a near perfect lunch

Copenhagen, 25 September 2023 in Writing

Why don’t you come over for lunch? I imagine a casual social affair. In summer, the lucky owners of holiday homes like to keep their gatherings informal. August get-togethers are spur-of-the-moment, the guests relaxed and the conversation light-hearted. Most of the time, anyway.

I accept the invitation without a second thought despite having never met the other guests. I don’t know it yet, but this lunch party is going to be a learning experience. When I get there, I discover that we will be sharing our meal with two other couples. Both of the husbands retired around ten years ago from long careers in the French natural gas industry. They soon start to dominate the conversation around the table.

I accept the invitation without a second thought despite having never met the other guests.

Their countenance, as they regale us with their professional exploits, is that of two retired generals reminiscing over the battles they have won. They used to work close to the government in a sector once considered of strategic importance for modern society. I ask them a few questions, in an attempt to both assert my presence at that lunch and challenge the monopoly the two men seem determined to claim over the conversation.

I ask them a few questions, in an attempt to both assert my presence at that lunch and challenge the monopoly the two men seem determined to claim over the conversation.

This exchange is an opportunity for me to try and understand what motivated them to work in the gas sector and see whether their thinking on that much-maligned industry has evolved since those early days. While plentiful, natural gas remains a fossil fuel. Methane leaks and CO2 emissions contribute to the climate changes that are threatening our civilisation and the balance of the natural world.

I have often wondered how anyone can work in a sector that imperils the well-being and prospects of humankind. Take the tobacco industry for example. How does anyone get up in the morning and go to work for a corporation whose mission is to profit from human weakness, ignorance and addiction, and ultimately destroy the health of its customers?

And so I ask the two men what they think of the natural gas industry, in hindsight, now that the science is clear. Do they harbour any regrets or feelings of guilt ten years into retirement? Ignoring my question, one of them takes this opportunity to jump in and assert that natural gas does not emit any CO2. I am so stunned by his reply that I fail to call him out before he launches into an evidently well-rehearsed screed. There is also no need to transition to electric cars, he avers, because diesel cars emit much less CO2 than petrol cars.

One of them takes this opportunity to jump in and assert that natural gas does not emit any CO2.

A rather uncomfortable silence now hangs over the table. At last I find my tongue again and remind my interlocutor of the greenhouse gases emitted by gasoline and the harmful fine particles found in diesel exhaust. In fact, I recall, France has been condemned by the European Court of Justice for its levels of air pollution, and fine particles are responsible for thousands of deaths a year in France.

At that moment, the man’s wife decides to give him a word of caution: “Careful, I suspect that you are speaking to someone who knows a thing or two about the climate”. But he forges on regardless, no longer capable of pressing the pause button or tempering his views. The harmful impact of diesel on human health has never been scientifically proven, he retorts.

His assertion takes me aback. I suddenly realise that I have never met a true climate sceptic before. I have come across my fair share of climate optimists, people who think that limiting global warming to 1.5° C, in accordance with the Paris Agreement, is merely a matter of finding technological solutions to our problems, just as humans have always done. But sitting next to someone who denies the scientific consensus and dismisses the reports of the IPCC, is a new and surreal experience.

I suddenly realise that I have never met a true climate sceptic before.

The man’s denial of climate change feels jarring in the middle of a quiet August holiday. Another guest tries to change the topic, hoping to salvage our lunch party, and mentions the green algae swamping the beaches of Brittany. We start discussing the journalist Inès Léraud’s investigation of this phenomenon and a new film on the subject, when our climate denier chips in that he owns a house in the bay of St Brieuc. The tides have always been green over there, he claims, before waxing lyrical about the colour and telling us that he even commissioned an artist to paint a picture of the green algae on the beach. Again, I am astonished at his denial that the algae are toxic and refusal to accept that intensive animal farming could have anything to do with the problem.

I no longer know whether to laugh or cry. How on earth did this man, a graduate of a top French school, come to stray so far from the path or reason? I have spent my life around men of his background, and there is no question he is an outlier. The vast majority of his peers are not climate sceptics, fortunately. Even then, however, it can be upsetting to see how little the state of the world seems to move them.

How on earth did this man, a graduate of a top French school, come to stray so far from the path or reason?

All too often, these men are incapable of holding themselves to account for the impact of their actions during their working lives, despite having all, each in their way, played a part in the ecological disaster that is unfolding before us. Not that I am holding them individually responsible for these ills, however. Far from it. We all played our part in the systems of modernity, oblivious to the consequences of letting the genie out of the bottle.

Still, I do have a feeling that I am having lunch with people who, when they get up in the morning, do not ask themselves what they can do to promote the green transition. Indeed, one of the guests explains that, in any case, he will not live to see the full impact of climate change. I am appalled by the selfishness of this argument – not to mention that he may be dangerously mistaken, considering the number of extreme weather events that we are currently experiencing.

I am having lunch with people who, when they get up in the morning, do not ask themselves what they can do to promote the green transition.

I can only conclude that it can be too much for retirees to accept that they spent their lives working for the wrong side. Their egos prevent them from seeing how, all too often, their work created the problems facing the next generations. As we get older, our thoughts can ossify, making it difficult to challenge old certainties. This can become a vicious circle, and over time we can lose the mental flexibility we need to grow and change.

Their egos prevent them from seeing how, all too often, their work created the problems facing the next generations.

But how can we expect our children to respect and love us if we do not show them that we understand what needs to be done? That we can continue to grow and learn in solidarity with them? Imagine living to 100, still clinging to 20th-century values incompatible with what the world will have become, what then? It seems rather short-sighted to think that we can use our social standing and past professional successes to deny climate change with impunity.