by James C. Sherlock
Ever feel not only disconnected from, but ignored by central planners?
Do you run a shoe store in Sterling or work for a hospital in Richmond? Use natural gas in your home or work? Teach in a public school in Wise County? Drive a gas-or diesel-powered vehicle?
In other words, do you do what people do to make the economy run and feed their families? Live your life using carbon-based energy, as does the entire economy?
Central planners have chosen your future. Nothing big, just the entire United states economy.
They acknowledge “headwinds” in that future. Challenges they call “weather fronts.” What McKinsey, the guru of net zero, calls a “devilish duality” that it claims has put “executives” on the spot.
They offer strategies to deal with them:
As net zero has become an organizing principle for business, executives are on the spot to lay out credibly how they will deliver a transition to net zero while building and reinforcing resilience against the certain volatility of ongoing economic and political shocks.
Dominion Energy is all in. But questions arise:
- Is net zero an “organizing principle” for your business and life?
- Who is “on the spot,” “executives” or you?
- Do you think, as McKinsey states as fact, that the actions of man can “mitigate the climate”?
- Do you want to move to transform your life at McKinsey’s headlong pace, or do you just want clean air and water, to move back from low lying areas, to protect our most strategically valuable assets from flooding, and to transition to green energy when it is proven reliable and affordable?
Doesn’t matter. You are along for McKinsey’s ride.
They get paid even if it derails.
For a peek into government/industrial group-think, it is always instructional to listen to McKinsey. Which is hired to tell them what to think.
As the “thought leader” of central planning, McKinsey is the go-to consultant for governments at the federal and state levels, multibillion dollar industries, and international central planning get-togethers like Davos.
And their own conventions.
For the last ten years, McKinsey’s Global Infrastructure Initiative has sought to create trust-based forums for senior decision-makers to scale innovation, forge relationships, and mobilize change in pursuit of sustainable, resilient, inclusive infrastructure. McKinsey serves as the convenor of the community, with the aspiration of creating shared momentum toward smarter, greener infrastructure.
If you don’t have a ticket for any of those rides, you get to watch.
Among the “weather fronts” McKinsey acknowledges are:
- energy availability and security, including grid reliability;
- the availability of the rare earth materials required for the transition;
- the affordability of the “adaptations” required to utterly upend the economies of nations;
- The growing backlash against environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting requirements and of ESG investing; and
- governments, mugged by reality (not including the Biden Administration), abandoning at least the pace of the course McKinsey has set for them.
McKinsey sees these as small speed bumps on the way to nirvana. Opportunities to excel, actually.
McKinsey advises staying the course. That, friends, is dogma on stage.
You weren’t polled. I urge readers to review what McKinsey is telling its customers.
Which doesn’t include you.
Read McKinsey strategies for “shaping a resilient sustainability.” Your betters will work to implement them. You won’t be tempted to try them at home or in your own business.
You may not be in a position to “form public-private partnerships.”
CEOs should realize that the challenge of maintaining resiliency while driving toward net zero is too great to go it alone. New public–private partnerships will be needed because many of the emerging energy and materials value chains will require full ecosystem development.
You are unlikely “go beyond net zero,” “play offense through a sustainable value creation strategy,” or “aggressively reskill leadership teams, boards, and frontline workers.”
“Reskill.” The use of insider verbs always shows deeper understanding than you have.
The Youngkin administration is trying to jump off of the part of that ride that ties Virginia consumers and businesses to California’s economic-death-defying dive. Godspeed.
Steve Haner keeps us apprised of the progress and challenges of Dominion’s efforts and the blocking of new natural gas pipelines in Virginia.
But always remember that central planners, with McKinsey at their side, have you covered.
If “covered” is the right word.
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