Almost 40 years ago, 1982, a book was published called “Megatrends”.  The author had been an intelligence officer in WWII and was using a technique that had been developed during the war to intuit what was happening to society, primarily in Germany, at that time.  The general concept was to count the number of lines in the local papers that various news items were garnering.  Something like shortages of food might start with a brief article far back in the papers and gradually take up more and more ink until it became front page news.  In this way we were able to learn what issues were developing in that area that might be useful for strategic purposes.

While I have not been practicing this technique in a scientific manner, it is extremely clear that this particular phenomena is happening here and now especially in the last couple of months regarding the amount of press the economic impact that a warming climate is having and going to have on our society.  This is because there are more and more studies and official discussions of this impending crisis that are occurring and thus are being reported.  This should not be of surprise to any of you that have been reading my posts for years as I have been continually warning of this risk (since at least 2013  https://franklytalking.com/buckle-up-transition/) before official studies began forecasting and quantifiably calculating this.

Take the following article and several others which I’ve copied for your reference.  At the recently concluded World Economic Conference at Davos, Switzerland (https://sdg.iisd.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2019/) the article describes how the climate discussions dominated the meeting.  Another article describes the risk to banks and other financial entities that a climate bubble popping would cause.  

The one big takeaway from all this is that there seems to be an epiphany occurring that there are huge risks and dislocations coming and as capital stops flowing to support the fossil fuel industry and all its suppliers and towards renewable energy development, dramatic financial consequences will occur.  It’s gonna be ugly because this is NOT going to be a gradual or straight line progression.  It’s going to be fast and tumultuous like falling off a cliff. It’s already starting and beginning to develop momentum and going to happen much faster than is being predicted.  Not only is this momentum organic but there are forces that are pushing along the move to halt capital flowing into fossil fuel funding.  Sierra Club is pushing a vigorous initiative in this effort.  (https://www.sierraclub.org/michael-brune/2020/01/stop-the-money-pipeline-divestment).  

Here are the headlines from several articles that are copied below.  

Climate Change Could Blow Up the Economy. Banks Aren’t Ready.  

  • “FRANKFURT — Climate change has already been blamed for deadly bush fires in Australia, withering coral reefs, rising sea levels and ever more cataclysmic storms. Could it also cause the next financial crisis?

  • A report issued this week by an umbrella organization for the world’s central banks argued that the answer is yes, while warning that central bankers lack tools to deal with what it says could be one of the biggest economic dislocations of all time.”

Economists Warn of Climate Dangers to Global Markets

“The International Monetary Fund released its own economic growth estimates from the World Economic Forum underway this week in Davos, Switzerland. Its newest World Economic Outlook zeros in on climate change, as well.

“Weather-related disasters such as tropical storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires have imposed severe humanitarian costs and livelihood loss across multiple regions in recent years,” IMF economists wrote. “Climate change, the driver of the increased frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters, already endangers health and economic outcomes, and not only in the directly affected regions.””

“The number of people who are talking about fossil fuels as a real concern “has increased dramatically over the last 12 to 24 months,” said Jeff McDermott, chief executive of Greentech Capital, an investment bank focused on low-carbon technologies. “They are both looking at the risks of high-carbon companies and industries as well as the returns available from low-carbon alternatives.”…

Potentially, enormous sums could be used to influence corporate behavior. For instance, Climate Action 100+ said investors with around $35 trillion in assets had signed on to its program for pushing companies toward greater disclosure and action on emissions.

“I believe we are on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance,” wrote Laurence D. Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, which has nearly $7 trillion under management, in a letter vowing to put sustainability at the core of the firm’s investment approach.”

“New York City is moving forward with plans to divest three of its largest public pension funds from fossil fuel companies.

Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and Comptroller Scott Stringer said yesterday that the city had selected financial advisers to offer divestment alternatives to the Employees’ Retirement System, the Board of Education Retirement System and the Teachers’ Retirement System. Together, the three pension funds hold $3 billion in fossil fuel assets.

As part of the announcement, New York officials said they intended to double investments in climate solutions like wind and solar power and energy efficiency to $4 billion by 2021.”

SPAIN:  Government Declares Climate Emergency, Gets Plan Ready

“Spain’s new government declared a national climate emergency yesterday, taking a formal first step toward enacting ambitious measures to fight climate change.

The declaration approved by the Cabinet says the left-of-center Socialist government will send to Parliament within 100 days its proposed climate legislation. The targets coincide with those of the European Union, including a reduction of net carbon emissions to zero by 2050.”

 Texas Oil Association Shifts on Climate

“”Bold and achievable action on climate change at the global level is essential, and America’s natural gas and oil industry is committed to innovation and leadership to make these ambitions more than just hopes and dreams,” API President Mike Sommers said in a speech last week.”

 BlackRock Goes Green: More Like GreenRock

“Fink said the economic consequences of climate change pushed him to make the decision. “The evidence on climate risk is compelling investors to reassess core assumptions about modern finance,” he wrote.”

Climate Change Could Blow Up the Economy. Banks Aren’t Ready.

Like other central banks, the E.C.B., which met on Thursday, is scrambling to prepare for what a report warns could be a coming economic upheaval.

Jan. 23, 2020

 

Bush fires raging in New South Wales, Australia, on Thursday.
Bush fires raging in New South Wales, Australia, on Thursday.Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York Times
  • FRANKFURT — Climate change has already been blamed for deadly bush fires in Australia, withering coral reefs, rising sea levels and ever more cataclysmic storms. Could it also cause the next financial crisis?
  • A report issued this week by an umbrella organization for the world’s central banks argued that the answer is yes, while warning that central bankers lack tools to deal with what it says could be one of the biggest economic dislocations of all time.

The book-length report, published by the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel, Switzerland, signals what could be the overriding theme for central banks in the decade to come.

“Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to human societies, and our community of central banks and supervisors cannot consider itself immune to the risks ahead of us,” François Villeroy de Galhau, governor of the Banque de France, said in the report.

Central banks spent much of the last 10 years hauling their economies out of a deep financial crisis that began in 2008. They may well spend the next decade coping with the disruptive effects of climate change and technology, the report said.

The European Central Bank, which on Thursday concluded a two-day meeting in Frankfurt focusing on monetary policy, is beginning to grapple with those challenges. The bank did not make any changes in interest rates or its economic stimulus program on Thursday. Instead, other issues are coming to the fore.

Christine Lagarde, the central bank’s president, who took office late last year, has pledged to put climate change on the bank’s agenda, and the issue will play an important role as the E.C.B. embarks on the first comprehensive review since 2003 of how it conducts monetary policy.

“While we might not be ahead of the curve yet, we are not sitting on our bottoms doing nothing,” Ms. Lagarde said during a news conference on Thursday, noting that the bank’s employee pension fund is shifting investment to companies with lower carbon dioxide emissions. “It is going to be an important matter that will be debated during the strategy review.”

The E.C.B. formally began the review on Thursday, saying it would be done by the end of the year. The review will focus on how to steer inflation in the eurozone, the bank’s main job, while also considering “the threat to environmental sustainability, rapid digitalization, globalization and evolving financial structures.”

But there will probably be disagreement within the bank’s Governing Council about using all of its financial firepower to help avert a climate catastrophe.

When buying corporate bonds to influence market interest rates, for example, the bank could exclude debt of corporations considered big producers of greenhouse gases. That approach could have a powerful effect on financial markets, encouraging private investors to follow suit by also acquiring bonds of companies considered sustainable and dumping debt issued by polluters.

Ms. Lagarde acknowledged that some members of the Governing Council question whether fighting climate change is a central bank’s job.

“I’m aware of all that,” Ms. Lagarde said. “I’m also aware of the danger of doing nothing.”

Harvesting seaweed in the Solomon Islands in 2018. The South Pacific nation may be at serious risk from rising sea levels.Credit…Adam Ferguson for The New York Times

 

This new attention to the financial consequences of a hotter earth comes as central banks are contending with another new challenge: technologies that threaten their monopoly on issuing money and their power to combat a financial crisis.

Digital currencies like Bitcoin and Libra, Facebook’s planned offering, bypass central banks and could undermine their control of the monetary system. One solution is for central banks to get into the digital currency business themselves.

On Wednesday, the central banks of Britain, Canada, Japan, Sweden and Switzerland said they were working together with the Bank for International Settlements to figure out what would happen if they did just that.

It’s complicated, though.

As with cash, people can use digital currencies to pay other people directly, without a bank in the middle. But unlike cash, digital currencies allow person-to-person transactions to take place online.

Such a system could be more efficient, but also risky, said a report issued on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, the organization that stages the annual conclave in Davos, Switzerland.

Commercial banks might become superfluous and fail, leaving central banks to become, in effect, giant retail banks. But they have no experience dealing with millions of individual customers and could be overwhelmed. If a central bank collapsed, so would the monetary system.

Climate change also takes central banks into uncharted territory. Think the subprime crisis in 2008 was bad? Imagine a real estate crisis caused by rising sea levels and coastal flooding that renders thousands of square miles of land uninhabitable or useless for farming.

By some estimates, global gross domestic product could plunge by nearly a quarter by the end of the century because of the effects of climate change. Central banks have enough trouble dealing with mild recessions, and would not be powerful enough to combat an economic downturn of that scale.

Teslas being charged in California last year. Tesla’s market value is now second only to Toyota’s among automakers.Credit…Philip Cheung for The New York Times

 

“In the worst case scenario, central banks may have to intervene as climate rescuers of last resort or as some sort of collective insurer for climate damages,” said the Bank for International Settlements report.

It suggested some precautionary measures central banks could take.

Central banks, which often function as bank regulators, could require lenders to increase capital reserves if they hold assets vulnerable to the economic effects of a shift to renewable energy. An example might be a bank that has lent a lot of money to fossil fuel companies, or to the Saudi government.

The auto industry already illustrates how investors are moving their money away from companies seen as polluters and into those seen as environmentally friendly, with disruptive effects on economies. Tesla’s value on the stock market is more than $100 billion, second only to Toyota among carmakers. (Toyota is still worth more than twice as much as Tesla.)

In this way, Tesla is being rewarded for producing emission-free electric vehicles. But the migration of capital away from the established manufacturers makes it difficult for them to invest in new technology, and it could result in huge job losses as well as social and political upheaval.

Central banks need to coordinate their policies to deal with these new challenges, said the Bank for International Settlements report. Unfortunately, coordination is not something that central banks are very good at right now.

“Climate change is a global problem that demands a global solution,” the paper said. But, it added, “monetary policy seems, currently, to be difficult to coordinate between countries.”

Economists Warn of Climate Dangers to Global Markets

Nathanial Gronewold, E&E News Reporter

A slowing global economy could be further inhibited by climate change, economists at the United Nations and International Monetary Fund warn in two new reports.

Citing the “deepening climate crisis” alongside issues such as rising inequality and huge public and private debt, the United Nations’ economics division says the world economy in 2019 expanded at its slowest rate in a decade. The trade conflict between the United States and China contributed, they acknowledged, but so did natural disasters that some scientists have linked to climate change.

The IMF concurs. Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva pointed to drought in Africa and wildfires in Australia as indicative of “the dramatic impacts that climate shocks could have” on economies globally.

Officials with the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) told reporters in New York that growth rates should improve this year, from a low 2.3% rate in 2019, but only if nothing else goes wrong. A laundry list of risks could dent growth even further, they warned, including additional climate shocks to agriculture and infrastructure.

“We may see a slight uptick in growth to 2.5% this year; however, that is based on an assumption that geopolitical frictions do not intensify, that trade tensions do not reescalate, that Brexit is concluded smoothly, that financial stability risks must remain at bay, that climate shocks do not destabilize the world economy,” said U.N. DESA economist Dawn Holland.

Holland stressed that governments aren’t doing enough to address global warming, either. That’s a problem not just for the planet, but also for individual countries — as fossil fuel-dependent economies risk a future downturn should a transition away from coal and oil pick up speed.

Already, there’s some worry. Economic growth for this year could come in weaker than the United Nations’ already weak forecast, cautioned DESA chief economist Elliott Harris.

“The world continues to face a host of risks and uncertainties including trade tensions, escalating geopolitical conflicts, elevated levels of debt, as well as increasing climate risks,” he said. “The risks of a further deterioration in the economic situation are high.”

These dangers could be mitigated if governments did more to transition away from fossil fuels and toward lower- or zero-carbon-emissions energy sources. “A more balanced mix of policy is called for,” Harris said.

The International Monetary Fund released its own economic growth estimates from the World Economic Forum underway this week in Davos, Switzerland. Its newest World Economic Outlook zeros in on climate change, as well.

“Weather-related disasters such as tropical storms, floods, heatwaves, droughts, and wildfires have imposed severe humanitarian costs and livelihood loss across multiple regions in recent years,” IMF economists wrote. “Climate change, the driver of the increased frequency and intensity of weather-related disasters, already endangers health and economic outcomes, and not only in the directly affected regions.”

The IMF’s estimate for 2019 growth is higher than the figure the United Nations gives: 2.9%. IMF economists are also more optimistic about 2020’s economic prospects, predicting global gross domestic product expansion will accelerate to 3.3% — though economists there admit this is a downgrade from prior growth forecasts.

The IMF’s chief economist stressed the threat posed by global warming during a news conference at the Swiss ski resort town.

“Climate risk is near and present,” said IMF research director Gita Gopinath. “There are huge changes that will be associated with the changes we are seeing with the climate.”

To fight the global economic slowdown, the IMF recommends that governments adopt a multifaceted strategy, including spending on climate change mitigation. “The strategy should feature an important role for investment in mitigating climate change as well as in areas that strengthen potential growth and ensure the gains are widely shared, including education, health, workforce skills and infrastructure,” economists there said.

Gopinath told reporters that governments need to be more aggressive in tackling the problem.

“This is not something that countries can argue about,” she said. “This is a major issue.”

Email: ngronewold@eenews.net

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