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If you’ve read #1 New York Times Bestseller The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming you wouldn’t expect its author to a very hopeful guy. Boy, it is a terrifying book, and you should read it.
When I finished it, I wondered how could you spend years researching and writing about the myriad negative impacts of climate change, including a section called "Elements of Chaos" with chapter titles like "Heat Death," "Drowning," "Unbreathable Air" and "Economic Collapse," and maintain any shred of optimism about the future? Knowing what you know, how could you get out of bed?
But author David Wallace-Wells, describes himself as a hopeful person. It's just his nature, he told me. During our conversation on stage last week at the Orbit FLOW, our company's exclusive maritime event, you could tell.
There’s something about a journalist who has such mastery of his material and confidence in his content that you think, maybe if I worked as hard in finding solutions to climate change as he did in writing about the problem then I might have an impact. There’s hope in that.
But hopefulness was more than just an impression. When asked if given the chance to revisit his book what if anything he would change, David said he would have focused more on the positive impact human activities have had on addressing our climate crisis, including the amount of investment in climate tech, the expanded capacity we have developed in solar and wind power and the dropping price of all of it. That’s due to human effort. That’s what gives him hope.
He also found hope in the commitments the maritime industry is making to decarbonize. Greater, he noted, than other industries and most nation states.
An event like this is particularly meaningful when you're part of the team that arranges it. My colleagues Mike Pignataro, Oskar Haraldsen and Isabelle Hänell provided phenomenal support and energy throughout the planning and execution process. I wanted to thank them for their efforts. The team extends to our partners at Blue-C and CashmanKatz, nimble agencies who have helped us build OrbitMI into a global brand.
Our other speakers were equally compelling. Rory Proud from Maritime Data in his presentation entitled “Not all data is created equally” laid out the differences in several foundational elements in maritime data, many of which you would think are uniform across providers (spoiler alert: they're not). His presentation reinforces why OrbitMI has positioned data quality at the heart of what we do.
Ali I. Riaz and Jørn Haanæs, two entrepreneurs from Norway, discussed their experiences in starting, scaling and spinning off companies.
Danilo McGarry educated us all on AI, but with a practical eye towards real ROI.
Peter Björkborg from Stena Teknik shared a vision for the energy transition.
Ultimately Orbit FLOW is about the people: Customers, investors, partners, colleagues and friends getting together, sometimes for the first time. How many times have you seen a small thumbnail on Teams come to life in person? There’s nothing like shaking hands, sharing a meal and talking to people to give meaning and purpose to what we do everyday.
Speaking of thumbnails coming to life, for those of you who know me, I'm 6'6" (2 meters) and I'm used to being the tallest guy in the crowd. So it was a thrill to meet Berend Luger from Viterra. Let’s say we saw eye to eye.
The day ended on Friday with a Wall Street tour that took us to the 9/11 memorial. The weather last week was eerily similar to that bright morning in 2001.
In between the two massive memorial pools stands an odd tree. It’s a Callery Pear Tree, the only one at the site. This tree withstood the devastation of the World Trade Center attacks. Severely damaged but still alive, it was rescued from the rubble, rehabilitated, and later replanted at the memorial site. Today, it stands as a symbol of resilience and hope, embodying the strength of those who endured and the spirit of recovery in the face of tragedy.
It’s the spirit of hope and resilience from the Survivor Tree that I will take with me.
