Are there any global industries that aren't? Corporate vision is amazingly shortsighted and insane considering they are supposed to be the best and the brightest, the “winning” people.

Remember that the oil companies get the price for oil from the Casino called "the markets". The negative prices were a result of the vast majority of trades having nothing to do with actual physical need for oil. There are just so many tankers that can be used as storages, and even that takes a lot of money. Big hassle to take physical oil...that's the logic of negative oil prices.

I still will guess the economy will come back sometime in the future.

Here's a global industry that is quite insane. — Banno

Motivated by an insane logic. Same logic that burns crops while millions of people starve.

Cost to environments should be taken into account so that it becomes more expensive. Markets seem to fail to do that, so they should be corrected. Is that about right? And if so, what is it that's holding this kind of correction back. Corporate lobbying, geopolitical interests... or even just that is difficult practically speaking to do something like that?

Incorporation is moral hazard.

I still will guess the economy will come back sometime in the future. — ssu

And because the price of oil is currently too low, when the economy recovers supply won't be able to meet demand and the price will slingshot high.

And because the price of oil is currently too low, when the economy recovers supply won't be able to meet demand and the price will slingshot high. — praxis

Not necessarily slingshot if there are a lot of reserves, and if the economy doesn't fully recover right away... but eventually one would think so yes.

Motivated by an insane logic. Same logic that burns crops while millions of people starve. — JerseyFlight

Bit of a pedantic remark, but the logic is actually quite straightforward and laser-focussed on a certain goal. There's nothing wrong with their logic, it's just that they only have a very limited conception of value.

And because the price of oil is currently too low, when the economy recovers supply won't be able to meet demand and the price will slingshot high. — praxis

Yes, something like that...even if renewable energy sources are coming to be more common.

The arbitrager lives from dramatic price changes.

Cost to environments should be taken into account so that it becomes more expensive. Markets seem to fail to do that, so they should be corrected. — ChatteringMonkey

Precisely right. The whole fossil fuel adventure was predicated on being able to treat the environment as a costless sink. That was a presumption built into the economic machine in the 1800s.

A farming economy, and even a nomadic herding economy, have to factor in the costs of their sinks. They live right in the shit they produce, the ecology they might denude.

But fossil fuel economics got locked into a fantasy of not having to account for its waste. Even when the rich West started to clean up its environment, it did that by exporting all the environmental destruction to the poor developing nations. That was what neoliberal globalisation was about. And industrial colonisation before it.

Until a few years ago, my own country proudly recycled all its household waste by shipping the useless plastics to China. And then China decided it was about time to get out of that "business". Heaps of used tyres are now piling up in fields and occasionally catching fire.

The oil industry peaked in 2006 in terms of conventional oil. And in its death throes, it paradoxically blocks a shift to green energy because oil producers are in a fight to be the last country standing.

The price of a barrel ought to be high just to justify corporate investment in moving to the extraction of unconventional oil. And it ought to be really high if the industry was forced to include the cost of the environmental sink that oil gets for free.

If the market actually functioned as advertised, these rational things would be happening and the world would be switching to renewables as the obviously cheaper/better choice.

Or in reality - as renewables can't practically deliver the same bang per buck - getting busy redesigning society for a post-growth world economy.

The definition of sanity is bleeding obvious. But coal and oil built their own social order. And that is only going to depart kicking and screaming.

Cost to environments should be taken into account so that it becomes more expensive. Markets seem to fail to do that, so they should be corrected. Is that about right? — ChatteringMonkey

Far better is simply to have so much investment on renewables that they actually are cheaper than oil. That's the real death knell for fossil fuels. Yet there are obstacles. If electric cars are reality, electric aircraft aren't. Even if thanks to the pandemic air travel has hit extremely bad times (for example the local air line has it net revenue shrank by -90%) that is one of the problems to be solved.

And the best way to lower the cost to the environment is simply to have people be more affluent: they have less children, they have the ability to care for the environment.

Far better is simply to have so much investment on renewables that they actually are cheaper than oil. That's the real death knell for fossil fuels. — ssu

Yeah, I mean I have no problem with investing heavily in renewables, but that wouldn't even be necessary if real costs where taking into account. Or that's what I would think in theory. Someone will have to pay the costs eventually... So longterm it would seem like a more effective solution that is more generally applicable, then constant ad hoc subsidising because prices fail to take some costs into account.

Thanks for that... no time to reply right now, I have to get some sleep. But I got to say, I like your perspective on things.

Someone will have to pay the costs eventually... — ChatteringMonkey

Yet thinking of it as a monetary cost is difficult. The way we pay for it is with changes in our environment, but that unfortunately is an aggregate of everything impacting the environment, so we'll never agree on what had this or that effect on the whole.

global warming — Banno

What do you make of this: Sun's Activity Increased In Past Century

A quote:

The energy output from the Sun has increased significantly during the 20th century, according to a new study. — Space.com

Modern Maximum

Oil companies are going broke. — Banno

Do you really think this? I mean it makes for a good headline, but do you truly believe that all those in the oil business, from the guy who works at the gas station, to the guy on the oil rig, all the way up to the CEO are all about to have to start looking for new jobs?

Capitalism is all about profit-maximization.
For a company, that's often in the scope of the sitting board and shareholders, so a bunch of (living) humans. I guess incentives toward broader concerns and ethics can be put in place, like with giving heavy fines/sentences for money laundering, or rewarding something.
Related to the tragedy of the commons. Might increase the risk of oil spills. :sad:

Capitalism is all about profit-maximization. — jorndoe

And hence it's not an all encompassing ideology about everything, as it's opponents desperately try to portray it.

Capitalism is all about profit-maximization.
— jorndoe
And hence it's not an all encompassing ideology about everything, as it's opponents desperately try to portray it. — ssu

No it's not, but it does seem to determine a lot of policy, be it via lobbying or via politicians having internalized a lot of it as an ideology.

So the problem is not necessarily with capitalism itself, but with the fact that there doesn't seem to be some larger value-frame that is strong and independent enough to resist its attempts to influence.

The shop-owners and blacksmiths have taken over the empty castle.

Capitalism is all about profit-maximization. — jorndoe

Except that's not what happens in any economy anywhere. Assuming the majority of business owners cast aside all ethical considerations in the operation of their businesses (which they don't), they cannot expect to disregard the multitude of formal government regulations that exist in every country without negative repercussion. The distinction we can draw between those business friendly countries and those more heavily regulated isn't a capitalistic/socialistic distinction, but simply the degree of regulation/lack of regulation the population wishes to tolerate.

That is to say, there is no principled distinction between Sweden providing extensive social security systems and the US offering far less. It's just a matter of degree. Both obviously allow for free enterprise and both offer governmental services. The quibble is just over how much there should be in order to maximize whatever outcome the population desires.

Except that's not what happens in any economy anywhere. Assuming the majority of business owners cast aside all ethical considerations in the operation of their businesses (which they don't), they cannot expect to disregard the multitude of formal government regulations that exist in every country without negative repercussion. — Hanover

But they (multinationals anyway) do to some extend, by moving (parts of) their business to countries that have the most favorable regime for a particular part of their business. Which leads countries to compete among eachother to offer the best conditions. You see, it's not as if business are really 'subject' to some democratic legal order anymore, they now float somewhere over and across countries and set the rules to some extend by exploiting competition between nations for their business. That's the big change with open borders and globalization.

So I had a friend years ago that was a petroleum engineer. He explained to me that shutting a refinery off is incredibly expensive and dangerous. Due to the nature of the substance, its best when its in a constantly heated and flowing stated in many parts.

The industry knows exactly what it is doing. It is much likely more expensive at this time to shut things down and turn them back on in a few months. They are likely making the correct bet that demand will rise again. Yes, they won't be making as much money as they were for a while, but its probably far better than the cost of shutting down production altogether.

So the problem is not necessarily with capitalism itself, but with the fact that there doesn't seem to be some larger value-frame that is strong and independent enough to resist its attempts to influence.

The shop-owners and blacksmiths have taken over the empty castle. — ChatteringMonkey

AHA!!!

Right on the spot, ChatteringMonkey! :up:

And you know why this is? I'll give my opinion:

The utter failure 20th Century collectivist ideologies form both the right and left meant that we stopped thinking of the society as a collective and hedonistic individualism and capitalism were left as the dominant semi-ideology. Why is this so? It's the failure of the collectivist thought.

The bloody right-wing collectivist ideology of fascism was quickly destroyed. And the answer from the left was yet the now totally defunct, nearly genocidal God damn disaster called Marxism-Leninism. That was put to be the answer to capitalism. Such ridiculous juxtaposition meant that indeed we had an empty castle as you said.

Do you really think this? I mean it makes for a good headline, — Hanover

The facts were in the article....

Global indexes measuring the value of the largest oil companies hit a 50-year low in 2018; of the world’s 100 biggest stocks, only six were oil producers. By 2019, the fossil fuel industry ranked dead last among major investment sectors in the United States. This was not surprising, given that the US oil and gas industry was in debt to the tune of $200 billion, largely because of struggling small fracking companies.

Far better is simply to have so much investment on renewables that they actually are cheaper than oil. — ssu

The problem is that oil could sustain a global capitalism because it is so energy dense and transportable. Renewables are local energy creation and many countries will struggle because they lack good hydro, wind or solar resources.

Consider the plight of Germany....

The results of the Energiewende program in Germany, started in the late 1990s, should put a knife through the heart of the belief that renewable energy sources are going to replace oil, and other fossil fuels, and solve the climate disruption problem. I’ve seen estimates as high as 500 billion euros (~$540 billion) for the cumulative cost of the program. Roughly 30,000 windmills and a high percentage of the world’s solar cells have been installed in Germany over the last few decades.

For all of that, there has been at best a minor decrease in per capita CO2 emissions over the last few decades (See Figure 2). Germany has one of the highest per capita CO2 emission rates in Europe, and the world, and the rate isn’t going down in a meaningful way.

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-11/the-end-of-oil-is-near-or-maybe-not/

Sensible folk would be planning for a general energy downshift - energy poverty replacing energy abundance.

The good news is that we would only have to get back to 1950s’ levels of individual consumption.

The bad news is no one wants to accept a degrowth economics. And if any nations do decide to do the right thing, others will take advantage of the elbow room that creates.

This is the nature of evolutionary forces. If you ain’t growing, then you are dying.

If everyone is locked into the same race to own resources, then a cooperative balance can emerge to regulate that “market”. You can have a system that makes sense and has a long run stability because all the players share the same goal and have to reach some mutual balance of interests.

But that emergent balance breaks down if some group of players decide degrowth has to be the new goal. That just reduces the competitive break on the remaining players. A tragedy of the commons ensues.

Imagine the German Army converting its tanks and ammunition to green renewables. Are the Russians going to say, OK, we will join your new Carbon zero game?

Degrowth will be forced on the world one way or another. But it won’t be a planned transition. And it will be very patchy.

Sensible folk would be planning for a general energy downshift - energy poverty replacing energy abundance.

The good news is that we would only have to get back to 1950s’ levels of individual consumption. — apokrisis

I'm not so sure just how sensible this is. In the 1950's a lot of people even in the West were poor. So the program to save the World is to increase povetry? How well that will go?

The bad news is no one wants to accept a degrowth economics. And if any nations do decide to do the right thing, others will take advantage of the elbow room that creates. — apokrisis

Yet if we reach Peak population and the vast majority of countries have afterwards negative population growth, why then should the economy grow??? Prosperity increases with same level GDP if the population shrinks. What is so wrong with that?

Imagine the German Army converting its tanks and ammunition to green renewables. Are the Russians going to say, OK, we will join your new Carbon zero game? — apokrisis

Replacing 244 tanks, less tanks than in only one Cold War tank division, isn't such a big issue.

Even if a sidestep, here is how the Western armies have become smaller:

I'm not so sure just how sensible this is. In the 1950's a lot of people even in the West were poor. So the program to save the World is to increase povetry? How well that will go? — ssu

Is your argument that we just have to wait for depopulation to reduce the overall pressure on energy consumption and environmental degradation?

That would work. But did you have a particular world population number in mind and a target date to reach it?

The details matter here. If world population is 7.8b now and we would need to cut it to the 2.5b of 1950 by say 2050 - a COP21 type target - how are you thinking of taking all those folk out of the equation?

Replacing 244 tanks, less tanks than in only one Cold War tank division, isn't such a big issue. — ssu

You were asked to compare green energy warfare against fossil fuel warfare. So whether it is 11 battalions or 85 battalions is not the point.

If your opponent turns up with a knife to a gunfight, do you politely toss away your Kalashnikov and ask him to wait while you run home to grab your Puukko?

As Friedman said, the corporation's only objective is to maximize profit. Our current age of a handful of multinational corporations owning nearly everything in the world -- the age of neoliberalism -- is (hopefully) coming to an end. They're determined to bring the rest of the world down with them, however.

Turns out economic dogma is worse than religious dogma, and is more likely to kill us. When you have the Pope coming out in favor of climate change action and Republican party denying anything is happening, it's a strange world indeed.

That would work. But did you have a particular world population number in mind and a target date to reach it? — apokrisis

What has happened historically in nearly all (if not all) countries is that when the population has gotten more prosperous, population growth has dramatically decreased. And usually the more prosperous countries do take care more about their environment than very poor countries. Peak population could even happen when we live (if we live for a long time from now).

The details matter here. If world population is 7.8b now and we would need to cut it to the 2.5b of 1950 by say 2050 - a COP21 type target - how are you thinking of taking all those folk out of the equation? — apokrisis

What kind of genocidal plans are you thinking about? 2050 is in 30 years. You really would have start a genocide not seen ever in history to get to 2.5b. The Paris Climate Conference wasn't planning killing over 5 billion people. Sorry, but that is totally ludicrous and utterly crazy.

Perhaps Thanos is needed to snap his fingers or what?

What has happened historically in nearly all (if not all) countries is that when the population has gotten more prosperous, population growth has dramatically decreased. — ssu

Sure. I understand that.

What I questioned was the implication it could have a useful impact on the problems of peak fossil fuel and global warming.

You really would have start a genocide not seen ever in history to get to 2.5b. The Paris Climate Conference wasn't planning killing over 5 billion people. Sorry, but that is totally ludicrous and utterly crazy. — ssu

Again, that is the point.

So it’s back to wishing for a planned energy downshift and knowing that is impossible as a voluntary human action.