confused, disconnected and uncertain.
One of the best examples I can give you about Harry The Dirty Imprint is my first trip to Pittsburgh in 2001. PNC Park had just opened and I was going to spend a week there.
At this point in life I had not ever been to Pittsburgh or seen too many pictures. I am not exaggerating when I say over 90% of my Pittsburgh imagery is of the Steelers, Pirates and smoke stack steel mills. That was my pre-Internet education of Pittsburgh growing up in the Midwest.
If my school system taught me more than Pittsburgh is a dirty steel smoke town, I didn’t retain it because Andy Van Skyke, Jerome Bettis, Barry Bonds, Bobby Bonilla and The Steel Curtain are the only real positives I retained. Sorry Bradshaw, I grew up around Purple People Eaters, so you know.
With all this context I drove into Pittsburgh expecting dirty soot and smoke, only to see an absolutely gorgeous city. The rivers, the ball parks and treed landscape. This town was legit. Like Top 10 Best City legit.
After all the positives and wow factor of Pittsburgh settled in, my Libra mind went right to Harry The Dirty Dog. Then I thought of how many teachers and educational volunteers used that book in my life as an example to illustrate industry to me.
In the same way Oscar The Otter reinforces accountability, mischief and personal growth, Harry The Dirty Dog reinforced all times that someone in authority misrepresented industry, family values and stereotypes.
One might call it my Yin and Yang of children’s imprint books. For Boomers, think of the Angel and Devil on the shoulders.
So when I first entered the oil and gas industry, I felt lied to. I didn’t see what my teachers, non profit youth leaders and elected officials were telling me as fact all those years. I saw opportunity, innovation, empowerment and environmental action.
So In 2014, the title of my weekly energy column published by the Bismarck Tribune was “Coal’s Problem Is Harry The Dirty Dog”. The column was more than a coal alert column actually, it was also an industry alert and hope that some would make the connection that they are included in Harry The Dirty Dog’s social imprints.
Back then the coal industry was in a fierce battle with the government and special interest groups. As a Libra, there is no idea not allowed on my scale. The only issue, the OCD-gene inside of me is constantly looking for that new idea to balance the scale. Not put more weight onto the side I just put the idea on, no, the opposite.
I call it mental ping pong. I take an idea and bat it around back and forth with as many clever crazy stupid wonderful ideas that I can. Then eventually it becomes vapor or mentally filed away for later.
I should point out at this time, especially for fellow Libras, just because we think it, doesn’t mean we are going to do it. However it does make us aware of it, therefore our next step in life is now completely different than it was ten seconds ago.
Interesting how awareness can change a person’s mind slowly. The mind becomes aware of something, yet the actions do not always sync right away. How many people reading this are planning something right now? Why not just do it? Because some things in life take time.
In geology there is a thing called erosion. In earth science, erosion is the action of surface processes that remove soil, rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth’s crust, and then transports it to another location where it is deposited. Erosion is distinct from weathering which involves no movement.
In the emotional world, you know the intangible part of life. Erosion happens too.
I would argue that we now live in a subjective society, which is one where laws and regulations are now being justified due to emotion over science. Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter, it’s the new normal and I am just pointing it out as another example of the Current Chaos Creator.
In order to explain Emotional Erosion, I will use The Grapes Of Wrath. Jon Steinbeck’s “classic” novel. I put “classic” in quotes because that is not my descriptive adjective and label, it’s someone else. There’s your first ESG U lesson in Emotional Erosion.
If you disagree with someone else’s fact or description, an emotion is evoked before your mind is aware. This is why awareness is so important in Emotional Erosion, Brainwashing, Manufacturing Consent and other linguistic tricks us writers, marketing professionals, politicians and people in power use on you the reader and consumer.
Have I lost you yet with my ESG University Level banter and discourse? Because I swear we will get there, and it’s well worth it. (see what I did there?)
OK, back to The Grapes of Wrath, which tells the story of the Joads, a 1930s era family of farmers who leave their dust storm ravaged home in Oklahoma to seek a better life in California.
One of the main underlying themes is the consequences of not nurturing the planet, and also, I believe, of what happens when people, the nurturers of humanity, forget how to care for themselves.
What was once abundant, nutrient-rich soil filled with plants and animals became useless dirt, depleted of any nourishing or nurturing capabilities. Starvation quickly ensued for humans and animals alike.
It’s this despair that Steinbeck’s characters were trying to escape that connected with those not in that geographical area of the Panhandle. Not the soil, farmers or new legislation to stop the degradation of the land.
Now think of Harry The Dirty Dog. Remember that Yin and Yang reference? Black and White. Light and Dark. Good and Evil. Even the cover is Yin and Yang.
Inside all of us, there is a plot of land that needs our love and care. For many it is as easy as a Garden of Eden imprint and human’s original sins are ruining the planet. For others it’s a spiritual ecosystem that’s completely self-supporting and sustainable, so long as we know how to tend it and care for it the “right way”.
When we don’t have the proper tools to nurture it, the soil of our soul becomes exposed to the damaging effects of our negative life experiences. It dries up, loses its nourishing capabilities, and blows away, leaving us completely ungrounded.
One could argue this theme was present in Harry the Dirty Dog. In the story, Harry joins his buddies and they go have fun frolicking around industry. Not the mud hole or the wet paint sign. No, Harry left home and went out into the world and landed in industry with his friends.
The book really hammered it home too.
The coal chute made him the dirtiest of all. Not the dirt or soil in the backyard garden or smelly garbage dump, nope, coal made him the dirtiest of all. The previous pages showed how tar, oil, asphalt and pipelines were the gateway carbons to his dirty ways.
Now many of you might be thinking I am writing this in Colorado after visiting one of their dispensaries. Fair point, but check out the next part of the story. His own family didn’t even recognize him because he was dirty from industry.
They didn’t recognize his voice. His energy. His eyes. His behaviors. Even his tricks.
The extreme hippie inside of me totally tears up when I see Harry’s last trick to as he tries to be accepted by his family once again. Harry’s last trick before he gives up is playing dead.
Once Harry cleans off all the industry from his mind, body and soul, he is accepted back into the family.
The real irony in Harry The Dirty Dog, is that while parents were eating popcorn enjoying rags to riches feel good oil stories about James Dean’s Giant and Jed Clampett’s Beverly Hillbillies, the babysitter was reading their children Harry The Dirty Dog, sprinkling seeds of Climate Activism and showing how many people in power, perhaps even your own family, will always judge a book by it’s cover. Even their own family dog.
Class dismissed til next week.
Questions on today’s lesson? Know someone using Ethical Energy? ESG University wants to know who these leaders are as we continue to showcase and highlight ESG solutions in energy. For consideration, please email studio@thecrudelife.com companies, people and organizations showing ESG in action.
ESG University Classroom Column is written by Jason Spiess and no way reflects the mission or position of The Crude Life. ESG University is an educational paper with classic newspaper op/ed elements sprinkled in. Because of this, we must categorize the column as Opinion and Editorial and run this disclaimer.
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