“There’s no such thing as luck in business.”

Alan Sugar, The Apprentice

Last week, we were lucky to be able to spend a few days in Stratford, doing touristy things and seeing a couple of plays. One of these was Kyoto, a darkly comic story about international climate politics in the years before and during the 1997 global summit. Don Pearlman, American lawyer, oil lobbyist, and master strategist, does everything in his power to subvert the whole process.

Pearlman existed. He died in 2005. The play attempts to explain his motivation for wrecking international climate talks. It seems he was a ‘self-made’ immigrant, with a Lithuanian Jewish background: Harvard graduate, successful lawyer, public servant in the Reagan administration, expert in climate negotiations. In the play, he extols the freedom of America, the land of opportunity, where people with brains and drive (like him) can rise to the top through their own efforts, and reap the justified material rewards. He seems to have regarded international efforts to curb carbon emissions as deeply threatening to that essential freedom.

He might well have been genuine in his attitude, less cynical than one might expect. His portrayal in the play reminded me of some successful people I know and others in the public eye. People who’ve worked hard, earned money, and feel entitled to enjoy the fruits of their labour.

America is the country best-known for people like this. It’s also the country that’s produced – at least, as far as I know – the best books about the role of luck in life. Books like Innumeracy by Jean-Allen Paulos, Fooled by Randomness by Nasim Nicholas Taleb, The Drunkard’s Walk by Leonard Mlodinow, Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, …

I’m persuaded that the role of luck is vastly underestimated, especially by successful men (it’s usually men). Luck in one’s background and education, luck in social attitudes, luck in who one meets, luck in the form of timing and location for one’s actions and ideas, lucky breaks at work, luck in not getting ill or having an accident, luck in living when and where there’s plenty of food and an absence of war, luck in one’s physical health, … But luck is much more likely to be noticed, let alone cited, when it’s bad than when it’s good.

I wonder about the implications for the planet. It seems to me that a lot of harm is done when successful people feel entitled, on the basis of their success, to an opulent (and damaging) lifestyle; and by the example they set to others.

I’d consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. I’m not sure I’m entitled to much. It’s certainly questionable how much planet damage can be justified by my ‘achievements’ in life thus far.