"The risks of emitting carbon are real, even if we are unsure how significant these risks are. This means polluters must be forced to bear the cost of their emissions, whether or not by regressive means."
The author appears to be assuming that the risk won't turn out to be so small that there is no measurable cost 80 or 100 years from now. That assumption could easily be wrong.
How does the author determine the future cost when the possible range of costs is from a lot to near zero?
How does anyone know what to charge?
How can any industry be forced to pay now for future costs that may or may not occur?
Most of the evidence in the article is speculation about what might happen in future worst case scenarios. There is no evidence that any of these scenarios are likely, except in the virtual worlds of computer models.
We don't live in a virtual world. Making policy decisions with far reaching impacts without solid evidence is irresponsible.
Whose human rights is Shell violating, I wonder? The comfortable human rights of those in wealthy, developed, energy-rich western societies? What about the human rights of those in the developing world, those who wait for stable and dependable power, that doesn’t need diesel generators after dark; who wait for good roads, and reliable vehicles to drive on them; for adequate sanitation and housing? Companies like Shell have played a role in providing the energy and materials that make such progress and prosperity possible. Will that now cease, or will Shell be further sued for failing to expedite such a necessary transition - the true ‘energy transition’? When litigation drives corporate policy, and even the possibility of economic success, it is only a matter of time before the clash of competing rights pulls the whole economic house down upon itself. Lots to ponder in this piece Vivek, thanks for writing it!
Vivek Kelkar is right, the transition away from fossil fuels means massive social and political change. It’s change that will leave those of us in the West, poorer and less competitive.
If the recent series on climate change demonstrated anything, it’s that solar and wind power will never be reliable and nuclear power will never be politically viable.
Yet the push to electrify everything continues unabated. How long will it be until our cars run on electricity and our homes are heated with electricity? And when the power fails because of the unreliability of the new electricity generation technologies, what choice will we have but to hunker down in our freezing, damp homes without the ability to even take a short drive to the store for a container of milk and a loaf of bread?
Despite, the facile arguments of many of the climate change hysterics who submitted articles to the CG series, we all saw what happened in California and Texas when the electricity went out. Imagine that scenario playing out over and over again throughout the Western world. That’s what’s coming.
What’s most fascinating about Vivek’s commentary about the climate activism of the corporate community and financial investors is that these so-called capitalists are turning the keys to the economy over to China. There’s no nation in the world that benefits more from the economic consequences of climate change policy than China. It’s a nation that pays nothing but lip service to the need to develop green energy policies while it continues to gladly accept all the business that once could be profitably conducted in the West but will now be based in a nation where energy is affordable, labor is cheap and support for environmental protection (and the costs that go with it) are little more than a public relations effort to con credulous Americans and Europeans.
What will the world be like for our children and grandchildren when Europe and the United States are in extremis and China rules the world? That’s the direction we’re headed in and the obsession with climate change is hastening the day when an ascendant China rules the world as the most powerful hegemon.
The irony is that Western collapse is due to suicide not homicide. That it is facilitated by western capitalists is a great irony.
I guess Lenin was right after all about capitalism and the hanging rope.
In short, what we have here is another recipe for economic, hence social and political, chaos in the name of climate change. In this case the leading culprits are "activist investors" rather than politicians, bureaucrats and the expert class—but hubris is hubris and it inevitably confronts its nemesis, which is reality. The reality here is that a business model founded on ideology is a business model programmed to fail.
On the subject of other possible disasters, I believe that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, expanding into a major war between China and the United States, is a real possibility within five years or so. In the alternative, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to which the US and the so-called world community did not respond forcefully is also possible. And that would be a disaster of a different kind: a tacit acknowledgement of China's status as global hegemon. What say the Cosmopolitan Globalists...?
"The risks of emitting carbon are real, even if we are unsure how significant these risks are. This means polluters must be forced to bear the cost of their emissions, whether or not by regressive means."
The author appears to be assuming that the risk won't turn out to be so small that there is no measurable cost 80 or 100 years from now. That assumption could easily be wrong.
How does the author determine the future cost when the possible range of costs is from a lot to near zero?
How does anyone know what to charge?
How can any industry be forced to pay now for future costs that may or may not occur?
Most of the evidence in the article is speculation about what might happen in future worst case scenarios. There is no evidence that any of these scenarios are likely, except in the virtual worlds of computer models.
We don't live in a virtual world. Making policy decisions with far reaching impacts without solid evidence is irresponsible.
Whose human rights is Shell violating, I wonder? The comfortable human rights of those in wealthy, developed, energy-rich western societies? What about the human rights of those in the developing world, those who wait for stable and dependable power, that doesn’t need diesel generators after dark; who wait for good roads, and reliable vehicles to drive on them; for adequate sanitation and housing? Companies like Shell have played a role in providing the energy and materials that make such progress and prosperity possible. Will that now cease, or will Shell be further sued for failing to expedite such a necessary transition - the true ‘energy transition’? When litigation drives corporate policy, and even the possibility of economic success, it is only a matter of time before the clash of competing rights pulls the whole economic house down upon itself. Lots to ponder in this piece Vivek, thanks for writing it!
Vivek Kelkar is right, the transition away from fossil fuels means massive social and political change. It’s change that will leave those of us in the West, poorer and less competitive.
If the recent series on climate change demonstrated anything, it’s that solar and wind power will never be reliable and nuclear power will never be politically viable.
Yet the push to electrify everything continues unabated. How long will it be until our cars run on electricity and our homes are heated with electricity? And when the power fails because of the unreliability of the new electricity generation technologies, what choice will we have but to hunker down in our freezing, damp homes without the ability to even take a short drive to the store for a container of milk and a loaf of bread?
Despite, the facile arguments of many of the climate change hysterics who submitted articles to the CG series, we all saw what happened in California and Texas when the electricity went out. Imagine that scenario playing out over and over again throughout the Western world. That’s what’s coming.
What’s most fascinating about Vivek’s commentary about the climate activism of the corporate community and financial investors is that these so-called capitalists are turning the keys to the economy over to China. There’s no nation in the world that benefits more from the economic consequences of climate change policy than China. It’s a nation that pays nothing but lip service to the need to develop green energy policies while it continues to gladly accept all the business that once could be profitably conducted in the West but will now be based in a nation where energy is affordable, labor is cheap and support for environmental protection (and the costs that go with it) are little more than a public relations effort to con credulous Americans and Europeans.
What will the world be like for our children and grandchildren when Europe and the United States are in extremis and China rules the world? That’s the direction we’re headed in and the obsession with climate change is hastening the day when an ascendant China rules the world as the most powerful hegemon.
The irony is that Western collapse is due to suicide not homicide. That it is facilitated by western capitalists is a great irony.
I guess Lenin was right after all about capitalism and the hanging rope.
In short, what we have here is another recipe for economic, hence social and political, chaos in the name of climate change. In this case the leading culprits are "activist investors" rather than politicians, bureaucrats and the expert class—but hubris is hubris and it inevitably confronts its nemesis, which is reality. The reality here is that a business model founded on ideology is a business model programmed to fail.
On the subject of other possible disasters, I believe that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, expanding into a major war between China and the United States, is a real possibility within five years or so. In the alternative, a Chinese invasion of Taiwan to which the US and the so-called world community did not respond forcefully is also possible. And that would be a disaster of a different kind: a tacit acknowledgement of China's status as global hegemon. What say the Cosmopolitan Globalists...?