Market Watch:
In 2008, the U.S. economy went into its deepest recession since the Great Depression, brought low by reckless financial institutions, deregulation, and lax regulatory enforcement. The recession led to millions losing their homes to foreclosure.
The federal government could have stepped in and rescued struggling homeowners. That would have kept families in their homes, and preserved the tax base and social fabric of communities.
Instead, they handed out $700 billion in public money to the very banks responsible for the crisis (not counting more than $3 trillion in zero or very low interest rate loans), allegedly because that was the only way to avert a deeper recession. But the recession worsened, and the “too big to fail” banks became even bigger.
This scenario is replaying itself today, with even higher stakes. We’re facing down not just a pandemic and a global economic meltdown, but an unraveling of our planet’s entire life support systems.
The pain, in other words, is being felt first and worst by low-wage service workers, who are economically insecure to begin with. When they lose their jobs, they face the prospect of eviction or foreclosure, losing health coverage, energy and water utility shutoffs, and other dire consequences.
But Trump administration and Republican Senate, which have taken huge sums from the fossil fuel industry, are using the possibility of a recession to bail it out. The proposals include a purchase of 30 million barrels of oil (an amount that could go up to 77 million barrels) for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, an emergency stockpile of oil held by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Other proposals reportedly being considered include low-interest loans and trade barriers.
This is an outrage.
For starters, the problems of the U.S. oil and gas industry are largely self-inflicted.
The current oil price slump is occurring at a time of already low prices, for which U.S. overproduction is largely to blame. The U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of both oil and gas, and is expected to account for 70% of the increase in global oil production and 75% of the growth of liquefied natural gas trade over the next 5 years.
And much of this oil and gas production binge has been fueled by debt, based on promises of future profit that haven’t materialized.
So let’s not blame a virus, or Russia, or Saudi Arabia. If U.S. oil and gas producers are in trouble, they are the ones at fault, and it takes nerve on their part to ask the government for a handout. While oil and gas workers facing layoffs deserve assistance, their undeserving bosses do not.
CNBC:
The coronavirus crisis will likely lead to the largest ever decline of global carbon emissions on record, according to research from Goldman Sachs, illuminating the potential for a long-term low carbon recovery.
The Covid-19 outbreak has meant countries around the world have effectively had to shut down, with many governments imposing draconian restrictions on the daily lives of billions of people. To date, confinement measures have been implemented in 187 countries or territories in an effort to try to slow the spread of the pandemic.
A side-effect of these measures, which vary in their application worldwide but broadly include school closures, bans on public gatherings and social distancing, has been a dramatic fall in the level of global carbon emissions.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a research note that they expect energy-related carbon emissions (which account for two-thirds of total greenhouse gas emissions) to fall by at least 5.4% this year alone.
To be sure, that’s roughly five times that of previous crises, with the potential for “much larger” declines depending on the length of disruption to the transportation sector and industrial activity.
“Energy-related emissions have always rebounded post crisis,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said, citing data which showed carbon intensity improvements in the year after every major crisis since the 1970s.
“This time could be different as we have potentially already reached peak energy-related carbon,” they added.
Guardian:
The plunging demand for oil wrought by the coronavirus pandemic combined with a savage price war has left the fossil fuel industry brokenand in survival mode, according to analysts. It faces the gravest challenge in its 100-year history, they say, one that will permanently alter the industry. With some calling the scene a “hellscape”, the least lurid description is “unprecedented”.
A key question is whether this will permanently alter the course of the climate crisis. Many experts think it might well do so, pulling forward the date at which demand for oil and gas peaks, never to recover, and allowing the atmosphere to gradually heal.
The boldest say peak fossil fuel demand may have been dragged into the here and now, and that 2019 will go down in history as the peak year for carbon emissions. But some take an opposing view: the fossil fuel industry will bounce back as it always has, and bargain basement oil prices will slow the much-needed transition to green energy.
Continue reading “Could Corona Herald Peak Carbon?”
