The financial markets unraveled so rapidly last week, it’s still hard to process all the developments and likely consequences. But there’s no doubt that events on Wall Street carry serious implications for our energy and environmental future as well.
I can’t wrap my head around all the pieces yet (and I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to), but here are some random thoughts about what the market meltdown might mean for oil prices, oil production, renewable energy development and climate change:
Writer Nate Hagens warns on The Oil Drum that the Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) temporary ban on short selling alone could put future energy markets in jeopardy. Now studying at the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics at the University of Vermont, Hagens knows some of this stuff from the inside: an MBA from the University of Chicago, he previously worked in asset management, pension research and commodity system trading algorithms for Salomon Brothers and Lehman Brothers.
He writes, “There will never be a year where we produce more oil than in 2008, (and if things fall fast, then 2008 still may not catch 2005). Energy and finance are critically linked. The deepening banking crisis now combined with apathy and reduced confidence in our financial system will evaporate any chance we had of offsetting oil depletion with new production and new technology. You can bank on it.”
The shrinking availability of credit also threatens efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a meaningful way. Agence France-Presse reported yesterday that European businesses are invoking the current economic crisis as a reason to drop proposed fines against companies that don’t reduce their carbon footprint.
Then there are the numerous pundits who warn that the taxpayer tab for bailing out Wall Street will require “Shock Doctrine”-like cuts in government spending for … well, almost anything beneficial: Social Security, the National Park System, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, schools, transportation, you name it.
Urban planner Christopher J. Ryan writes on his The Localizer blog: “Imagine what we could have done with the public and private money to research alternative energy and build a more sustainable society. Throw in the trillion or more for Iraq and if you’re not shaking mad now like I am, you’re on a slab.”
This is all scary, uncharted-territory stuff, and it’s hard to know where things will stand when (if) the dust settles. Right now, though, the view from an environmental/energy-security perspective is anything but encouraging.
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
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[...] Study”; The world’s economy is suffering more from the loss of forests than from the current crisis on Wall Street, according to a new EU-commissioned [...]
I actually published the same type of ideas on my own blog… Good thinking!
DEMOCRATS should read all the stories circulating today about how former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan warned congress back in April that legislation was needed to prevent the melt down we’re now experiencing … but, the democrats blocked it. These are the same democrats who want us to elect them in November.