BlackRock’s Larry Fink: Climate policies are about profits, not being ‘woke. Investment fund manager says firms that do not plan for a carbon-free future risk being left behind.

Fink said businesses, cities and countries that do not plan for a carbon-free future risked being left behind. He argued that the pursuit of long-term returns was the main driver behind climate policies, “We focus on sustainability not because we’re environmentalists, but because we are capitalists and fiduciaries to our clients.” Yet, West Virginia’s Treasury investment board would no longer use a BlackRock fund, after the fund manager urged companies to cut their carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. Fink wrote that It is through effective stakeholder capitalism that capital is efficiently allocated, companies achieve durable profitability, and value is created and sustained over the long term. Make no mistake, the fair pursuit of profit is still what animates markets; and long-term profitability is the measure by which markets will ultimately determine your company’s success.”

After Fink wrote two years ago that climate risk was an investment risk and that the firm would put sustainability at the heart of its investment decisions, many companies set out plans to become carbon-neutral. BlackRock had previously been criticised for not pushing hard enough on the issue. Last spring, BlackRock reportedly threw its weight behind a shareholder campaign to oust several directors on the board of the US oil giant ExxonMobil to help push the oil company towards a greener strategy.

Fink predicted that the next 1,000 unicorns won’t be search engines or social media companies, they’ll be sustainable, scalable innovators that help the world decarbonise and make the energy transition.

RESPONSE TO LARRY FINK : LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/17/the-market-for-energy/

IF LARRY BELIEVES IN MARKET BASED SOLUTIONS TO PROBLEMS HE SHOULD SEEK A MARKET BASED SOLUTION TO THE CLIMATE PROBLEM. DETAILS BELOW.

THE MARKET FOR ENERGY PICKS WINNERS AND DRIVES EVOLUTION IN ENERGY TECHNOLOGYIn the history of energy that drove human progress since the Neolithic Revolution from human power, animal power, the invention of the wheel, water wheels, windmills, the combustion of carbon based fuels, and nuclear power, the evolution of energy technology was orderly and progressive. These changes were driven by ideas and innovations in a market economy. The dynamics of a market for energy that selects winners and losers is the evolutionary process that gave us the fossil fueled economy we live in.

However, certain downsides to fossil fuels were identified in the 1960s when smog, oil spills, acid rain, and other environmental issues emerged as serious downsides to fossil fuels from both human welfare and ecology points of view. The 1960s hippie movement against fossil fuels, described in a related post [LINK] was a product of these weaknesses in fossil fuel energy.

These environmental weaknesses of fossil fuels spearheaded the renewable energy movement more than 50 years ago with innovations in wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal energy. However, in the market for energy, even as renewable energy was being developed and implemented, fossil fuels regained the upper hand with technological innovations needed to overcome environmental laws enforced by the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The acid rain story, presented in a related post [LINK] , is instructive in this historical context.

These innovations by the fossil fuel industry solved the smog, the acid rain, and oil spill problems and weakened the case against fossil fuels. At the same time, the widespread implementation of renewables revealed their operational weaknesses in terms of intermittency, and power output variability not under human control, the need for fossil fueled backup power, and high maintenance cost. As a result, renewables could not compete with the new improved fossil fuel energy product free of smog and acid rain. Wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal waned and retreated into a near death experience. This left the large and growing environmental movement against fossil fuels in shock because it had seemed for a time that the war against fossil fuels had been won and that clean green renewables were the future of energy.

The rise of fear based climate change environmentalism against fossil fuels is best understood in this context. As described in the related post [LINK] , fear based climate change is preached by climate scientists and activist with horrific predictions of extreme heat, the collapse of polar ice sheets, catastrophic sea level rise, extreme weather in terms of storms, droughts, floods, heat waves, forest fires, mass extinctions, and the collapse of civilization. Even the phraseology to describe global warming and climate change has turned into global heating and climate crisis or climate emergency. The fear is then further extended to the whole of the planet with the assessment that if we continue to burn fossil fuels it will be the end of life on earth and the end of the the planet itself.

At issue is the use of fossil fuels because all of these fearful things are described as the effect of burning fossil fuels. We are told that burning fossil fuels creates CO2 from very old carbon from under the ground that does not belong in today’s atmosphere. And that when this old CO2 is released into the atmosphere it causes atmospheric CO2 to rise [LINK]  and that in turn causes warming (or heating) by way of the greenhouse effect of CO2 . And that therefore, the only solution to the global heating crisis is to take “climate action” and that means to stop using fossil fuels and move the world’s energy infrastructure to wind and solar renewables.

We propose that the interpretation of this argument as a rationale for moving the world’s energy infrastructure from fossil fuels to wind and solar renewables is that there was no rational case for renewables because of their operational drawbacks particularly in terms of intermittency and unreliability. The theory of catastrophic climate change was needed to force the issue with fear based activism against fossil fuels having failed to compete in the market for energy.

Belatedly, after more than two decades of forced implementation of a flawed energy model with fear based activism against fossil fuels, climate science now boasts that the technologies such as TES, PCM, and PHES are currently in development and that these technologies hold the promise of solving the unreliability and intermittency problem of wind and solar renewable energy.

In the context of the history of the cart before the horse forced implementation of wind and solar renewables with fear based activism, the promising developments for reliable wind and solar renewables after the fact reveals the fallacy of forced fear based activism as a method for promoting renewables. A technology still under development and not ready for the market was thus imposed with activism.

This grotesque history of the attempt to force an energy transition with an incomplete and yet undeveloped technology is revealed as yet another criminal failure in a poorly thought out activism against fossil fuels before the alternative energy technology development was complete and before the technology was at hand.

In the context of the admission at this late stage in the climate movement that technologies for reliability of renewables are still in development, the fear mongering lies used to push an incomplete energy technology cannot be understood as business decisions in the contgext of how the economy works. It is, rather, a crime against humanity.

IN THE MARKET ECONOMY, INNOVATERS SHOULD JUST BRING THEIR INNOVATIONS TO THE MARKET WHERE THE MARKET FOR ENERGY WILL SELECT WINNERS AND LOSERS. IN THIS CONTEXT, THE NEED FOR FEAR BASED ACTIVISM AGAINST THE COMPETITION IN THE MARKET FOR ENERGY EXPOSES THE UGLY UNDERSIDE OF CLIMATE CHANGE. THE INNOVATIONS ON OFFER THAT NEED FEAR BASED ACTIVISM TO SELL ARE THUS EXPOSED AS INNOVATIONS THAT CANNOT COMPETE IN THE MARKET FOR ENERGY. QED.

MORE EVIDENCE THAT THE CLIMATE CHANGE MOVEMENT IS NOT A MARKET BASED FINANCE ISSUE IS THE VEHEMENT OPPOSITION BY CLIMATE ACTIVISTS TO THE WAY OUR CAPITALISM ECONOMY WORKS-AS SEEN IN THE LINKED DOCUMENTS BELOW.

LINK#1: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/09/09/creative-climate-activism/

LINK#2: https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/05/16/grantham-institute-climate-change/

ABSTRACT:

THE PRESENTATION BY THE GRANTHAM INSTITUTE MAKES THE CASE THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS AN ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUE AND THAT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF FINANCE AND ECONOMICS IS INCOMPLETE AND DANGEROUSLY FLAWED WHEN ECONOMICS IS UNDERSTOOD IN THE ABSENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSIDERATIONS.

THIS ARGUMENT IMPLIES THAT CAPITALISM AS PRACTICED IS A DANGEROUS TOOL THAT IS SHORT TERM AND WITH ASSUMPTIONS THAT EXCLUDE NATURE. THE POINT OF THIS PRESENTATION IN THE CLIMATE CHANGE CONTEXT IS THE IMPLICATION THAT CLIMATE CHANGE IS A CREATIION OF CAPITALISM AND THAT THESE KINDS OF THINGS WILL CONTINUE TO HAPPEN IF WE DON’T FIX OUR ECONOMICS SYSTEM AND THAT WE CAN AND MUST FIX OUR ECONOMICS SYSTEM WITH AN ECO WACKO AGENDA INSERTED INTO ECONOMICS AND FINANCE TO INCLUDE NATURE AND THE PLANET BECAUSE WE ARE PART OF NATURE. THESE CHANGES TO OUR ECONOMICS SYSTEM ARE NEEDED SO THAT WE DON’T END UP DESTROYING THE PLANET.

YET WHAT WE SEE TODAY IS THAT EVEN AFTER MORE THAN 400 YEARS OF CAPITALISM AND MORE THAN A CENTURY OF CLASSICAL ECONOMICS WHAT WE FIND IN THE WORLD TODAY IS THAT THE HIGHEST QUALITY OF LIFE ON THE PLANET, LONELINESS OR NO, IS FOUND IN THESE SOCIETIES.

AS FOR THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE POPULATION, WEALTH, POWER, AND REACH OF HUMANS ON THIS PLANET IS NOW SO GREAT THAT THE PLANET HAS REACHED A NEW STATE CALLED THE ANTHROPOCENE WHERE THE WORLD’S NATURAL SYSTEMS ARE AT RISK OF BEING OVERWHELMED AND DESTROYED BY THE ENORMOUS REACH AND POWER OF THE HUMANS THAT NOW CONTOL PLANET, WE NOTE IN A RELATE POST THAT THIS HUMAN CONTROLLED STATE OF THE PLANET IS AN IMPOSSIBILITY.

LINK: https://tambonthongchai.com/2020/03/30/the-humans-must-save-the-planet/

CONCLUSION: NO SUPPORT FOR THE LARRY FINK VIEW THAT CLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISM IS A MARKET BASED SOLUTION IS FOUND IN THE DETAILS OF WHAT THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT SAYS, HOW THEY OPERATE. FEAR BASED ACTIVISM TO PUSH THROUGH ADMITEDDLY INCOMPLETE RENEWABLE ENERGY TECHNLOGIES CANNOT BE UNDERSTOOD AS A MARKET BASED SOLUTION.