A short true-story-of-the-day, in pictures and charts, relaying almost incomprehensible political gymnastics by three governments in one week: two of which profess to be champions of climate-change action.
The week of the white elephants: The UK, US, and Canadian governments all tried to bail out the energy incumbency
Dear Jeremy & team,
One more bail-out about to happen: GAO says that a federal fund to help U.S. coal miners disabled by black lung disease will require a multibillion-dollar taxpayer bailout if Congress does not extend or increase the tax on coal production that funds it. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-coal-blacklung/us-black-lung-fund-will-need-taxpayer-bailout-if-coal-tax-falls-gao-idUSKCN1J029I
Regarding slide 25, there is a BIG roadblock. Credit – the life blood of CapitalismFail –has been predicated on the energy-equivilant slaves of the oil era. Renewables are not similar (energy density being one way to think about this). Technology has increased the per capita number of slaves (&, thereby, creditworthiness) by ~50% during my adult lifetime. That growth in slaves is stalled and will decline with renewables. That is a trap – or another reason CapitalismFail needs to be called what it is.
Another way to think about the roadblock regards transport. Electrification systemically shrinks globalization; tends to shift the definition of economic efficiencies toward a local model. Because this shift will tend to require a zero carbon (and other pollutants) small scale manufacturing, consumer goods costs will skyrocket. This is contrary to the needs of credit growth (greater disposable household income) and indicates significant investment write-offs will be integral to decreasing that ~80% of the energy mix that has been fossil carbon based.
Isn’t this “white elephant week” actually more likely the report of a blind man feeling part of the heard of elephants in the room [that we will not see due to motivated reasoning and a homeostasis-dependent trust in CapitalismFail]?
I’d really like to see this slideshow, but the “click forward” or “play” button is not linking anywhere, in either of my browsers… so I’m stuck on the cover image.
All original powerpoint files are downloadable from this folder:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pJlLMT57QZbUP0ZjWf5RMrexzDuanaC2