Michael Taylor takes Joe Dwek to his local Lebanese for a lesson in how to turn climate change calamity into a business opportunity
For our special environmental issue we wanted to speak to someone in a senior role in business that takes part in the major debates around the environment, the causes of climate change and the nature of the opportunity for developing new environmental technologies.Joe Dwek fits the bill on many counts. He's wealthy, healthy and wise. The chairman of the Mersey Basin Campaign from 1999 to 2004, in 2006 he was ranked as the region's most important environmental champion in the first ever Green Power list in a supplement to Insider.
With a lot of senior business figures and politicians that talk the jargon of the new age, you can smell the biodegradable bullshit a mile off. But Dwek has a pedigree in this kind of thing. He's also a shareholder of Mercury Recycling, an AIM-quoted business for which he has high hopes.
He's been an enthusiastic and single-minded advocate of environmental issues in the North West for many years. He has gone on to chair a long list of environmental and investment organisations, including Envirolink and Enworks and has made a professional nuisance of himself on the board of the Northwest Regional Development Agency.
In industry he spent a large chunk of his career with Bodycote, where he was chief executive and executive chairman from 1972 until his retirement in 1998. During that time he steered Bodycote to become a FTSE 200 listed company, employing over 4,000 people in 17 countries. It's tempting to talk about how that business is doing, especially as it is currently under offer from Swiss industrial giant Sulzer. Dwek things they should sell.
We've also come to the wonderful Cedars of Lebanon restaurant in Wilmslow, which not only serves magnificent platters of bread and bites, but has a special place in his heart - his mother was Lebanese. He was born in Brussels but is very un-Belgian, but he has a worldliness about current affairs that most don't take the time to think about.
"China and India think climate change has been dreamt up by the West as a propaganda tool to keep them in the dark ages," he says.
But we're here to talk green things and how he comes to the environmental table. He doesn't especially buy into the nanny mentality about monitoring every discarded cornflake box and counting everyone's mileage that the carbon warriors seem to advocate. He has a much more practical view of how new things get invented and how lives can be improved - the present renaissance of Salford Quays and of Liverpool wouldn't have been possible without the clean up of the waterways that he worked so hard to promote as the chairman of the Mersey Basin Campaign - he eventually wanted to introduce freshwater alligators to the river.
Dwek is adamant that mankind can be furthered by the pursuit of environmental goals, not held back. "Suppose the scientists have got it all wrong," says Dwek. "What if the planet isn't warming, or if it is that climate change is not caused by increases in carbon dioxide emissions, but by the sun. What do we possibly have to lose by finding a better way of using resources more efficiently? What businessman out there isn't driven by finding more efficient ways of running a business? The end result may well be a better standard of life, improvements to water quality and air quality, better controls over pollution.
"Whatever the reason for doing it, if we reduce waste, is there anything wrong with that?
"We're not just the descendants, but the ancestors of future generations."
When it comes to energy he says renewables just aren't efficient enough yet and there is no chance of the targets being met. "All of these things, wind, wave, water are part of a global package of energy sources. But having a collection of different inputs into the system means you can seek improvements all the time. What can possibly be wrong with that?" he says.
"At the moment though the case simply hasn't been made for turbines and solar panels on houses. The return on investment is just too long to make it worth doing."
He believes in nuclear, but is realistic enough to know that even if work started on a new power station tomorrow then there would still be an energy deficit at the point at which gas and oil become too expensive.
But he also takes issue with a few items of perceived wisdom on the environmental agenda, particularly the use of coal for energy. "The UK is built on coal, the Selby coalfields have plenty of the right kind of clean coal and the technology to clean our coal that can then be burnt to generate more electricit," he says.
On nuclear there is a clear opportunity for the North West. "I went to a debate recently at the Tyndall Centre in Manchester, which was full of the "green-at-any-price brigade', who are instinctively anti-nuclear. The technology is changing. At the end of the debate there were only four people voting against nuclear energy," he says.
Here's what I like about Dwek, he sees through most of the current stunts and gestures for what they are. Rubbish collections at two-week intervals won't work, and they'll create more problems than they seek to solve. Reducing air travel and demonising people who take flights is just cultural snobbery.
The question he wants all policy makers and environmental campaigners to consider is how the changes to lifestyles will be paid for and who will pay.
As a capitalist Dwek also sees the challenge. Understanding the specific requirements of directives is one thing, grasping the extent of the opportunity is another. Making engines less energy consuming and developing technologies to get cars running on biofuels would also take up land that could cut out land that could be used for food production.
It's the mark of the opportunist and the economist, but it's a damn sight more exciting and realistic than being lectured on carbon use by a Guardian reader.
Also in: June 2007
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The tide is turning
Forget rainforests and melting glaciers, think regulation, corporate image and the bottom line. The world is turning a bright shade of green and businesses must act now, finds Lisa Miles, before it's too late
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Radio award causes rumpus
Bidding for a commercial radio licence resembles a lottery, but, as Michael Taylor reports, there is anger brewing over the most recent regional decision