Burning book festivals is not a climate solution

We need better conversations – not pressured boycotts – to drive climate action.

This is a rare divergence from my usual data-driven articles. Feel free to skip if this is not your thing. Normal services will resume next week.

It’s tiring to start with this disclaimer, but it seems necessary at this point. I am very bullish on clean energy. I want to see us transition from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear power, and I think we can do it. On this Substack, I spend my time digging into the data on the opportunities this can create, and the challenges we need to overcome to get there. I publish it all here, for free, because I think everyone should have good information to make informed decisions about how we move forward. No one should be locked out of conversations because they can’t afford it.

I’m very concerned about climate change and doing what I can to build a vision of how we can move to a low-carbon economy.

Now that’s out of the way, I can get to the main point of this post: I fully agree with Mark Lynas when he argues that the recent fossil fuel divestment campaigns against major book festivals seem like short-sighted and misplaced efforts.¹

A brief summary, especially for those who don’t live in the UK. Several of the UK’s biggest literary festivals – the Hay and Edinburgh Book Festivals – are sponsored by Baillie Gifford. BG is an investment management firm that has been a critical sponsor for major UK book festivals for 20 years.

Unfortunately, no longer. In the last few weeks, the Hay and Edinburgh Book Festivals have suspended BG as its major sponsor. This comes after intense pressure from activists – Fossil Free Books – because a small share of BG’s client money is invested in companies linked to fossil fuels.

Some speakers have boycotted the festivals, a letter was passed round for writers to sign against this partnership, and activists threatened “escalation” of this pressure (probably protesting at talks during the festival) if action wasn’t taken.

For context, BG invests around £5 billion, which is around 2% of its portfolio into fossil fuel-related companies. This is lower than the industry average of 11%. Baillie Gifford invests more than this in clean energy companies. And looking at its climate reports, its record looks better than many other investment funds, with much lower carbon emitted per dollar invested. See the chart below.

Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Would I rather it invested less in fossil fuels and more in clean energy? Of course.

But it’s not all bad, and looks like it’s trying to make progress in the right direction. These are efforts I’d like to support and discuss, not boycott. And I struggle to see how threatening the future of book festivals – which is what will happen if they lose their funding – is going to help us get there.

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Books open minds, and create space for important discussions

Last week I spoke at this the Hay Festival about my book Not the End of the World. It looks at how we solve 7 of our big environmental problems, of which climate change is one of them. The event was sold out. Hundreds of us sat in a big tent talking about the impacts of climate change, the solutions, and what we can all do about it. I signed books and had good, respectful conversations with people afterwards.

John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather was speaking in another sold out tent at the same time. Across the week there were loads of climate-focused sessions. The festival bookshop was filled with books on climate challenges and solutions.

My point is that the Hay Festival was a great place to have engaging, open conversations about it. Regardless of what you think about Baillie Gifford, book festivals are a positive for making progress on climate change. And if you take away their funding, that positive force disappears.

The funding landscape for arts and literary events is incredibly strained. How these events can continue to deliver without generous support from BG, I’m not sure. I think it will be even harder now, because whoever steps in knows they will be under intense scrutiny and fear that they will be the target of the next boycott. I can only assume that Fossil Free Books and the artists that have backed them will be doing absolutely everything they can to help them find new sponsors to fill this gap. (That was sarcasm).

Another side-effect of this intense pressure from activists is that speakers – who are there to speak about climate – feel pressured into opting out. I wouldn’t have dropped out, but I did worry about how I might be judged. If I wasn’t ditching the festival, was I one of the “bad guys”? How would I respond if I was asked about the controversy? Did participating mean I didn’t care about climate change as much as other people?

It created an uncomfortable dynamic that those boycotting were “good” and those taking part were “bad”.

It’s also why – as Mark Lynas notes in his article – people are worried to speak out. I am one of them. I’m sure I’ll be criticised for publishing this. It would be easier to get on board with the boycott because that what’s a “good environmentalist” would do. But I struggle to support it because I don’t think this will drive the outcomes that we vitally need.

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The “fossil fuels are evil” narrative creates a strawman argument against climate action

There is another – broader – problem that I think is important.

This narrative that anything linked to fossil fuels is bad and evil just provides ammunition for those that want to slow down or stop a transition to clean energy.

One of the arguments I hear against against the transition to clean energy is that “you need lots of fossil fuels to build them”. This is half true. You do need fossil fuels to mine minerals and build low-carbon technologies, just not lots. This is how transitions work: you use the existing technology or fuel to build the infrastructure for the one replacing it. We do need some fossil fuels to build solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and electricity grids.

I used to think this argument was a strawman: no one was really arguing that we could ditch fossil fuels overnight. Or that fossil fuels were inherently evil. But that’s exactly what some activists seem to be arguing. If anyone or any company linked to any fossil fuels is inherently bad – which is what this boycott implies – then the message is that the world can go fossil-free tomorrow, and still thrive.

Not every behaviour or investment linked to fossil fuels is bad. If it is, we’re all hypocrites, because we all use goods and services supplied by fossil fuels. It’s impossible not to in the modern world.

And while we might want to deny it, many of those goods have brought us benefits. Fossil fuels have given the world huge benefits through the energy they provide. The problem is that they’re creating large problems too, so we need to find alternatives. And we need to do that quickly.

This transition, though, is not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take decades. That means we need an increasing share of energy investment going into clean energy, and a declining share into fossil fuels. What we can’t do is drop the fossil fuels share to zero tomorrow. We need to keep the world running while we transition.

To be clear: I want to see the world massively increase its investments in clean energy, and I want us to transition away from fossil fuels. In the chart below, I want clean energy investments up, and fossil fuels down. That’s exactly what’s happening (and I want to us to have informed discussions about how we make this happen faster).

But the black-and-white “fossil fuels are evil” narrative is not helping us to have grown-up conversations, and plays right into the hands of those that want strawman arguments for how unreasonable us environmentalists are.

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Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good

I’ve written previously about the risks of optimising for “perfect solutions”. They don’t exist.

I think the same applies here. None of us have perfect climate scorecards. Neither does Baillie Gifford, the Hay, or Edinburgh Book Festivals.

But these festivals are trying to do good. They promote respectful and informative discussions about climate change. They inspire audiences – including young kids – to get excited about books, and the ideas that lie within them. And BG, while it has more fossil-related investments than some might like, is also trying to move things in the right direction.

If we’re unwilling to engage with people and companies that are doing “good” because they’re not “perfect” then we’re going to get nowhere fast.

What are the potential implications of these book festivals being forced to dump their major sponsor?

• The festivals crumble, or are forced to become mini-versions of their previous selves.

• Consumers prices go up, making these conversations even more elitist. I want the book industry to be more inclusive, not less.

• Kids and schools that are invited for free no longer get to attend.

• Authors and artists get frustrated with the narrative capture of climate change.

• Those on the fringes of supporting clean energy are put off because the climate movement seems unreasonable and judgemental.

• Baillie Gifford saves money on charity donations, and can invest more in its companies.

• There is no change in carbon emissions.

None of these are good outcomes, or get us closer to net-zero.

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1. Mark Lynas has been a long-time writer and campaigner on climate change, and wrote the famous book "Six Degrees".

He has done a lot to wave the flag for climate action.