Florence

Carnevale comes from the Latin words ‘carnem’ and ‘vale,’ meaning ‘meat’ and ‘farewell’…. and so when Ash Wednesday and Lent came, it was time to leave Venice for work in Florence. Needless to say, any opportunity to visit Florence is a treat… but this working visit was much, much too brief!

There were 27 engineers in this GE ‘Oil & Gas University’ session, from 20 different countries – and given their background, they were particularly interested when we discussed the recent ‘stranded assets’ debate. A couple of years ago, Bill McKibben wrote an article in Rolling Stone entitled: “Global Warmings’ Terrifying New Math,” which suggested that companies would not be able to burn all of the fossil fuel reserves that are included in their stock market valuations if the world were to meet its 2oC global warming target. This subject is now getting academic attention, as was evident in a paper last month in the somewhat more authoritative journal Nature. One of its authors was quoted in the Guardian as saying: “In 2013, fossil fuel companies spent some $670bn on exploring for new oil and gas resources. One might ask why they are doing this when there is more in the ground than we can afford to burn.”