Of course (excuse the pun), the other thing people (mostly men) travel across the world to St. Andrews for is to play golf!  The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews was founded in 1754.  The club has 2,400 members from all over the world: membership is by invitation only.

The club allowed women members for the first time in 2014. You see: things can change!

In fact,  radical change and iconoclasm provide St. Andrews with its most distinctive landmark: the ruined twin towers of the cathedral.  Clerics started building the cathedral in 1158.  From 1318, the cathedral was served by a community of Augustinian Canons.  It became a place of pilgrimage and pilgrimage made St. Andrews rich.

In 1559, however, a crowd, enthused by the preaching of John Knox, ransacked the cathedral and destroyed the building’s interior. Thereafter, the remains of the cathedral  became a source of building material for the town.

St. Andrews  has a history of violent debate – and violent suppression of debate.  In 1546, the cathedral hierarchy burned the Calvinist preacher George Wishart at the stake outside St. Andrews Castle.  Three months later,  the Catholic Cardinal Beaton, who oversaw the trial and execution,  was assassinated in the same castle by local men angered at Wishart’s murder.  Beaton’s murderers, and a number of associates, were subsequently besieged in the castle.  The beseiged included John Knox, Wishart’s former body guard, who was captured by the French at the end of the siege and further radicalised by 19 months as a galley slave.  After his release in 1549, he travelled to England, then to Geneva where he was mentored by John Calvin.  He returned to Scotland in 1559 where his preaching led to the sack of the cathedral at St. Andrews (among other things).

Professor Stephanie Le Menager of the University of Oregon delivered the first keynote speech of the Centre for Energy Ethics’ Financing the Future Conference.  The presentation was entitled: All the Intimate Externalities: Literary Takes on the Costs of Climate Crisis. 

In an atmosphere of generous collegial debate, her insights,  snippets of which are interleaved in the lines below, provide salutary warning of the risks associated with systemic and epistemic change  – visions that chime with the martyrdoms and iconoclasms which mark St. Andrews townscape.

Here is some more of what I heard about Climate Justice in St. Andrews. 

I heard that war is a desperate means of instantiating reality.[1]

I heard that observed reduction in fossil fuel investment is consistent with net zero targets…but that it is not clear where the missing money is going?

I was asked, “What is oil pollution like in the North Sea?”

I heard that the claims persons have acquired in their life-plans were formed in good faith, based on the presumption that the fossil fuel economy would persist. [2]

I heard that fantasies of civil war, with profound social costs, reflect a loss of hope.

I heard that ‘invention’ blocks transformation.[3]

I heard that Ecotopias render democracy more fictional: they represent a separation of power from politics

I heard that the polity is constrained to impose only small burdens on citizens’ autonomy, well-being or liberty : burdens are characterised as obstacles to freedom or actual suffering.[4]

I heard that, in the USA, alternative story forms come from non-white Americans.

I heard that story forms of bureaucracy are not a genre (anymore).

I heard that projects rely on the success of previous projects (in different times and spaces).

I heard that cooperatives are the vehicle for local sustainability.[5]

I heard that cooperatives guarantee prices but may limit choice in times of scarcity and have to implement rationing.

I heard that the distributive nature of energy needs to distinguish between communities of place and communities of interest – where perhaps there are shared intentions.[6]

I heard that violence is an externality (a form of pollution).

I heard the question, ”Is it legitimate to expect regulatory frameworks to be stable?”

I heard that, in Italy, cooperatives are experimenting with a prosumer model, where prosumers collectively fund wind turbines in return for stably priced energy. 

I heard that projects are modular but the heterogeneous material and organic world in continuous.

I heard that prosumers seek radical market decoupling and that prosumerism may also involve radical lifeway transformation: for example, living off-grid is an extreme (and often symbolic) form of prosumerism.

I heard that fossil fuel exploitation is structured by asset/firm relations, institutional & business elite networks and industry practices & norms.[7]

I heard that, since the Civil War of 1860-65 – secession is a dominant narrative trope in the USA.

I heard that ethical consumers must become energy-citizens in an energy democracy.

I heard that funding nuclear energy is funding deep time.

I heard that the beauty of Antarctica demands major chords.[8]

I heard that contracts are the connective infrastructure of capitalism, knitting together corporations and states through projects.

I heard that cooperatives such as e-nostra virtually disconnect prosumers from the grid (their initial capital contribution fixes their operating cost) but they may also disconnect them from the global crisis.

I heard that depleted oil and gas fields are assets in so far as they may bring future benefits OR can bear debts.

I heard that incomplete or failed projects outnumber successful ones.

I heard that Margaret Thatcher said, in 1977,”The North Sea is not a socialist sea. Its oil is not socialist oil.”[9]

I heard that the private equity fund Hitech 7 has a $7bn fund for energy.

I heard that current green hydrogen technology with heat recovery is 97% efficient.

I heard that challenges to masculinity are allied to moribund industries including oil, gas and mining.

I heard that late-life asset financial logic supports fossil fuel lock-in.

I heard that 2050 is beyond the equity funds’ horizon. 

I heard that morality is made up of general conclusions on how a person should behave in a situation.

I heard that there is more rain in the summer in Antarctica and that penguins chick do not fare well in the rain.

I heard that racism is a separate reality in the US: it offers the ‘white nation’ a psychological wage for racism as a form of misdirection

I heard that projects are modular and situated.

I heard that there is an increasing failure in American readers to recognise fiction as fiction.

I heard that Nimbyism is the flip-side of Sacrifice Zone.

I heard that it is not share price but internal rate of return that matter to equity funds. 

I heard that the Scottish Minister for Energy’s speech was all about the future, never about the past.

I heard that transition does not imply a break between time periods.

I heard that there is a need for public expertise in independent environmental and/or economic assessment of projects.

I heard that regarding ‘liberty’ as a good might be part of the problem.

I heard that conversations need to continue.

I heard that there is a danger of thought without action.

Key References: Listed below are some of the key presentations from which many of these insights and inspirations arise. Other contributions arose from many generous conversations and comments with other participants in Financing the Future in the course of the 3 day event. My thanks to all for their generosity and insight and especially to Mette High and Sean Field of CEE for their support and encouragement.

[1] Stephanie LeMenager, University of Oregon: All the Intimate Externalities: Literary Takes on the Costs of Climate Crisis

[2] Eike Düvel, Karlsrhue Institute of Technology: Stranded Assets and Legitimate Expectations

[3] Andrew Barry, University College London : Projects & Projections: Transition and the Global Situation.

[4] Luca Stroppa, University of St. Andrews: Callousness, demandingness, and climate change

[5] Joohee Lee, Sejong University: Food cooperatives in the mission to promote bottom-up climate-energy transitions: opportunities and limitations.

[6] Lorenzo Sapochetti, University of St. Andrews: Becoming a prosumer: the ethics of financing a renewable energy cooperative in Italy.

[7] Gavin Bridge, Alexander Dodge, Tiago Teixeira: Extracting value from the bottom of the barrel: exploring the value proposition for investment in oil and gas in the North Sea’s twilight years

[8] Steve Garrett: The Song of the Ice

[9] Ewan Gibbs, University of Glasgow: Special or Generals Revenue? Spending the Proceeds of North Sea Oil Taxation c. 1970-1990.