I spend a lot of my time thinking about global heating, where it’s often hard to be optimistic about the future. But there are some bright spots. In particular, there’s a good chance that 2023 will be the year that coal use finally begins a sustained decline, and relatedly the year the carbon dioxide emissions from electricity generation start to fall.
This is by no means a sure thing. The International Energy Agency predicts a plateau, in which nearly all new electricity demand will be met by solar PV and wind, leaving coal and gas use almost unchanged. But the IEA has a long track record of underestimating carbon-free[1] energy, and there are plenty of reasons to think that this has happened again.
Total electricity demand is currently a bit over 25000 TWh (terawatt hours a year), growing at around 3 per cent per year. So, to meet the growing demand, we need to generate an additional 750 TWh from solar and wind ( Other carbon-free sources, such as hydro and nuclear have been essentially static.)
Assuming solar PV generates at full power for 2000 hours per year, meeting additional demand with solar alone requires addition of between 375 GW of solar PV per year, with any shortfall made up by wind.
The good news is, that’s already happening. Bloomberg BNEF estimates 315 GW of solar will be installed in 2023, up from 268GW in 2022. Additions of wind power have been around 100 GW a year recently, which amounts to between 250 and 300 TWh per year.
Assuming the 2022 installations are already connected to global grids, we should see a reduction in carbon-based electricity generation this year, and steadily larger reductions in the future. That will be true even if electricity begins to substitute for oil and gas in transport, heating, cooking and so on.
Underlying this shift is the steadily decreasing cost of wind and, even more, solar power. This trend was interrupted by the supply shocks of the pandemic and Putin’s war, which led to a big increase in the price of polysilicon, as well as those of coal and gas. But while coal and gas prices remain high, the polysilicon price, while still volatile has dropped back to more normal levels. And new investment is raising production capacity even further, heading for 500GW by the end of this year
Meanwhile technological progress continues apace. Commercially available solar cells now routinely exceed 20 per cent efficiency , while new multi-junction technologies are approaching 50 per cent This didn’t happen by chance: it is directly correlated with a massive growth in research, driven originally by public subsidies, but increasingly now by market demand.
As the urgency of ending reliance on coal, gas and oil has become more evident, supportive policies have reduced costs further. The result is that solar panels are expected to become cheaper in 2023 and beyond. In Europe, the need to respond to the cutoff of Russian gas and oil has led to the removal of some of the NIMBY obstacles to wind farms, transmission lines and so on that have delayed the transition.
The big exception to all of this is China, where coal-fired power has made a resurgence. Up to 100 new coal plants have been granted permits in the last year. This doesn’t make economic or geopolitical sense for China. It does, however, make plenty of sense for regional governments desperate to keep up a flow of large projects, both to maintain employment in coal-related industries, and for the corruption opportunities such projects inevitably generate. It seems likely that most of these plants will, if they are completed at all, lose money and face premature closure. But China has enough excess savings to deal with this.
The prospects for stabilising the global climate still don’t look good. But in electricity at least, there has been far more progress than seemed possible ten or even five years ago.
Electricity is only part of the picture of a response to global heating. I’ll try to write about reasons for hope in other aspects of the problem later. That’s more difficult, but there are still some reasons not to be too gloomy.
fn1. I avoid the terms ‘renewables’ and ‘fossil fuels’ which date back to the energy crises of the 1970s, when we were worried about running out of oil and coal. What matters isn’t that solar and wind are renewable, it’s that they are carbon-free.
John Quiggin 
Something I didn’t know: “Contrary to conventional wisdom, large stores of natural hydrogen may exist all over the world, like oil and gas—but not in the same places. These researchers say water-rock reactions deep within the Earth continuously generate hydrogen, which percolates up through the crust and sometimes accumulates in underground traps. There might be enough natural hydrogen to meet burgeoning global demand for thousands of years, according to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) model that was presented in October 2022 at a meeting of the Geological Society of America.” https://www.science.org/content/article/hidden-hydrogen-earth-may-hold-vast-stores-renewable-carbon-free-fuel
Missing: The B S phrase – Battery Storage.
8,760 minus 2,000 leaves
6,760 reasons for fossil fuel fossils to bleet – when the sun don’t shine…
JQ, I feel you’ve missed an opportunity to negate critics major talking point saying “Assuming solar PV generates at full power for 2000 hours per year,” by not mentioning storage.
Using Hope is standing in for your “reasons not to be too gloomy” JQ.
JQ: “I’ll try to write about reasons for hope in other aspects of the problem later. That’s more difficult, but there are still some reasons not to be too gloomy.”
Cambridge Dictionary: “Hope is often used of good things you would like to happen in the future. Hope implies that you are already doing something to achieve the hope you have.”… which I assume to be your meaning and reason for using Hope. We are taking positive actions re global heating.
The defintion continues; “…It is also used with dream in the phrase hopes and dreams to refer to something you wish would happen.(^2.)
I see Hope as “hopes and dreams”, and last resort bordering on a miricle, as in, “I hope I don’t drown” if lost at sea.
As “all hope imposes opportunity costs” (^1.), what are the opportunity costs bourne by your use of Hope?
If I am Hoping, I have lost the “attitudes which may be more instrumentally valuable.”. I stop thinking and Hope for a miracle – and drown.
Suggested alternative headlines;
– Some positives on global heating
– Some bright spots on global heating
– Some good news on global heating
Anti Eyeore:
– Some reasons not to be too gloomy on global heating – (no)
I always appreciate you sunny attitude JQ, as it provides agency that we do have a chance of beating global heating.
Yet I see Positives for using another word, not Hope. Language is super powerful so I maybe asking too much, as in (^1.) below, everyone seems to use the word.
Thanks.
^1.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Hope
…
“As Moellendorf (2019: 154) argues, all hope imposes opportunity costs, since it precludes alternative attitudes which may be more instrumentally valuable. Political realists (such as Sleat 2013) argue that hope may be a necessary element of politics, but will by necessity go beyond that which is actually possible and thus mislead our political agency. Although these arguments draw attention to the dangers of hope in politics that have to be taken seriously, a balanced judgment must also take into account the dimensions of value discussed above. Indeed, philosophers working in the field of climate change often emphasize the instrumental value of hope in sustaining action where the attainment of the ultimate goal—managing climate change—is uncertain (McKinnon 2014, Roser 2019). Moellendorf highlights the need to develop hopeful politics when discussing climate issues (Moellendorf 2022).
“A third argument finally confronts the fundamental issue of whether hope and hopefulness are always as desirable in politics as much of the preceding arguments have assumed. Warren (2015), for example, argues that the discourse and the valuation of political hope in Black American politics, serves to appropriate a theological notion of hope and uses it to enforce a “compulsory investment” of Black people’s hope in the political—although the resulting politics only prolongs and reinforces the racist structures towards the ending of which their political hope is ostensibly directed. Instead, Warren advocates for “Black nihilism”, that is, the rejection of the metaphysical and political framework in which political hope operates (see Lloyd 2018, Winters 2019 for discussion). But even Warren leaves space for “spiritual hope” as a hope for the end of political hope.”…
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hope/#HopePoliPhil
^2.
dictionary.cambridge.org/thesaurus/articles/something-you-want-to-do-or-achieve
“Labor has just approved 116 new gas wells to be fracked by Santos in QLD. Not only that, Tanya Plibersek has given them the green light to operate until 2077. This isn’t what “ending the climate wars” looks like. Labor is making the climate crisis worse. Approval was granted on Friday (17 Feb 2023). No media release. No statement. No regard for the climate. For a Government that likes to talk about integrity & transparency, this is straight out Morrison’s playbook. A reminder that Santos have donated at least $521,719 to Labor since 2015. Labor wants coal & gas corporations to keep polluting, profiting, and opening more mines. Labor is safeguarding coal and gas corporations’ profits, not your future.” – Adam Bandt, Greens.
So, we see the ALP are doing nothing to stop climate change. Just as they are doing nothing to stop the COVID-19 pandemic. And they are doing nothing to help ordinary Australians with the housing crisis, wages stagnation, living costs, disaster recovery and rising inequality.
Corruption doesn’t only happen in China. Just like the LNP, the ALP are in the pockets of big business. Our only peaceful and possible option it seems is to completely rout both major parties at the ballot box. A plague on both their houses. Oh wait, that’s already happened and still they do nothing. What will it take?
No, not working for me the positive thinking at the moment, and global warming never really got to me all that much on an emotional level in the first place. It sometimes does when for example some fool in village council manages to ban solar construction based on well we already got so much i don´t like how it looks as recently happened -_-.
JQ: “What matters isn’t that solar and wind are renewable, it’s that they are carbon-free.”
I respectfully disagree.The carbon-free is more important, but it makes a very real difference that we now have technologies that offer humans, if we have any sense, a practically unlimited vista of energy plenty. A counterfactual thought experiment. Suppose the only non-carbon energies available were nuclear and conventional geothermal. Suppose also that geothermal reservoirs are finite and recharge only very slowly. We would still be stuck in a world of managing scarcity.Wind and solar offer us something completely different and much more attractive.
A different point. Is there significant hysteresis in the political economy of energy? It looks plausible that the transition has been held up by longstanding, ruthless and well-funded opposition from fossil fuel interests. The Rio treaty was in 1992, and nothing much happened in policy action before Paris in 2015. (We did fix the ozone problem.) They have been unable to stop it entirely, and the no-carbon interests are increasingly winning the battles. As the fossil lobby fades, we can therefore expect the transition to speed up: very bumpily as with Russian gas, but the prospect is still there. In the comedy lane, the GOP has just discovered the sinister lefty plot of ESG finance, and they would like to stop it, but will fail.
BTW, it is gratifying for me personally to see our esteemed host making, more elegantly, an argument I ‘ve been trying to advance for some time – indeed before I started commenting regularly here.
JQ: – “Electricity is only part of the picture of a response to global heating. I’ll try to write about reasons for hope in other aspects of the problem later. That’s more difficult, but there are still some reasons not to be too gloomy.”
In a piece by David Spratt published on Feb 24 at ClimateCodeRed.org:
(I wish there was a preview facility, to make sure formatting is correct, before posting comments. Please delete earlier botched attempt🤦♂️).
JQ: – “Electricity is only part of the picture of a response to global heating. I’ll try to write about reasons for hope in other aspects of the problem later. That’s more difficult, but there are still some reasons not to be too gloomy.”
In a piece by David Spratt published on Feb 24 at ClimateCodeRed.org:
”
http://www.climatecodered.org/2023/02/faster-higher-hotter-what-we-learned_24.html
Decarbonisation is not enough.
I think governments at all levels, wherever you look, are in denial of the scale/magnitude and limited timeframe to respond effectively before it all gets out of control to continue to maintain human civilisation, failing dismally to mitigate for:
1) The Climate Crisis;
2) The Energy Crisis – particularly already declining global gasoil/diesel fuel production – the workhorse of the global economy; and
3) The ongoing SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic.
Yesterday morning (Mar 2), I attended a public forum in Bathurst for the opportunity to put a question to the candidates intending to contest for the NSW seat of Bathurst in the NSW state election on 25 Mar 2023, hosted by the Bathurst branch of the Combined Pensioners and Superannuants Association. Only three candidates where present – NSW Deputy Premier Paul Toole (Nationals), Kay Nankervis (Greens), and Cameron Shaw (Labor). The independent Martin Ticehurst was a no show – too busy doing something else apparently.
Paul Toole talked about the need for NSW to secure more gas supplies and allowing further extensions of existing coal mines. I interjected and asked him if he accepted the climate science. He did not respond to that. He also said there needed to be a “balance” in managing the COVID response. There was nothing from Paul on how to deal effectively with already declining global diesel fuel supplies, but it seemed he had plenty of enthusiasm for the planned Great Western Highway upgrades between Katoomba and Bathurst.
I gained the impression from my experience at yesterday’s forum that most people there simply don’t know (or are in denial) about how bad our/humanity’s predicament is. I’d suggest until people do wake-up to the rapidly escalating existential threats and demand change by voting for people who do understand the challenges and have an effective, timely plan, our trajectory will continue to head towards civilisation collapse.
I’d suggest if we don’t have a civilisation, then all the other issues discussed at the forum, like on NSW paramedic pay rates & staffing, local medical facilities like the new MRI facility at Bathurst, a call for the reopening the Cowra rail line, local jobs, affordable housing and education, accessible transport links during bushfires & floods, etc., however important they may be, will become moot.
Cost of renewables with storage
We are all aware I think of the big-scale models of the energy transition by Jacobson, Breyer, Blakers etc – that all say the firming of intermittent wind and solar electricity post-transition can be done and done affordably. (The predicted cost overruns at the oversized and overcomplicated Snowy 2 are an aberration.). However, the issue persists as a worry in public opinion, primed by denialists and delayists.
It may then be useful to look at a nice concrete example from the USA. It’s three years old, but the relevant prices have stayed about the same, as the pandemic and the supply glitches in the thaw from it have negated the trend price reductions.
A Californian developer committed to a hybrid generating plant in 2020 at Eland in the Mojave desert, coming into operation around now. It combines 400MW of PV (AC) and 300MW / 1,200MWh (4 hours) of energy storage in conventional lithium-ion batteries. The combined output is sold on a standard PPA contract at a startlingly low overall price of $40 per Mwh. The solar element by itself has an LCOE of $20/Mwh. The other half of the price comes from the storage, though this is only responsible for 25% of the delivered electricity.
https://www.energy-storage.news/battery-storage-at-us20-mwh-breaking-down-low-cost-solar-plus-storage-ppas-in-the-usa/
Grid batteries are expensive; Eland is paying an LCOS of $217 per Mwh. In spite of this, the commercial math adds up, because of the high value of the time-shifted output in the sunless evenings of the infamous “duck curve”. For a generator, it makes no difference whether this value is embodied in a ToD price paid by consumers, or is borne by the grid operator and recovered from consumers through flat prices.
Purists will object that four hours of storage is not full 24-hour load matching. For this, you would probably need at least five hours in the evening and one in the morning. Eland presumably decided this would not be worthwhile at current prices, and the remaining imbalance is not its problem. The grid operator will eventually have to find more storage or demand management to achieve zero emissions. There is presumably a modest cost advantage in colocation of batteries with solar farms – there is for instance no extra cost for the grid connection – but it can’t be huge, and grid operators can buy batteries in quantity too. Pumped hydro storage dams are not colocated with generation, and V2G with vehicle batteries is on the way.
Pundits agree that battery prices will keep falling, but it’s anybody’s guess how much.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2023/02/13/u-s-energy-storage-market-set-for-take-off/
In addition to the old faithful of pumped hydro storage, whose main problem is that it requires thinking ahead, and li-ion batteries, there are a host of other storage technologies competing for a booming market: compressed air, solid-state, flow batteries, ground heat… One interesting longshot is the iron-air battery an MIT spinoff called Form Energy claims to have cracked. The website is about at the level of a weekend school project, but they claim to have secured $ 800m (!) in funding from the likes of Bill Gates and ArcelorMittal, so it’s not just hype. If they can get this chemistry (reversible rusting) to work efficiently, iron is very cheap indeed and air is free.
https://www.energy-storage.news/form-energy-raises-us450-million-for-100-hour-iron-air-rust-battery-technology/
Geoff, I agree and appreciate your comments. As for “there was nothing from Paul on how to deal effectively” – with anything – says it all.
Paul’s blunt axe and prefered woodpile shows: “Toole’s father was a thrice-unsuccessful candidate for state and federal political office, representing the National Party at the 1984 and 1995 state elections for Bathurst and the 1996 federal election, for Calare. Paul Toole’s grandfather, Jack Toole, was an unsuccessful Liberal candidate at1956 state election, also for Bathurst.[2]
“Toole began teaching at Assumption Primary School in Bathurst in 1995.[10]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Toole
JQ: “But there are some bright spots.” … “market to facilitate the provision of inertia in the National Electricity Market (NEM).” AMEC.
James: “As the fossil lobby fades, we can therefore expect the transition to speed up”
Gaining Inertia. I hope JQ, you put in a submission.
“The Commission has therefore extended the statutory timeframe for a draft determination until 29 February 2024.:
From:
“Consultation on options for the efficient provision of inertia
02 March 2023
“The AEMC is now consulting on a rule change request for a spot market to facilitate the provision of inertia in the National Electricity Market (NEM).
…
“A variety of influencing factors is driving us towards new and previously unobserved operational conditions, including declining system inertia.
“Inertia is critical to maintaining the stability and reliability of the energy market. The greater the inertia of the power system, generally, the less vulnerable it is to disturbances.
“However, as the energy mix on the grid evolves, there is an increased risk of system security and efficiency challenges in the NEM.
“To help examine these challenges, stakeholders are now invited to make submissions to a consultation paper looking into the efficient provision of inertia in the NEM.
“This rule change request was submitted by the Australian Energy Council (AEC) and follows a joint AEMC and AEMO paper that was published in June 2022.
“Through this rule change process, the AEMC will seek to identify an option that ensures not only the secure and efficient operation of the power system as we navigate our way to net zero but one that leads to the least cost outcome to consumers in the long term.
“Submissions by stakeholders in response to the consultation paper should be provided to the AEMC by 31 March 2023.
“The policy and technical aspects of this rule change process will take time to work through. Prior to making a draft determination, the AEMC expects further public consultation will be required, which may take a form of a directions paper. The Commission has therefore extended the statutory timeframe for a draft determination until 29 February 2024.
https://www.aemc.gov.au/news-centre/media-releases/consultation-options-efficient-provision-inertia
“Efficient provision of inertia – ERC0339
https://www.aemc.gov.au/rule-changes/efficient-provision-inertia
“Related Documents
Consultation paper
Information sheet
Stakeholder submissions template
Statutory notice – s107 and s95
“t looks plausible that the transition has been held up by longstanding, ruthless and well-funded opposition from fossil fuel interests.”
My bet these days is more on human stupidity, in particular the tendency to fight tooth and nails for the status quo of many people who do well in the status quo – even so the change would be obviously better for everyone involved, including them.
Hint Aust Post & governments fleets.
“U.S. Postal Service starts nationwide electric vehicle fleet, buying 9,250 EVs and thousands of charging stations”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-postal-service-starts-nationwide-electric-vehicle-fleet-buying-9250-evs-and-thousands-of-charging-stations/
Sure, industry has made deliberate efforts to turn environmentalism into a means of self expression, feeling superior and showing social status on an individual level, often in very ridiculous ways with doubtful utility. But people also have to fall for it aswell. Don´t think it was ever necessary for dirty industries to push, people just go for feeling superior facts be damned vs actually doing something anytime.
James – Now that there is confidence in strong solar and wind growth the investments in storage are indeed starting to happen – like you say there are a variety of options and they all appear to work. Requiring the investment in storage first in some variant of “must be coal plant equivalent” was never going to happen, even leaving aside the “must supply whole of system for X number of hours” nonsense. And it is not like any coal plant was expected to provide full backup should it need to shut down; when not online some other generator steps in, often at a premium price.
I suspect that early solar thermal with molten salt storage suffered for including the storage for 24/7 operation; the grid didn’t need the stored power and the market didn’t pay any premiums for it. As storage becomes more important there will be opportunities to get a return on the investment, so we may yet see a renewed interest in such options. But there will be competition.
Isn’t it funny how we are still arguing about solar power, wind power, energy storage and de-carbonizing transport long after they haven’t happened at the levels needed to save the climate and humanity? They haven’t happened soon enough at the necessary levels. It’s too late now in all probability. Yes, we should keep trying, in case a “eucatastrophe” is still possible, but the fact there’s even still an argument illustrates how close to lost we really are.
A footnote on the 500 GW of solar panel production capacity. To a first approximation, this is close to the type of industry envisaged by classical – not neoclassical – economists (Ricardo, James Mill), say textiles in Lancashire in 1830: low barriers to entry, little IP, constant returns to scale. The steady innovation comes embodied in new machinery anybody can buy. Collusion in price-setting is impracticable. The only way a capitalist can make more money is to grow. It will rarely make sense for him to restrict the output of his factories even in a price slump. (Patriarchal gender bias intended.) In this world, the potential 500 GW will very probably be produced and sold. One difference from Lancashire textiles is that solar factories need fewer workers to tend the machinery, which reinforces the conclusion.
Wind is very different. The individual turbines are 100 times the size of a single and perfectly functional solar panel, and the industry making them is concentrated in half-a-dozen oligopolists with brand reputations. This is one of the several reasons why prices decline much more slowly. It’s early days for batteries, but at first sight the industry looks more like solar. The joker is that there is lots of IP.
Perhaps I should back my apparent cavilling with substantive concerns. The real concern is that we cannot make an energy transition *and* keep all our current consumption priorities in place. We cannot make an energy transition *and* have everyone or a high proportion of our populations traveling every year and owning electric cars and having high materials/high energy consumption in many other lifestyle arenas, all concurrently. It is very doubtful that this can realistically happen. We need an energy transition to combine transition to renewable green energy *and* a transition to a lower high consumption lifestyles: a transition to comparative frugality and the setting of realistic aspirations, realistic goals and realistic priorities.
A key problem for the electrical economy will the availability of the supporting non-ferrous metals and the energy inputs necessary to mine and refine them. Taking Norway as the model for what everyone can do is not realistic. Norway has massive and unique advantages in this matter which are not available to all nations.
This presentation puts the case well.
The presentation no doubt takes place in a pro-fossil fuels / ignore climate change paradigm or audience setting. Nevertheless, the points may well be independently valid in the scientific, physics sense. If they are valid, they don’t suggest don’t make the transition. They do suggest make the transition but couple it with a transition to efficient and low energy consumption. An electric SUV or three per family, annual overseas or long range holidays, a big McMansion, two dogs and a pool in the backyard, big stadiums *and* big hospitals (you probably can have one but not both), big consumer extravaganzas (think Olympics, sports finals) etc. etc. are not going to part of any sustainable system.
Aspirational stickiness and hysteresis are part of the psycho-social problem we face in a population heavily brainwashed and enculterated into indivvidualism, selfishness and consumerist expectations. An equally big problem is the expectectations of the tiny section of people with power in this system (the 1%) who have expecations of acquiring ever more wealth and ruling their nation and the globe indefinitely. It’s a wicked problem. Without revolutionary change in people and society, we are certainly doomed. Tech revolutions will not be enough. Indeed, in Jevons Paradox fashion they will just make the situation worse (further increasing consumption) without the concomitant understanding of the need for the moderation of expectations.
Currently, we are indeed moderating expectations: this is part of the inescapable reality of our situation. However, these are not the obvious expectations which we might have been expected to moderate sensibly. We are not moderating expectations of consumption. We are moderating expectations (explicitly and implicitly) of health and longevity. The COVID-19 pandemic is one example. We refused to fight the pandemic, indeed we aided it, by refusing to reduce entertainment and leisure consumptions (essentially) and at the same time refusing to use any containment measures other than leaky vaccines against an extremely rapidly mutating and contagious virus.
Life expectancy has already dropped markedly in most countries where it is credibly measured. One can be near certain it has dropped everywhere else. Live fast, die young and have a rotting corpse. This is our new social motto whether we realize it or not. Covid-19 is of course not our only or even most important lowering of expectations. We are also, at least implicitly, lowering our expectations of being safe from climate change induced flood, fire, drought, sea-level rise and high wet bulb temperatures. We are reducing our expectations of our ability to protect and insure our property.
This is the swindle going on which will eventually impact on nearly everyone, the 99%. Whether it will impact fully on a proportion of the 1% is unknown. They clearly think they can insulate themselves indefinitely and create safe zones for themselves in the chaos. I think this expectation on their part is wholly unrealistic. Time will tell.
In the interim, the change we need is less consumerist consumption, less expectation of private material wealth and more social provision. We need more equality, less exclusion and a shift to necessities (more social and public health spending for example) and away from luxuries.
Of course, I am probably whistling in the wind. I hope not but hope is getting slim now.
Bravus & Adani version of Hope — ala the piggies house of sticks,
just blown down by…
THE iconic tone deaf quote of the centruy! re global heating:
“Jain downplayed the charges leveled at Adani as “a lot of hot air”, ”
(See Yahoo News below via Forbes via Bloomberg)
The “hot air” is from burning fossil fuels. Yet it has “secured a $US3 billion loan from a sovereign wealth fund.”. Humans wealth burning their children’s health. Ironic and utterly irresponsible.
But hey, as Ikon says, they’ll have a lot of numinaires to burn on seawalls and keeping climate refugees out!
And GQG Partners & Goldman Sachs and the opportunity ckst Sovereign wealth fund get to eat their babies as they also get a slice of India’s :renewal project” – read: consolidate Modi!. The perfect security – 1.2bn humans. Ala Cloud Atlas & The Matrix
*
“American investment fund led by the anti-Cathie Wood just rode to the rescue of Indian tycoon accused of fraud”
March 4, 2023
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/american-investment-fund-led-anti-142818337.html
*
“GQG Partners invests $US1.87 billion in Adani group companies”
…
“The group, sources have said, has told creditors it has secured a $US3 billion loan from a sovereign wealth fund.”
…
“A Goldman Sachs fund has also bought shares worth $US138 million in Adani Green, $US280 million of shares in Adani Ports, and $US67 million of shares in Adani Transmission, stock exchange data showed on Thursday, local time.”
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-04/adani-secures-much-needed-investment/102053854
*
Worse luck, Bloomberg says Rajiv Jain is “everything that Cathie Wood isn’t”. “As of 31 December 2021, Cathie Wood’s ARK’S ETFs came in fifth place among Morningstar’s list of top 10 wealth-destroying funds”.
GQC – 100 entities @$9bn.
Rajiv Jain founder & chair of:
“GQG Partners is a large advisory firm with 100 clients and discretionary assets under management (AUM) of $90,954,208,966 (Form ADV from 2022-12-21). Their last reported 13F filing for Q4 2022 included $36,986,381,941 in managed 13F securities and a top 10 holdings concentration of 54.31%. GQG Partners’s largest holding is ExxonMobil Corp. (Standard Oil of New Jersey) with shares held of 32,917,561”
whalewisdom dot com/filer/gqg-partners-llc
Cathie Wood
“In 1977, via her mentor Arthur Laffer, Wood got a job as an assistant economist at Capital Group, where she worked for three years.
“Wood left the company and founded Ark Invest.[5][2][10][11] The company is named after the Ark of the Covenant; Wood was reading the One-Year Bible at the time.[12]ARK’s first four ETFs were seeded with capital from Bill Hwang of Archegos Capital.[13]
“As of 31 December 2021, Cathie Wood’s ARK’S ETFs came in fifth place among Morningstar’s list of top 10 wealth-destroying funds compiled by portfolio strategist Amy C. Arnott, and ranked just below investment vehicles from Credit Suisse, ALPS, Kraneshares, and Barclay.[16]
“As of December, 2022, Wood’s flagship fund, Ark Innovation, had lagged behind the S&P 500 for five years, dropping in value by more than 80% from last year’s peak.[17]
wikipedia dot org/wiki/Cathie_Wood
*
Better get a carbon tax son, better get A REAL BIG ONE.
Can we sue now in the future? Lmfao.
The Cruel Sea – Better Get A Lawyer (1994)
I’m just the messanger.
KT2,
You forgot the trifecta! 😉
Tochè Ikon.
My emotional framing of the quiniela above:
Adani
GQG Partners
Vampire squid
Soveriegn Wealth
Modi
… won’t effect Co2e in any significant manner.
But the missed opportunity will cost the poor in India, and bolster Modi & Adani + entrench effects on the future.
Kids for Climate had better go to court. For the future now.
Hope won’t fix it. As I said above;
“I see Hope as “hopes and dreams”, and last resort bordering on a miracle as in, “I hope I don’t drown” if lost [in the Cruel] sea.
As “all hope imposes opportunity costs” (^1.), what are the opportunity costs bourne by your use of Hope?
https://johnquiggin.com/2023/03/01/some-hope-on-global-heating/comment-page-1/#comment-259322
No hope required.
And just in case…. BHP after the apocalypse.
“Primitive Technology: Making cement out of iron bacteria
https://boingboing.net/2023/03/03/primitive-technology-making-cement-out-of-iron-bacteria.html
“… how would I confront the two-hundred-million-dollar ransom demand for a daughter, as Mr. William Hearst is asked to confront it this morning? From the sidelines the demand at first seems less outrageous than stupid. This money, asked as a benefit for the poor, would be absorbed without a ripple, leaving the poor as poor and Hearst poorer.”…
“Written before his Pulitzer Prize for his music, American composer Ned Rorem”
https://diariesofnote.com/2023/02/13/am-i-worth-a-million-dollars-to-you/
The Cruel Sea of Capital and Human Nature.
A cry. Punk song by Crass in 1978 – A plea for a Job Guarantee & “They’ve buggered this old world up, up to their necks in debt.”
Be brave. They have no hope. It is only 1:55 long and you’ll only listen once.
“Do they owe us a living?
Of course they do, of course they do.
Owe us a living?
Of course they do, of course they do.
Owe us a living?
Of course they fcuking do.
“The living that is owed to me I’m never going to get,
They’ve buggered this old world up, up to their necks in debt.
They’d give you a lobotomy for something you ain’t done,
They’ll make you an epitomy of everything that’s wrong.
…
Crass – Do They Owe us a Living (Lyrics)
Iko: I’d be interested in yourtake on this (very well done) UN page on material consumption: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2019/goal-12/
The indicator is simply the weight in tonnes of the materials used for economic production, which is still slowly growing globally in spite of gains in material efficiency. It’s not a perfect indicator for sustainability: a tonne of sand and a tonne of coal are not equivalent in the harm they do, and biodiversity and biological carrying capacity are just left out. It’s still a useful, if vaguely Marxist, reminder that GDP per se is not the problem but only its declining material component. This is likely to shrink further as fossil fuels are phased out and replaced entirely by weightless electrons, and cement and steel partly replaced by engineered wood in construction. Losing weight should be a stated goal of policy.
The waste in the Olympics comes from fringe sports like kayaking and equestrianism. It’s carnival time in Rio, a giant popular junket of music, display and sexuality. (Google for videos of Maraya Lima, a talented new 20-year-old rainha de bateria.) Is there anything wrong with having more of this? I suggest that your objection is at root the Puritan disapproval of fun, hedonism and excess, as with Shakespeare’s Malvolio. If green politics is to succeed, it must support cakes and ale, not calls for repentance and misery.
James,
When I refer to the ontology of real and formal objects, a valid field of scientific investigation, I get ironic or humorous references to Anselm: he of the metaphysical ontological argument. In other words, I am charged with metaphysics or speculative philosophy. When I counsel the need for moderation and prudence in consumption I am charged with parsimoniousness, prudery and ill-will. It is simply the case that people don’t take the trouble to understand my arguments.
The reasons why they don’t take the trouble to understand and instead make these charges are interesting. They simply do not like the inescapable conclusion, ecologically and existentially, that we are headed for total disaster and we need to change our ways. It is not I who is the killjoy. It is the harshness of objective reality, something the bulk of the human race clearly have a huge problem understanding. They would rather live in a fantasy cornucopia land. Fantasies tend to come to abrupt and horrible endings.
It is clear from the first graph on the site you refer to that material use is rising faster than GDP is rising faster than population. You correctly allude to the problem of aggregation in considering this. This is a problem economics has never come to terms with and perhaps cannot come to terms with. Even scientifically, the problem of (valid) aggregation limits us in what we can understand and what we can do in dealing with complex real systems. As you say, not all metric tons are created equal in terms of environmental harm.
If we dis-aggregated the materials, I am sure we would find the consumption of almost every raw material is still rising and rising faster than GDP and population. It is clear overall that we have not solved the problems of growth in population and growth in consumption of real resources. I = P x A x T is an equation which holds in broad thematic terms although I doubt it can be made into a scientific equation. What are the units of Humans x affluence x technology? Humans are easy enough. They are real bodies and can be accounted as such. But what units for affluence? Dollars? They are nominal or formal units. Etc.
I don’t bear humans ill will. I just think they (we and I also) are idiots. “Idiot” here is a relative term. I mean relative to the wisdom we would need to save ourselves on planet earth. I speak of no other saving for I am not, contrary to humor or rumor, a religious or speculative metaphysician.
Our fundamental problem is desire, which so often occludes our reason, and which you refer to in your mention of festival, carnivàle or bacchanalia. People simply desire too much and that is to be their and our undoing. From an evopsych point of view, the slavering satisfaction of as many desires as possible was entirely evolutionarily necessary. The drives fed and propagated our species, like all mammalian species (at least), in its beginnings and through its survival of evolutionary bottlenecks. But that strength of unfettered primal desire has now become a liability.
The catechism of (conventional) economics, like imperialism before it, was founded on the fleshly and kakistocratic desires for endless consumption and accumulation. The other wisdoms found necessary to sustain society and civilization widely for all and to sustain the natural world reasonably intact were cast aside, for example both Christian (theistic) and Buddhistic (non-theistic) ascetic or rather moderation or “golden mean” ethics.
But no, we are determined to go down in an orgiastic frenzy of consumption and destruction. And those who warn are, as always, pilloried.
My excuse would be f33.1, what is yours? Corona is a genuinely annoying new one (just having my first taste right now), other than that… nope still not seeing the end of material growth, the technology looks just fine to have a great standard of material well being without doing too much environmental damage. Since there is so much consumption concentrated among a few very rich, even most people in the rich world should be perfectly fine at current levels. Should some occasional rare current pattern not work out anymore, the substitutes should be just fine. Albeit, even the rather fictive hardcore discount airline traveler on a budget enjoying his welfare is not really the one causing the consumption, one could usually expect the person that really goes for the 10 Euro ticket only to hardly make a difference in the plane flying or not.
hix,
f33.1 (Major depressive disorder, recurrent, moderate) is not an excuse, it’s a (partial) description of some phenomena in a person and in their behaviors without full or even any explanations of biochemical, biomechanical, genetic, nurture-deficiency or traumatic causes. FWIW, I have Borderline personality disorder (BPD) infrequently accompanied with low mood (in my case now) the features of which may satisfy the diagnostic criteria for major depressive disorder (MDD) at times. But this was less so as I entered middle age and now old age. I’ve learned how to live with it and manage it without any psyhotropics or ongoing treatments so there is the possibility of hope and independence from the at times dubious medical treatment system. Financial means, ability to do a mundane job in an era of fair pay and an understanding partner and family certainly do assist one a lot.
I did have help in early adulthood. My BPD and MDD episodes semi-destroyed nearly two decades of my young life. They put me a generation behind my age group and intellectual peers most of whom went on to have professional or academic careers. Hence, no doubt, the massive chip I have on my shoulder when I think more life-course fortunate, well-educated people are dissing me, gaslighting me or looking down on me in some assumed intellectually superior or supercilious fashion.
Some fortunate people, who have never battled with serious mental illness, love to gaslight people like us and to impugn our intelligence, ethics, reality checking and/or will-power. Or that could just be me being hypersensitive, another aspect of my condition. 😉
Nevertheless, I don’t back down these days. I simply won’t take that crap lying down anymore. I’m not here (on this blog or on this planet) to make comfortably superior people more comfortable and more superior. They do such a good job of that for themselves.
Footnote: It won’t be long now until you see the end of material human and economic growth on the planet and see it in unambiguous terms. That is my prediction, has been so since LTG was first published and is according to the textual, not dust cover, prediction for end of growth by circa 2050. We humans have made such a mess that the end of aggregate real growth is coming probably two decades earlier than that predicted.
Ikon, James and all, a simple graphic to elucidate;
James: re gdp “and biodiversity and biological carrying capacity are just left out.”
Ikon: “something the bulk of the human race clearly have a huge problem understanding. They would rather live in a fantasy cornucopia land. Fantasies tend to come to abrupt and horrible endings.”
“Only 6% of the combined weight of mammals on Earth is wild”.
Wild Animals: 60 million tonnes
Humans: 390 million tonnes
Donesticated: 630 million tonnes
“The weight of responsibility: Biomass of livestock dwarfs that of wild mammals
by Weizmann Institute of Science
“…the first global census of wild mammal biomass, conducted by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers and reported today in PNAS, reveals the extent to which our natural world—along with its most iconic animals—is a vanishing one.”
Greenspoon, Lior et al, The global biomass of wild mammals, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023).DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2204892120
https://phys.org/news/2023-02-weight-responsibility-biomass-livestock-dwarfs.html
See also 2 startling images here re: “Kakistocracy” https://hedearnell.medium.com/kakistocracy-45490957aa50
Fun fact: LTG thread here has the most (or second most?) comments. 10yr anniversary of posting next year I think. I doubt JQ wants to revist. So no link.
Ikon and all, this 500pg tome – The Problem of Atheism by Del Noce – … first sentence says, “makes its structure and unity hard to grasp.” (“Arguing with atheism” by Ben Sixsmith below.)
I won’t be rushing to read it.
Yet reading the reviews and other info was intersting, and it stuck me Del Noce may provide you Ikon, with some support of your stance on philosophy, capitlism etc, not necessarily politics or faith. From Wikipedia “he always maintained that philosophical ideas influence the course of human history:”
Or not. His Catholicism & immanentism may render the worthy and prescient opinions biased, yet as the reveiwer says “the reason this book is of great interest even to those of us who dwell outside the hallowed halls of academic philosophy is its intellectual foresight.”
*
Review.
“Arguing with atheism”
by Ben Sixsmith
February 24, 2022
…
“One of our ghosts is the distinguished Italian philosopher Augusto Del Noce (1910-1989), whose first book, The Problem of Atheism, published in his native tongue in 1964, has now been translated into English. A Catholic author who had opposed the fascism of Benito Mussolini, Del Noce turned after the war to left-wing radicalism and to the subtle, inexorable secularization of Europe and the United States.”…
““The apparently essayistic nature of this book,” says Del Noce in its first sentence, “makes its structure and unity hard to grasp.” Such refreshing honesty! One can tell that this was a philosopher who cared more about the truth than about sales.
“Del Noce’s book can be hard going for the reader.”…
…
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/arguing-with-atheism
Augusto Del Noce
…
“His works on Marx were part of a lifelong interest in the role of atheismin the history of modern philosophy, which culminated in 1964 in his magnum opus The Problem of Atheism. ”
“Philosophical themes
“A common thread of Del Noce’s work is the attempt to understand the connection between philosophical ideas and socio-political history.
“Against the prevailing Marxist and neo-positivist opinions of his contemporaries, he always maintained that philosophical ideas influence the course of human history, and that modern history in particular can only be understood as the unfolding of certain philosophical options (rationalism, immanentism, scientism).”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Del_Noce
*
Note on search.
Google is now self serving, ignores search terms even in quotes. Shareholders and advertisers must be thrilled. I am disguted. Poor old DDG not too small now to matter.
So re Del Noce, best results for contemporary discussions I got were by using this phrase via a ref in Wikipedia:
– Augusto Del Noce, interpreter of our times
This is Simona Angela Gallo’s article, “Augusto Del Noce, interpreter of our times” – which I couldn’t find! Arrggghhh!
[…] the title of my latest piece in Inside Story, expanding on this recent post. More over the […]
Posted yesterday (Mar 11) at John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations was an op-ed by Ian Dunlop titled A desperate race to avoid locking in the pathway to human extinction, that included:
https://johnmenadue.com/negotiating-with-the-laws-of-physics-is-not-good-climate-policy/