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And a stovetop swap.
“Kodak didn’t fail because they missed digital photography. They invented it. They failed because film was still wildly profitable, digital cameras felt additive, and the real disruption — smartphones — didn’t look dangerous until it was too late.”
– Russ Conser, 30-year Shell Oil employee turned regenerative farmer
Dear Reader,
Ross Conser is a veteran of the oil and gas industry, having spent three decades at Shell Oil. Part of his work, he told a reporter, was in carbon sequestration, by which companies and countries try to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by “sequestering” them where they don’t warm the atmosphere. His world “changed,” he explained, when he heard some wild claims about the carbon sequestration abilities of various soils. Skeptical, he dug deeper, concluding, somewhat triumphantly, “oh my gosh, nature’s already solved this thing. We just have to learn to work with her again.”
The unlikely convert is noticing something else — that oil and gas companies are at risk, as he puts it, of being “Kodaked.” The future is coming fast, he wrote — “solar, batteries, EVs, heat pumps, software — from Texas to Portugal to China.” Lest we miss his metaphor, he put it plainly: “Oil and gas are today’s film.”
And while the fossil fuel industry has been playing around with clean energy, it hasn’t been with any genuine sense of urgency. These days, anyone paying attention can see the way things are going.
Want to read about others who have made the shift from jobs in the fossil fuel industry to work that helps fight climate change? Check out Bluedot’s series, The Shift.
Predictively,
Dot
Dear Dot tells us more about gas stoves. And check out rebates to swap out your gas stove.
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