Yet in the end, on December 13, COP gutted out a statement that seemed to please corporate greens, at least. Here's the Bloomberg News writeup:
While the outcome falls short of the specific fossil fuel “phase out” most countries wanted, it does break new ground: No previous COP text has mentioned moving away from oil and gas, the fuels that have underpinned the global economy for decades.
Whereupon Bloomberg wrote of "language pushing a decline in fossil fuel use [that] will send a signal to investors about the future of energy markets." Pressing the point was Jennifer Morgan, the German delegate:
We now tomorrow move forward in implementing this. Every investor should understand now that the future investments that are profitable and long-term are renewable energy — and investing in fossil fuels is a stranded asset.
Can Germany make those words stick? The country isn't anywhere near the economic and political power that it was even five years ago--and neither is the European Union. All this green "Hobbit"-type thinking may improve the ecological soul, but it's hell on economic vitality. (In the meantime, of course, Germany is burning more coal.)
Morgan's words are more than just brave optimism--they are also expressly designed to talk down carbon-energy viability. That is, by applying the "wave of the future" framing tactic--you have to be on the right side of history! you can't fight the inevitable!--she and her allies seek to depress carbon-fuel investment and make the "stranded asset" prophecy self-fulfilling. Morgan obviously has an ally in Bloomberg News.
Will Morgan, and Bloomberg, succeed? This author thinks not. Why? Because the value of all the oil, gas, and coal around the world is to be measured in the quadrillions of dollars (that's 15 zeroes). And people tend not to overlook things of value--that's why capitalism works so well, and so efficiently: If it has a value, or could have a value, some capitalist is on it.
The Germans, gloomily processing their tortured history, might be happy becoming poor, and they might even drag the EU with them, but the rest of the world won't agree. The ROW includes, for sure, China and India, as well as other big countries in Asia and Africa. Most of them, in fact, are still using coal. And #resistance to the long march to the green Finland Station probably also includes the United States, where substantial opinion now regards Al Gore-type greenery as a hoax, or at least a con. (One needn't have an opinion on the science of climate change to nonetheless be a skeptic on the proffered solutions--most of which seem to involve subsidies to solar- and wind companies.)
So the Directional Investor sees this as a contrarian opportunity--go long on carbon fuels. Soon enough, the politics will catch up, as carbon fuels are protected. Ideally, we'll have carbon capture, as part of a Grand Carbon Bargain. With that, we'd have all the appurtenant industries that can come from carbon usage--carbon being, after all, a wonder element. So a whole second industry of carbon capture could emerge alongside the ongoing industry of carbon extraction. The value of all this would be in the quadrillions, too. What goes up must come down--and a good thing. Here's the circular economy.
We could even use captured carbon to make islands, as argued here. In fact, there's a whole book, which I have co-authored with Dr. Joyce Starr, outlining the potential of carbon capture to build new things, including peace in the Middle East.
