‘The world’s in a weird place’

This article first appeared in our Earth Day 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine, published 22 April. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox

Somewhere around a decade ago, the western world – as we knew it – started to change.

It’s tough to put a finger on why, but several things were taking place simultaneously. 

After the economic shock caused by the collapse of the Lehman Brothers in 2008, most of us endured several years of severely constrained finances.

But at the same time billionaires – technology pioneers in particular – were becoming obscenely wealthy. This is a trend that continues today.

According to Takers Not Makers, the latest annual Oxfam inequality report, global billionaire wealth grew by $2 trillion in 2024 – three times faster than the year before – equivalent to roughly $5.7 billion a day.

In a short space of time, seven of the 10 richest people on the planet were US-based tech titans, including Musk (X, Tesla), Page and Brin (Google, YouTube), Bezos (Amazon), Zuckerberg (Facebook, Instagram), Ballmer (Microsoft) and Ellison (Oracle).

Their wealth accumulation has highlighted a fast-growing chasm between ‘them’ and ‘us’.

According to the World Bank, the number of people still living in poverty – around 3.5 billion – has barely changed since 1990. Yet the world is now on track to see five trillionaires within a decade.

Bitterness and resentment has risen (and been redirected) as a new strain of populism has been unleashed.

At the same time, the world started to quite successfully wean itself off fossil fuels as batteries, wind and solar became cheaper and cheaper. The rise in electric vehicles has also been disconcertingly rapid for some.

The world is changing

The profound change that is disrupting the oil and gas industry is at an early stage, but the transition has begun in earnest and it’s now clear that the world – or what’s left of it – will be very different indeed by 2040.

Throw in the Covid pandemic, conflicts and the threat of trade wars, not to mention AI, and you could be forgiven for feeling dread, despair and disillusionment in equal measure.

Now, I would say that on the spectrum of positivity to negativity I am naturally a positive person, but the last decade has, at times, profoundly tested my faith in humanity.

Nevertheless I remain convinced that we, as individuals, can make a difference, and that there are many more good people than bad on this planet.

Now’s the time to take the bricks that life throws us and use them to build a better world. While the daily choices we make may seem small in isolation, collectively we can make a difference through our everyday decisions.

Ways to make a difference

When it comes to ‘cleaner’, low-impact living there are, to my mind, four things that you can do that would make a significant difference.

Things that will really stick in the craw of the old and new industrialists alike, and the shameless, populist profiteers like Farage and Trump.

I would talk to you about your diet, but there are much more qualified people to advise about that (though it is much, much easier than people think to significantly decrease meat intake).

I would also talk to you about flying but, as someone who runs an international business, that’s a thorny subject – not least because sustainable alternatives do not really exist yet and are years away.

While we are trying to set up teams overseas so we don’t have to fly, it has proven much harder than we imagined.

So instead, I am going to focus on the two subjects on which I can speak with confidence. I am gong to try to persuade you to switch to an electric car as soon as you are able and perhaps to start investigating electric heating, too.