"Interestingly, the oil companies know very well that in less than 30 years they will not only be charging very high prices, but that they will be uncompetitive with renewables"
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“Interestingly” does a lot of work here. Hawken opens like he’s offering a neutral market observation, then uses that calm tone to smuggle in an accusation: the fossil-fuel industry isn’t confused about the future; it’s betting against it. The line frames oil companies not as hapless suppliers meeting demand, but as rational actors who can read the curve: scarcity pushes prices up, while clean energy keeps getting cheaper, faster, and harder to stop.
The most pointed subtext is about motive. If executives “know very well” their product will be uncompetitive, then today’s lobbying, greenwashed advertising, and delay tactics look less like disagreement and more like a liquidation strategy: extract maximum profit during the runway, socialize the costs, and leave governments and communities holding the climate bill. Hawken turns what’s often treated as a moral debate into a question of corporate foresight and, implicitly, corporate negligence.
The 30-year horizon is also deliberate. It’s long enough to sound strategic, short enough to indict anyone using “we can’t change overnight” as cover. Hawken is speaking from the cleantech and climate-activist context where renewables’ falling costs and deployment scale are not speculative, they’re visible trends. By predicting “very high prices” and “uncompetitive” in the same breath, he spotlights an industry trapped by its own economics: it can remain profitable only by becoming, for everyone else, intolerable.
The most pointed subtext is about motive. If executives “know very well” their product will be uncompetitive, then today’s lobbying, greenwashed advertising, and delay tactics look less like disagreement and more like a liquidation strategy: extract maximum profit during the runway, socialize the costs, and leave governments and communities holding the climate bill. Hawken turns what’s often treated as a moral debate into a question of corporate foresight and, implicitly, corporate negligence.
The 30-year horizon is also deliberate. It’s long enough to sound strategic, short enough to indict anyone using “we can’t change overnight” as cover. Hawken is speaking from the cleantech and climate-activist context where renewables’ falling costs and deployment scale are not speculative, they’re visible trends. By predicting “very high prices” and “uncompetitive” in the same breath, he spotlights an industry trapped by its own economics: it can remain profitable only by becoming, for everyone else, intolerable.
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| Topic | Technology |
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