Consenting to a world without oil, gas, and coal

Consent of the governed

We implicitly consent to a world where we cannot just go up to someone and directly harm them.

We implicitly consent to not harming them indirectly either; we cannot pour oil in front of their doorway deliberately to cause them to slip.

This consent does not only limit what we can do; we implicitly accept that we may be punished. We consent to this because it also protects us from being harmed by others.

This is the principle of consent of the governed. It is the foundation of why laws work.

Individual laws come about over time as situations change, and people recognise there are new ways by which others can harm each other. These laws operate at a national level. We elect of law makers in our countries to enact laws our behalf. In this way, we give our governments the right to look after our interests under this consent to be governed.

Governments, however, have long exercised a principle that the interests of the state can and sometimes must overrule the interests of individuals. Machiavelli in The Prince expresses how the security of the state must take priority: a state must go to war when its security is threatened even though going to war will for certain put its citizens in harm’s way.

Today, it is economic interests which take precedence. Governments enter into trade agreements with other countries even if its own fishing, textile, or manufacturing industries may suffer. Governments put the interests of the whole economy regularly above the interests of individuals and groups, and sometimes even ahead of all its citizenry.

As citizens of nations, this is part of the consent we give to be governed. We implicitly accept this on the international arena. Where issues arise, we retain individual sovereignty through referendum or elections. The Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the following rounds of general elections are examples of individuals expressing their sovereignty and reinforcing their consent.

In the matter of climate change, however, the global citizenry lacks the essential ability to consent to be governed by a world without oil, gas, and coal.

This choice is blocked by the fact that the traded commodities of oil, gas, and coal bring tangible and substantial economic benefits now to individual countries while the harm caused by their use lie intangibly in the future.

The COP process reflects this. It has increasingly become focused on technologies and financing, on the things that benefit jobs and economy in the present, to the degree that any mention of an actual program to reduce oil, gas, and coal has disappeared. Net-zero pledges are not the same as an actually program spelling out the reduction of oil, gas, and coal production.

This has come about because the participating governments put their economic interests first, and it is tragically rational that they do this because this is what our consent authorises them to do.

Climate change is a uniquely different situation

Climate change harms the future far more than it harms the present. It harms all people together far more than it harms any one nation. It makes the current form of national governance fail at the very point where it is needed to succeed most – to bring people together. Instead, the focus on national interests creates tit-for-tat bargaining and proliferations of the very oil, gas, and coal it should be working to keep in the ground.

Recovering this ability for the global citizenry to consent as a worldwide body of people to be governed by a roadmap of reducing oil, gas, and coal production is the most pressing issue for our individual sovereignty and strikes at the heart of how we deal with climate change.

Nature of the crisis

Climate change harms us like smoking.

Each smoke particle we inhale itself does not by itself cause death, but the accumulation of the alien smoke particles reduces our lungs’ ability to function, weakening our ability to breath effectively. This subtly changes our habits and lead us to less healthy lifestyles. It creates a dependency on smoking. This increases the chances of developing all manner of diseases which, ultimately, cause death.

The difficulty the anti-smoking lobby faced was this loose and complex connection between cause and effect. Most of all, we gain immediate benefits when we smoke but at that moment of inhalation we do not feel the cumulative long-term damages to ourselves and to those around us.

With climate change, the remote and highly technical connections between the burning of oil, gas, and coal and the storms, floods, heatwaves and all manner of extreme weather disrupting our lives makes it difficult to see how the one is related to the other. What makes these events not just extreme weather events but signs of something much larger is that they are happening around the world together. These events are rarely reported in this way. This makes it even more difficult to appreciate. We report them like we may complain of an occasional bad cough when what is happening is the cough is one symptom among many of a broader shutdown of the body.

Climate is global. It is the global occurrence of extreme weather events more out less at the same time that is the problem. 

The costs of these more or less concurrent disruptions ricochet into our over-extended and highly-leveraged economy and affect the affordability and supply of everything from energy, food, to materials. Governments respond defensively and ban exports of essential items and onshore essential supplies. This further fractures a global economy that relies on free and open trade.

Without trade, governments run out of cash. Social provisions become underfunded as costs and inflation rise. The traditional route of stimulus to promote more activities lead to greater energy demands. As a trivial example air conditioning increases as businesses respond especially during extreme heatwaves to maintain your productivity. It all goes to drive the need for more oil, gas and coal.

Governments lacking budgetary space end up playing into this demand by exploring for and producing more oil, gas, and coal; even if this will fuel more extreme weather.

The result is the short-term benefits from producing more oil, gas, and coal run against the long-term unequivocally bad consequences.

Governments do not face these long-term consequences; each government exists only during its tenure. The short-term economy is more immediately important to its re-election than the longer-term consequences. Businesses also do not face these long-term consequences. Their owners change and their managements are compensated by the profitability over their own tenures. They despite all the rhetorics on sustainable business will be dead and are not paid by how the world actually will look like in a hundred years.

Therefore, as climate change worsens, the drive to more activities supports more new entrants to produce more oil, gas, and coal.

We are all exploring

In 2022, 47 countries in Africa, a continent that has seen the worst damages from extreme droughts, floods, storms, etc, are actively exploring for oil, gas and coal. Zimbabwe which previously never produced oil before announced a recent discovery. Somaliland did the same with a basin containing potentially 30 billion barrels. Immediate ownership of this was contested by its neighbours. Even developed countries are doing the same. The UK’s short-lived Truss government facing fiscal collapse approved 100 new explorations in its 44 days of power. Norway, which already has amassed $1.2 trillion of savings from its oil and gas industry is still exploring for new oil and gas fields.

The consequence is no matter the progress in renewable energy and in the energy transition, the amount of oil, gas, and coal production continues to increase.

Without a mechanism for the citizenry of the world to consent to be governed by a world without oil, gas, and coal, the COP process is broken. Individual governments may agree at the multilateral forum and sign treaties, but the need to look after the short-term national economic interests override the longer-term interests of their own and the broader citizenry of the world. 

We need a mechanism to recover the ability for individual citizens to consent to be governed by a roadmap of reduction in oil, gas, and coal that can bring businesses and governments into it fully within existing frameworks.

Intent to harm

The distinction between producing more oil, gas, and coal today versus previous decades is the certainty we have today that any further production harms people.

When Svente Arrhenius noted in his paper in 1896 On the Influence of Carbonic Acid in the Air on the Temperature of the Ground that greenhouse gases increase temperatures on the ground, he dismissed the possibility that using coal could be a problem. In 1965 when President Johnson received the report on air pollution and was informed of the potential of global warming, scientific understanding was still developing and the then existing computational power could not forecast with any accuracy the situation we face today.

By 1997 at the time of the Kyoto Protocol, the situation changed. Charles David Keeling had provided consistent measurements of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and demonstrated without question its increasing concentration and correlated that increase to the use of oil, gas, and coal. This was further correlated with temperature measurements; simulations clearly identified emissions as harmful to the future of the planet.

The Kyoto protocol embodied this harming into a multilateral agreement. Richer countries which had been responsible for almost all of the emissions up to then would rein in and reduce their emissions. This would give room for the developing countries to continue to develop. Given it is the total emissions which matters, this provided the ability for emissions to hold steady across the planet while poorer countries could develop. At the time of the Kyoto Protocol, both the richer OECD countries and the poorer non-OECD countries emitted in aggregate similar amounts.

The consequence of the Kyoto Protocol was a massive outsourcing of manufacturing and industrial processes by the developed countries to developing countries, bringing about the era of the BRICS – namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. OECD countries held their emissions steady over the next decades but did not reduce, so by the time of the Paris Agreement in 2015, with the non-OECD countries free to emit without being responsible for the harm emissions cause and with the rationalisation that their contributions will be offset by reductions from the richer countries, non-OECD emissions doubled.

This led to the Paris Agreement to seek an alternative approach where each country has to recognise its own responsibility and acknowledge its role in preventing harm to all. Each country made its own pledges of nationally determined contributions to reduce its emissions. Since, OECD emissions have decreased very marginally while non-OECD emissions have continued to increase albeit at a slightly slower pace. The narrative, however, is still that poor countries still need to be able to benefit from more expansion and revenues from the production and export of oil, gas, and coal should be permitted. It again puts the short-term economic interest ahead of the actual harm emissions create. 

The damage from emissions are now clearly everywhere

The past few years physical reality has made the damages and costs from emissions very clear. Pakistan flooded and pretty much bankrupted the country; prolonged drought in East Africa have killed millions of livestock; drought in South America capped copper production driving up prices; flooding in California this year will likely hurt its agricultural production. These all add to substantial costs and direct harm economies and people.

It is now clear that we are at the tipping point where new waves of disruptions are coming before we have time to recover from the last; there is no buffer left for more emissions.

Any further emissions no matter who by will lead to harm; with this knowledge established, it is clear that any emitter is complicit in the harming.

Public sentiment especially among youths reflect this. They protest vehement over the East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), for example. This takes oil from the newly developed fields in Uganda to the coast in Tanzania for export. The joint venture is funded between a French and Chinese company, the Ugandan state through its national oil company, and the Tanzanian state. Protests are strongest from the African youth who are objecting to further expansion in the production of oil; they see it as a betrayal of their future especially in a part of the world that has already been so devastated by climate change. They see this production as a clear intention to harm.

Loss and damage

The recent Turkish discovery a billion barrels of oil highlights how without a heavy stick it will not be possible to rein in nationally-condoned exploration and development of oil, gas, and coal.

Countries facing increasing financial pressures will seek greater exploration and produce more oil, gas, and coal because this will benefit them financially in the short-term, and having discovered it, it allows them potentially to negotiate for compensation for not producing. This puts them into the perfect position. It effectively gives them the means to hold the world to ransom.

The lesson from the Kyoto Protocol is that if emissions can be rationalised on economic and development grounds, they will happen. At the current concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, such arguments amount to the right to cast a final sinking blow to a ship because I have not had my chance to cast my blow. It does not make sense. We are all on that ship. When that blow is struck, we will all sink with it.

It is therefore essential to have a heavy stick against explorations and production with genuine and significant costs. It is also essential that existing oil, gas, and coal assets cannot simply be traded like potatoes. They are toxic. We will find when we finally walk away from oil, gas, and coal, we will be walking into a massive environmental disaster as the final owners abandon pipelines, wells, and tankers. The cost of guarding them against theft, sabotage, and even natural decay will be much greater than the price they paid for the assets.

If there are any doubt about the extent of the costs, the Keystone pipeline leak at the end of last year cost half a billion dollars to fix. Most of the cost comes from fixing the land and water the leak contaminated. The leak was only 14,000 barrels of oil, less than 0.0002% of the over 100 million barrels moving about in pipelines, tankers and trucks each day.

Any new discovery must recognised by the discoverer as a pure liability; existing owners need to know they are stuck with the assets with the only way out is to accept oil, gas, and coal are globally common resources that need a global conservatorship to manage and control.

If exploration and production are carried out outside of this conservatorship, then with the existing scientific and evidential knowledge, the parties involved are knowingly causing harm. It therefore makes them liable to compensate the rest of the world even for discovery it and disqualifies the countries involved from benefiting from the Loss and Damage program as agreed upon in the COP process. It places them in the side of those having to pay into the program.

Transformational Ownership

It is impossible under current ownership structure of oil, gas, and coal to impose a roadmap of production. As independent companies driven by their own mandates, whatever one company does not produce, another will simply step up to fill in the gap.

We are in a situation where supply is driven by demand.

In reality, demand responds to supply. It is the same as giving you money. As long I give it, you will take and spend it. It is only when I stop that you will seek and find other means.

Making clear a roadmap of future supply will therefore push forward the energy transition. It will also bring discussions to the distribution and use of energy, which is what is needed at the COP processes.

The global citizenry consenting to be governed by this roadmap is what will empower it; and by doing do, we as the global citizenry empowers the international process to seek economics that are consistent with the constraints of the planet, and recovers our dearest principle of the consent to be governed.

All businesses need customers. The consent for individuals to be governed by the roadmap allows individuals to bring businesses onboard. Those businesses that do not contribute to the roadmap can simply be boycotted. Without costumers, there is no business.

This brings governments into the same picture. The short-term economics governments look after is only possible if businesses have customers. Without customers, boycotted businesses do not survive. Governments interests to put the economy first are now aligned with the longer-term interests of the global citizenry.

The final piece to this is the transformation of the ownership of oil, gas, and coal companies themselves.

The creation of a global conservatorship for oil, gas, and coal assets has to respect the individual right to property ownership. Anything else shakes the foundation to our economic system too much. Land conservation is done through purchases of land from existing owners. Capital markets allow us to purchase oil, gas, and coal companies in a similar way from their existing owners. These companies have to continue to function profitably, or we will not manage to provide the energy we need or have the funds for the decommissioning. They need to be purchased in their totality. This means purchasing the likes of Shell, Peabody etc with all their renewable and associated businesses, with the employment structure and contracts intact.

Because whoever pays calls the shots, the money for the transformation cannot come from a rich elite but has to come from the global citizenry, or it will not put the conservatorship into the control of an elite few.

Having the money coming from everyone strengthens the consent to be governed by the roadmap ensuring it cannot be interfered with. The way to achieve this is to recognise that a fraction of the money we spend has to go as a fee to maintain the planet. This comes by calling on businesses to contribute. If they do so, then they are contributing to the roadmap. Otherwise, they face boycotts.

This fee is not the largesse of businesses but one that we are all paying. The businesses are collecting it for us. Businesses need to contribute their fee too, which they do by contributing the fraction of their revenue without putting up their prices. If they fail to do so, they will simply face backlash from their customers. It is important to recognise that ultimately the owners and investors of businesses are the very citizenry calling for this contribution.

The fee is used to buy out the oil, gas, and coal companies as described in their entirety so that a roadmap of reduction may be enforced. The bought-out companies continue to operate for profit with the profits paying for the necessary decommissioning and development of alternatives. 

Dividend payments to the conservatorship do not belong to the conservatorship and need to be distributed fully and equally as direct payments to every individual on the planet. This ensures the conservatorship has no financial interests. Distributing directly and equally reflects any benefits, like sunshine, belongs to all regardless of age, gender, or nationality. By direct distribution, it acknowledges the dignity of each person to make their own choice without being judged over their use.

In this mechanism, privately owned oil, gas, and coal companies are purchased in same way. The pricing for the companies again reflects the amounts of usable reserves determined by the roadmap. Private owners face the prospect of having no customers for their products if they decide not to sell or to hold out for extortionate prices. As production outside of the roadmap is now associated with intent to harm, they would also face potential legal actions.

As for state owned assets, the important issue is production follows the same roadmap. Without consenting to this, the state is clearly harming the planet and its oil, gas and coal will be shunned. Further sanction from Loss and Damage should follow.

New projects under the roadmap are not excluded. What matters is the total production, and the journey to permanent reduction has to allow for a secure transition. Emissions can first be reduced by switching from the highest emitting fuels to less emitting ones. The roadmap provides forward guidance to allow for the recognition that the physical limits on the use of oil, gas, and coal are real; this will strengthen investments into the energy transition.

Free, Prior, and Informed Consent

The principle of consent to be governed sits side by side with the concepts of free, prior, and informed consent.

Consent has to be given freely if it is to be legally meaningful. Free consent can only be given if it is given without coercion. When you are beholden to another for your livelihood your choices are not free.

The pressures of climate change have already made livelihoods impossible for many. Climate actions have to address how to empower people to be confident of their ability to face the future. It needs to help them develop the sense that their still have purpose, that they have choice. 

Not all things will be possible. Accepting this is essential to enable that free choice. This calls for a new approach to complement the more analytical and mechanical approaches to climate focused on solutions. It calls for an engagement that validates the anxieties and fears so that loss can be recognised and change can be celebrated as a new beginning. With climate change brings forth unknowns, and climate actions need to address the anxieties and emotions associated to empower genuine free consent.

Prior consent is about understanding the roadmap, working out the governance necessary for Transformational Ownership and appreciating the implications beforehand. This works to the advantage of Transformational Ownership as the key to its success is to have all the critical issues openly and freely discussed.

Prior consent will allow for topics like EACOP to be addressed properly in the context of the whole roadmap. The current framework forces people into the position of victims fighting with bureaucrats to protect what amounts to a pane of glass in the light of the big picture where fire and heat are burning their land, killing their livestock, and razing their homes.

Prior consent allows for the world to come together and for the COP meetings to be reinvigorated with how we need to distribute and share our energy resources.

It will also address the issue of the proper pricing for these assets. Currently, these companies are all priced to the full value is their reserves. This approach to pricing celebrates the climate-induced destruction of our economy and ways of life. Tied to it are numerous financial contracts that derive their value in the same way. Banks have a responsibility to adjust for the roadmap, and doing so will allow investments to shift to transition technologies and interim pathways. 

Prior consent also provides the important space for our emotions to come to terms with change. It allows for more than rational arguments to be aired, but also our emotions to settle and find new comfort zones. This is essential. We are more than our rational selves and prior consent allows us to consent with our whole self.

Finally, informed consent addresses to the proper understanding to the true costs of the current pathway. The world is hell bent on a strategy of out-running climate change by pitching a story we must replace all our energy with renewables or nothing. The evidence is clear we cannot extract enough materials to achieve this, and equally that it will exhaust all the remaining carbon budget with no guarantee that this approach can be successful. 

Climate change does not reverse even if the greenhouse gases are eventually reabsorbed. Melted glaciers and salinity changes in oceans will not revert. Informed consent has to include honesty about the cost of destroyed habitats, animals and plants that will happen with the current strategy. They will be gone forever, and crazy extreme weather will get worse. 

More importantly, informed consent is about knowing what will happen to our communities. If we come from a coal community, what would consent to be governed by a world without coal mean? This is more important in giving consent than the ins-and-outs of one solution over another. Informed consent is about knowing whether we will still have the community that is dear to us, whether we will still have the support of those we treasure, whether we will still have the things that give us joy?

The things that give us joy

Plato espoused the importance of consent to be governed in his dialogue Crito, emphasising the connection between adherence to the law and the wellbeing of a community. St Augustine in his dialogue De libero arbitrio voluntatis (On Free Choice of the Will) addresses this element that natural law comes from consenting to abide by the natural limits. Today, the global citizenry lacks this ability to express this choice as the governance of nations puts other considerations ahead of the central need to respect the carbon budget – the total amount of carbon dioxide we can continue to emit. 

The discussions in the IPCC AR6 reports of overshooting the carbon budget is now normalised into story-telling that it is okay to commit further harm to the planet. Future generations will not forgive us for this.

The planet and all in it are natural commons placed in our care for all generations.

The economics Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, awarded for her work on governing the commons, summarised her Nobel Prize Lecture in 2009 talk Beyond Market and State with,

“Extensive empirical research leads me to argue that instead, a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”

Laws are about bringing out the best in people. If we are to resolve our climate situation without creating a greater problem for the future, we need an approach that is more than replacing the oil, gas, and coal with alternatives. This is our opportunity to become a community that gives consent to be governed by the natural limits of our planet.

Economic interests do not bring the global citizenry together. We are more than our wealth. Laws empowers people with dignity because it is the recognition and respect for each others dignity and celebration of the things that give us joy that brings about the consent to be governed. This lies at the heart of Transformational Ownership as a community committed to protect the planet and all of its people.