 Yeah, sure. Hi. Good afternoon, everybody. I am Abhi and the topic that I thought we can discuss about today is how do we prioritize long-term holistic thinking versus short-term insights. And the reason I suggested this was because I work for a company where we deal with getting large organizations to think about making positive environmental impact. And the challenge has always been that everyone's focusing on short-term quarterly results. And it's very hard to get people to think long-term about the impact they're having on communities. And I figured this is the same problem that's leading to climate change that we see today because everyone's focusing on this quarter's profits and not about how do we keep the city or the planet safe. So again, I am no authority by any means. I just thought we'd have a discussion. Please feel free to just push me out and come here and share your thoughts. Totally keen. So I think just a bit of, I guess I can share a bit of my experience in the past couple of years working on this field and then we can jump in as we please. So typically what happens is when we approach large companies and pitch a project saying, let's say you're an FMCG company, a manufacturing goods company, and if you want to reduce the amount of waste that you use in your packaging, then from a society's point of view, it's great because you have less waste. It's better for the planet. But from a company's point of view, they don't get to do branding. They're concerned about their products, shelf life, etc. And so it's a very hard sell to get them involved and get them on board into these projects. And what we inevitably end up doing is saying that, hey, you can actually drive your brand value because consumers these days are educated. They prefer more responsible companies and products over people who are trashing the planet. Hello. So if you do this, you can then communicate the story of how you're being a better company and use that to drive your profit. So at the end of the day, we still come back to the core notion of thinking long term is better for your profit line. But I'm just wondering if, I guess, if there is a way to do it better, if there is some other incentive structure that we can, either as governments or as individuals, develop to get large organizations, particularly to not forego short term profit, but just think, have long term in mind while making decisions. So please, anybody who would like to share anything, please jump in, please stand up. I can think of two examples. And there is, this is sort of the account of the idea that governments are magically long term decision making. Governments are line large on a four year cycle. The two big exceptions I'm aware of. The US Navy is the world's largest consumer oil. It's a single organization. There's no one else in the world who uses so much oil as the Navy does. They've been worried about the climate impact and the strategic impact of being oil dependent for more than a decade. So despite political stupidity, even what's just happened to the US, the Navy has been for over a decade looking at, oh my God, how do we become less dependent upon oil to do what we're doing? And it turns out that the run ships electrically is hard. It's not impossible, it's hard, but there's a whole bunch of other things that the Navy needs. But yes, the mere fact that you've got a stable structure that is somewhat immune to both commercial and electoral pressures turns out to have been one of the places where a credible drive or an effective drive has come into being. And then the other is a commercial one, which is re-insurance. So re-insurance? Re-insurance. Okay. Re-insurance. So insurers, insurers. So most insurers are, if not actually selling retail, at least retail level, initiating policies for individual consumers or businesses to ensure some risk. The insurer is pulling risk to some extent, but insurers need to lay off risk as well. So re-insurers are in the business of insuring insurance. Okay. Swiss re-invent will be able to be one. They've been pricing environmental risk also for more than a decade. And so I sort of, it's not the only solution to the problem, but I wonder enough about their motivations and whether that sort of filters up into broader commercial practice that whether there is a path either to encourage it to occur or by regulatory fear to occur or by other means for the long-term business risks that are associated with carbon emissions to be priced into actions which drive carbon emissions. Exactly. You can't quite see it, because most of it is an externality. In the Navy's case, it's just because they're huge that got an interest. But I sort of wonder whether there is some way for that to affect these businesses. But I think that's exactly the point. So if you take like this pen, it's using a tube of plastic and it costs maybe a dollar, but if you take into account the actual environmental cost of it, it should cost $10. And the moment you start factoring in the price of the environmental impact of the products, everything that becomes you becomes way higher. And so I guess in some ways there is the threat that this is anti-poor because you're going to deprive those who most need the commodities, of the commodities that they need to survive. Bottle water, for example, like sure, if we had amazing public water all over the world, then we could ban bottle water, but we can't do it because many rural communities depend on it at the price range that we currently have. So yeah, I don't know. Perhaps the reinsurance industry could help drive that push towards cutting the margins on these products. One of the issues is how to re-health reinsurance. Fortunately, Swiss Re is looking. They've got their, they've got a relation to people, a re-insurer. It's got to be this dodgiest of all businesses. They're basically very long-term thinking, very, very good at pressing risk and averse to taking on un-inactively measured risk. So these are, they're not risk-averse, far say. Except the risk is their business. But if they can't quantify it, then they won't touch it. So these are, in theory, the most conservative businesses on the planet. In practice, the retail insurers are. The retail insurers take no risks. Don't even buy a costly BT and make sure they work expected back with the reinsurer and we take no risks. It turns out that the reinsurers are actually the round that got innovation people in most markets with much innovation occur in, including Singapore, looking for startups. So if there is scope to do stuff that helps reinsurers price and ensure, even on a retail level, there's been a retail business and then sell it to one of their retail partners. Then yes, I can't yet point to how to use that. The opportunity is there. So what ways to structure? But then I guess taking that mindset of the reinsurer who is measuring not just profits but also the environment around you, how do you get, for want of a better word, the annual report of the company to reflect the fact that our environmental cost is X and we need to factor that into a profit line and then you see that you're not making a profit. You're actually making a loss. I'm not certain that you do. I'm pointing to the reinsurer and Navy examples, these cases where they're not motivated by need to demonstrate environmental credentials. They are pricing in environmental language courses for actual organizational and economic mechanisms. It's not, and we are marketing to environmental conscious consumers and our environmental conscious shareholders should reflect this. It's trade out. If we don't do this, we will lose money. True, true. Or in the Navy's case. We'll stop existing, yeah. We'll stop existing, but we'll dramatically limit, if they can't get oil without having to invade still more Middle East countries. Or drill in the Arctic. Well, that's the trade off. The idea that Iraq was invaded because the US was sort of achieving the oil was ridiculous, but it certainly factors into it that the US state and defense interests are much more strongly engaged when oil is on the table than when it is not. So that makes that sort of this. But yeah, versus drilling the Arctic or successfully building the Keystone XL pipeline because nobody wants to build a refinery. Refineries carry risks and costs that nobody wants to touch. The reason for this ridiculous pipeline that crosses from Canada to Texas is because that's actually cheaper than building a refinery in Canada by the time you factor in the risks. And so the insurance liability concerns. So I mean, some of it's there, but it's only there in the city. We won't build more refineries because that's too dangerous. We'd rather fuel pipelines and trap the rights of indigenous people. So it's not a perfect solution, but I would point out that the perspective of the Navy is not how do we go to our consumers. It's how do we maintain our ability to be an effective military civilization. And right now that means dependence upon the best oil and it means destabilizing the DJI political system. So but then again, please feel free to jump in. I'm getting carried on. But I guess the same question can then be applied to oil companies. So a Shell or an ExxonMobil can see that if oil is going to run out in 50 years time, how do we stay relevant as a company at that point in time and they should be pouring a lot of R&D money into renewables, but they won't because they have legacy structures and vested interests they are to protect. So I think it's not as straightforward as just finding an existential threat to your organization, but then finding it enough to push vested interests out and get in because I mean, everyone's long been saying that the private sector is going to be the magic bullet that solves it, like people will start jumping into renewables. And to some extent that is happening, but not nearly fast enough, I guess. Since the world is run on capitalism, there's one good way to get the stock exchange to put indices that indicate environmental holders or health owners into the index and get people to buy it by that index. So with that somehow, you know, if you can see that this index as a result of people buying it, it rises, you know, I guess that will incentivize people to try to stay on that topic, whatever company, since it's a public exchange, right? If you can get an index fund, an environmental index into the stock exchange that measures, well, not just carbon, you know, carbon training will be one example, but it's a bit too narrow, if you can widen the scope of it. So what you're saying is to make an economic incentive? Yes, an economic incentive. But are there actually pollution credits being bought and sold right now out there? In the United States. So that will actually factor into what you just said. It actually does. This is really good. So pollution credits independent of carbon tax? They want the same way. What is a disincentive one? Is it incentive, right? Okay. It's a flip side, essentially. That's not correct. But also there are market mechanisms. That's why you're advocating. I think what you're saying, if I can clarify this, it's a bit too narrow. You want to mix it together so that the stock price actually reflects what you're doing to the environment instead of being... But it just reflects it in the company's stock price, which takes effect due to some extent to the pollution credits. Most people don't see this. I agree. It's not reported in the same way. But the smart investors do, right? And if you want to be a good investor, the smart investor will figure that out. This is the down money mentality, essentially. I guess what you're interested in is on a max scale. Macro scale, essentially, global, right? The question is, what is the market advantage, but is there a viable action that can be taken that will have the effect of reducing environmental escalation generally, but carbon in particular? How do we get to critical mass when all of these changes start to happen? That's the question. Somebody's going to... Well, that's what the United Nations is all about, right? I mean, to some extent. I don't have any... There's a book done at Kennedy School of Government. Drop the statements. It was actually done for the past 25, 30 years. Pollution credits, essentially. But the problem is market breaking, right? It's a game. People are gaming the system in the... I believe it's Europe, some time back. So the problem is, check the balances. There were attempts to do... You know, that's all I think. Game the system, game the system. How do you handle that? Because a lot of European biodiesel was from Indonesian palm oil, if I remember correctly. A lot of the biodiesel sold in Europe was from the palm oil in Indonesia. Yeah, it's one of them. Yeah. What? But yes, really. Yeah. I think it's bio. Oh, it sounds good. It's green. It's not Indonesia, but it's bio. Anytime you're market and centre, they'll be gaming. Pretty simple, right? Game theory. I mean, it's just like a mass version of the President's Dilemma, game theory, where you're trying to get them to sort of cooperate. And how do you do that without religion, so to speak? You've got tragedy or the commons. More that here, because IBD actually is sensible over a long period of time. In any case, there's no... In IBD, you've got... You've structured the incentives that you can't think of how to say it, but in a way it doesn't correctly describe. How do the pollution... Do they have to do the pollution credits factor? Are they being called futures in that sense? I don't remember the exact term they used. But it's not a fancy, I remember that. It's like they marketed it, essentially. Because, you know, there is something called a futures market, right? So, if you could put those in the futures market, then that would, again, you know, make the whole thing like, hey, everybody's playing a game, right? So, let them go play a game with that and see what, you know? What's the outcome? What kind of signal do you get? But probably all of these don't have a global enforcement mechanism. You don't have a global enforcement mechanism. You don't even have a local enforcement mechanism. Great, right. You don't have a local enforcement mechanism. Oil is entirely for... Hydrocarbons are entirely different to all of the other kinds of pollution. So, sulfides are the big success story. Including here. You pay lower port fees if your ship burns only low solar fuel when it's in the port of Singapore. But the difference between hydrocarbons and sulfides is that sulfides are not a source of energy. Hydrocarbons are. The denominator for sulfization is absolutely the hardest energy. So, the moment you're sort of putting credit systems in the way of burning hydrocarbons, you are essentially trying to wind civilization backwards. When you're doing that, the rule is almost certainly cheaper to buy the displacement regulation than it is to trade the grants. So, to jump into a tangent on driving civilizations backward, like there's a lot of times where, at least in my line of work, I hear people talk about, it's a relic of modernity that we have this mentality of, like, consume, consume, consume. But I actually think it's not in that I don't think humans, a thousand years ago, were any less, for want of a better word, consumerist or greedy than we are now. It just so happens that we have the tools to then actually have an impact on a global scale. And the example that I would give is, like when Native American tribes were hunting bison, they would just push thousands of them off a cliff to consume. And that's... And the idea being that, oh, you will always have bison, so why do we care? Similarly, we'll always have oceans, so why do we care if I throw pollution into it? Enough plastic to have giant gyrus in the oceans. And so I think it's actually a factor of smallness versus age, in that I find that any time you have smaller communities or smaller cities or smaller organizations, it's easier to sort of get this long-term thinking, perhaps because there isn't as much cut-throat tendencies, so to speak. But the moment you have large organizations and large cities and large countries, it becomes harder to control. In fact, whatever the problem is, it's not me or my people I care about, because there's enough to describe it, but without getting into claims about the other guys being critical, it's just the bison, right? As long as I'm getting my bison and the supply of bison is okay, what's the problem? What's the question that you're asking? Are you interested in something that is low-level, upward solution? I'm looking at... I guess what is a small thing that we can do because I don't think we're ever going to have an Alexandrian solution to this. We just need to start keep pushing from the ground. Like the Alexandrian knot, like you have a complex knot and he just cuts it. No, so the story is, I think it's in Macedonia where Alexander was coming by and there was a very complex knot that couldn't be removed, and he said, I'm going to solve it and just took out his sword and cut it in two. And he gave you a modern-day equivalent that you all can relate to, right? Yeah. Do you have a Jones grabber? Yeah. Can I just shoot him? No, but... He had the runs. Yes, I know. The actor Harrison had the runs. He was two weeks away. There was another example. Again, it's a bit metaphorical, so forgive me, but where someone said, this is a TED Talk on India and how do we build solutions to the Indian market, where he said you can't have one solution that scales across the country because you have multiple language systems with different writing scripts, different cultures, et cetera. And in mythology, there is a story of a demon who would multiply each time a drop of his blood touched the ground. So the more you attacked him, the more of him there would be. And the solution is to create a spirit that would consume all the blood before it hits the ground so you can defeat him without spilling his blood. Metaphorically speaking, but so to speak... Can you catch the Camel d'Arsha before the example? Maybe. So I guess, yeah, I don't know. What are the small things that we can all do to sort of keep in our own spheres of influence, to keep pushing us? Let's get LTA to stop taxing the Tesla cars so much. That's why they miss out on the service. Tesla Model S is not an efficient vehicle to sports car. So LTA's position makes absolute sense. If you put a Nissan Leaf on the road in Singapore, then you, I forget what words and how much, but the amount of money involved is much much smaller. So the problem is that the Model S is a sports car. So it's being taxed everywhere. It's the new models. The new models that you have for your food. What would it be? That's the new model. That's the illicit one. Yeah. Tesla's not showing the efficient daily life. Right. And we're turning into a Tesla discussion. No, no, no. It's not an accident. Well, the things like the Nissan Leaf are already on the road in Singapore and they're much cheaper around. So then that option already exists. You want to put down a cheap in Singapore guitar? One of the options. Actually, I think that for Singapore's situation, cars is not a good solution. Although we are very small island, we are spending so much building roads building all the infrastructure. We are destroying the environment to just build roads for cars. No matter Tesla Leafs or any other cars that's in the market, public transport should be the best solution for us. Let's make it solar city then. But again, then it becomes a cultural problem because people are so vested in the idea of cars as status symbols as... You already have a connection just now when I talk about consumerism. Yeah. Unless you can change consumerism, I don't think you can fix it. For instance, ask yourself, ask me if there were two things and would I pay more for X and they would say, well, I think most people won't care. It's just, you know, I mean, they won't care unless they're a villager in coastal Bangladesh who now has to move because sea levels are rising. Yeah, but once those people move in, I'm sure they'll start consuming as well. Because this is our age, you know, I think it's one of the problems of our age. So... The boat key is only two meters above sea level. And all the boats are only about age. It's not just Bangladesh. Again, metaphor, please forgive me, but I remember a story that I read a long time ago called Green Patches by Asimov, I think. And it talks about a planet where all the living things are interconnected, where they can sort of directly feel everybody else. So when you perform an action, you're incentivized to think about the whole planet. So I guess in some way, how can we build a nervous system that connects us not just to each other, but also to the planet, if I buy a pen, I can immediately feel at some direct pain of like, oh my god, I'm buying plastic and I'm causing this much pain to this many people down the line. Wishful thinking, hugely wishful thinking. Basically, you're saying pain doesn't have to be a nervous system. Yeah, just pain, yes. And in some ways, we're feeling that Delhi has haze now and Singapore has haze now, so people are feeling it, but they don't make the connection enough. Yeah, but how many people in Singapore have actually stopped using power? No. Is your question, how do we get there? Yes, how do we get there? You just wait, we'll get there. No, but let's see. No, it's like training dogs, right? If you don't want your dog to pee in the carpet, you have to stop him while he's peeing in the carpet. If you wait 10 minutes, then he'll know what to make. I think I like the frog in that water is slowly warming up. So if we change the point of view, looking at what happened in the past, that we actually, as a humanist, humanity did something about it. So about the CFC ozone hole, right? So what happened that made the world come together to try to fix that and then actually fixed it? But I think that's what Roland said, it's not a source of energy, so it's not a vested interest. That's very much, it's not a source of energy. That's very much everything that isn't a source of energy. So if CFC is a source of energy, you think that the hole will be big enough so it's closed. But then, spinning on that, take plastics for example, they're a big consumer of hydrocarbons, but I don't think there's nearly enough research going into alternative packaging that's better for the planet, even though it's not a source of energy, because it's tied to oil. Yeah, I mean that the ocean joys are a real turn, but we have to manage it between how we hydrocarbons in products. For sure. Sorry, that doesn't mean it's not an important problem, but it should be amenable to make our enforcers if alternatives can be found. There are phytoplastic around, but I don't know enough about the main movement, so there's a lot of ways to package it. Consumer electronics is phytoplastic, but instead of... Coming back to the market-based solutions, what happened to the carbon-trading market? Every time it's the same thing, whether it's taxing or carbon trade or whatever it is, actually once you build it, it's cheaper for businesses to buy legislation and buy regulation than it is to comply. Sorry. And I think it wouldn't work at all because what you're going to do is somebody exceeds their cap. I mean, are you going to invade? Are you going to find them? I don't know, it doesn't make sense. Even if you were seeing it only within cooperating countries, while China and India... That's the next part of that whole scheme, but even if you look at what happens within cooperating countries, it's still going to be the case. You're seeing it in the US where it is much more effective for business to compromise or corrupt the legislation than it is to comply. And so you can't... If it's act, there's a... So why did that work for pollution credits? Why is pollution credits? Because you can make... You can make the transition without undermining the economics of the story. I see. But... There's some reason it cannot be. I think the only people that can do is national level. As long as governments are gaining from consumers because that's what revenue comes from. You're not going to... So run that one to the end. Let us suppose that all the government in the world, these government ones, agree and actually succeed in driving in the government. There's multiple... What happens in China? China is not student enough to do this. It's got a... People are probably in the world... I think we did in the rest of the world in mind. It's not going to sign its own name when they thought but what happened in Copenhagen where it carefully sabotages negotiations and then came in public and announced it was going to triple to 6. The words were divided by 3 but the subject was permanent GP of the period they expected to do it. So China's going out of its way to make sure it can continue to grow and does not want to get stuck in a regulatory mess and will strongly produce it. And India can't. It's not possible for the Indian government to tell a billion people please stay poor. Please do not try to live yourself out of poverty. They just can't. They don't have the strength to do it. I think it's also not a... It means that if the rest of the world apart from those countries agrees and implements cap and trade or any similar scheme it won't make a difference. No, I think it's not the issue of strength of the country because if we are in a problem training this on per person how much a person is able to spend then countries like India and China they will actually have a lot of excess capacity. I think now when they were negotiating for the plans a lot of times they were talking about how much they are spending at the moment which makes it that the situation is that the countries that are poor now are being kept in a situation where they cannot grow basically India is stuck at that level whereas countries that are overspending and in one way Singapore is one of those that overspends by a lot I just can't remember if I can remember the word. Correct. And we are still a lot to spend at the level that we are doing it because we were at that level. This isn't something like that. If you attempt to move if it's the whole developed world stopping it in carbon tomorrow but it's not about say or because you are just putting some absolute number it could be some gradual change if the entire developed world stopped emitting hydrocarbons you are putting an absolute number you are saying tomorrow you are going to see it it makes no difference it's the entire world the developed world stopped emitting carbon dioxide and methane again this year tomorrow this can't happen I agree with you but suppose it did it's not enough therefore every intermediate stage that you are talking about is even less not enough that's the problem we can't get there in the path that you are talking about never ever gets to work we are going to bring back to the pain it's a good idea probably everyone pays like 5% carbon tax annually that's a pain right so I don't want to pay that I am making this suggestion and it hurts me just saying it but then we map that 5% to some measurement of the country and then the citizens can lobby the government because there is a discussion that you can have up or down so then we make some connection from that 5% to consumerism purchasing and what's important and so on and so forth maybe that's one way I think we have to be staggered so that 4 people pay less and 3 people pay more because otherwise the lower end viewer needs to yeah those are details yeah those are details you can pick it up