I listened to a webinar this week about the future of the energy industry. It reminded me of a panel discussion I attended at the University of Chicago’s Annual Economic Outlook luncheon in 2012 when a Toyota executive was predicting that the majority of vehicles in 2050 would still be burning gas even if many of them might be hybrids. My view then was that…
The Federal Reserve is finally proclaiming the obvious and what I’ve been warning you of for years. “The Fed said storms, floods, droughts and wildfires are among the “acute hazards” that could upend stable economic conditions.” While this article is primarily about the threat of climate change to commercial and residential real estate and their underlying assets (mortgages and mortgage backed securities)…
Let’s talk cars. There’s a bunch of news recently on several fronts. Two states are passing legislation requiring all sales of new cars to be electric by 2035. (That’s only five years after I bet on 2030 quite a few years ago. The world is finally catching up to me!) ELECTRIC VEHICLES: N.J. calls for 100% EVs by 2035,…
You know that I’ve been warning for a very long time that investments in fossil fuel assets are going to lose their value and do so much sooner and faster than “conventional” wisdom. Of course, there were some that didn’t even agree that fossil fuel investments were even risky. I posited that major oil companies’ investments in enormous development projects…
Today’s message is that small, sometimes nearly invisible things matter in a BIG way. Previously I’ve alerted you to NSR (New Source Review: https://franklytalking.com/altering-nsr-can-kill-you-concerned/) and how what might be an obscure adjustment to a regulation can have an enormous impact on your personal health and that of the planet. In addition, I wrote about the CRA (Congressional Review Act: https://franklytalking.com/what-the-hell-is-cra-and-why-should-you-care/) and how its…
Last week I wrote about the multitude of articles showing how our country is waking up to the climate crisis and beginning to react. None too soon because the consequences are becoming not only worse but converging. Or, as the following article describes, cascading. The article from the NYT is a bit long and honestly, scary and depressing as…
As you know, I have been writing about the adaptation of electric vehicles forever and predicting the conversion to an all electric fleet long before the “experts” have been prognosticating. One of the primary reasons is that I have faith that battery technology and competitive costs will occur quantum times faster than conventional “wisdom”. Facts on the ground continue to support my…
After sending my last message to you incapsulating some of my themes and perspectives I thought that today I would send you the highlights of some recent articles that summarize and reiterate several topics about which I’ve been writing. I’ll leave it up to you to look up the articles if you want more details. Phoenix Hits 114 F for…
I recently received some feedback that there’s enough bad news from the media everyday and that it would be nice if I were more positive in my messaging. Yes, there is some negativity in my writing. But mostly, I think I have been encouraging optimism. In considering this I hope that my themes are coming through: 1. Negative: The Climate…
I hope you listened to my warnings over the past few years and divested yourself from any asset in any way tied to fossil fuels not just for moral reasons but for your own financial security. A great deal of the asset values supporting the prices of a fossil fuel extraction company’s financial instruments is the capitalized cost of the proven…