“Asset Manager Quest” Game Targets Idiotic Fossil Fuel Investments

A group of “serious people,” including someone who calls himself Oli Frost, have devised a simple computer game called Asset Manager Quest that uses a Raspberry Pi computer to spoof the actions of Abrdn, a wealth management company based in Scotland that is heavily involved in funding the fossil fuel industry. Above is a screenshot of the opening screens in the game, which is way less complicated than Pac-Man and about as complex as Pong. (If you were born after 1972, we have included a helpful Wikipedia post that explains that game.) In an odd twist, the creators of Asset Manager Quest styled their game console to resemble the one used by Pong.

Humor is a wonderful way to expose pomposity and stupidity at the highest levels. The history of literature is chock full of satire that pokes fun at people who take themselves way too seriously. William Shakespeare set most of his plays in foreign countries like Denmark (Hamlet) or Italy (Julius Caesar and quite a few others). In the Bard’s time, saying disparaging things about the royals was punishable by having your head cut off in the Tower of London. Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll lampooned the monarchy in Gulliver’s Travels and Alice In Wonderland, while Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado had nothing whatsoever to do with Japan and everything to do with Jollye Olde Englande.

Oli Frost took his portable game console to Abrdn headquarters, where he was rudely dismissed with all the pomp and circumstance we would expect from people who think they are way smarter than anyone else and did not want to be shown why they are blithering idiots and fools. The group made a video of their adventures. This is something you definitely want to watch for yourself.

According to We Don’t Have Time, a climate advocacy group that we hold in high regard here at CleanTechnica’s posh global headquarters high atop Mount Olympus, “Oli Frost, known for his quirky climate crisis songs, has taken his creativity to the next level with his latest project — a video game about asset management. But don’t let the topic fool you — this isn’t your average finance simulator. In typical Oli fashion, he’s made managing assets fun, while also raising awareness about climate change.”

The game challenges players to make decisions that balance profit with sustainability, showing how managing resources can make or break the planet’s future. It’s a fresh and entertaining way to get people thinking about the role that businesses, investments, and even everyday choices play in the climate crisis. Oli’s game is another example of how he takes serious topics and makes them engaging. It’s a clever way to get people involved in conversations about sustainability while keeping them entertained — and it just might make asset management the next big thing in the climate fight!

On his website, Frost says, “I’m Oli Frost, the guy who makes novelty songs about the climate crisis. Greta Thunberg did the macarena to one of them. My work has been featured everywhere from UK Parliament to Britain’s Got Talent, BBC to Fox News, in music festivals, art shows, and on bins. Most recently: I’ve been mesmerizing people, won a climate song contest, and made a video game to annoy fossil fuel financiers.” If you visit his site, you can listen to several of his songs, which have been downloaded millions of times. Here’s an example:

Frost has also created a fake ad agency to lampoon the stalwarts in the ad world who shamelessly shill for fossil fuel companies as they struggle to make them cute and cuddly instead of the rapacious environment destroyers they really are. Those people go to work every day with their heads held high so they can cash their massive paychecks at the end of the week while showing no regard for the effects the pollutants associated with extracting and burning of fossil fuels have on real people. The Asset Manager Quest game was played by over 600 employees at Abrdn until management banned its employees from playing it. People often have no sense of humor when their fat compensation packages are under threat.

When Is A Subsidy Not A Subsidy?

Last month, Michael Barnard addressed the issue of fossil fuel subsidies. The International Monetary Fund says direct and indirect subsidies — poorer health is one such indirect subsidy since society as a whole has to pay the costs of health care for those affected by fossil fuel pollution — total more than $7 trillion every year.

Let’s start with what are subsidies? There’s a lot of arguments about this, Barnard says. A lot of people try to pretend that classes of subsidies aren’t actual subsidies, they’re something else. But Michael prefers to go with the International Monetary Fund definition. From 2010 to 2015, they normalized what they considered to be subsidies, and it’s a big bag. They talk about direct subsidies, which are the ones everybody thinks about — giving money to the fossil fuel industry.

They talk about indirect subsidies, which is putting a cap on retail prices or under-pricing fossil fuels at the gas pump or paying consumers a fee to enable them to buy more fossil fuels. Further, we’ve got foregone revenue where taxes are lowered on fossil fuels, so the government isn’t collecting money. These are all fiscal arrangements that are directly related. A lot of people try to exclude indirect. That’s an inappropriate choice.

And, of course, there’s the big kicker in the room, the negative externalities. A couple of seminars ago, we talked about carbon pricing and carbon pricing schemes around the world. That is a process that prices negative externalities for the economic, human health, and environmental impacts they cause.

The Takeaway

Humor can cut the biggest stuffed shirt down to size, something Kamala Harris and her team are using to their advantage. So play around with the Asset Manager Quest game and see how easy it can be to actually do something about fossil fuel pollution instead of hiding it in the pantry with your cupcakes. Let us know if the game has any impact on your world view. It should, but then again, some people are just not teachable. Have fun!