Fossil Fuel Divestment Has Doubled In the Last 15 Months (vice.com) 263
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A little over a year ago, it was big news that thousands of people and hundreds of institutions controlling more than $2.6 trillion in total assets had pledged to remove their investments from stocks, mutual funds, and bonds that invest in fossil fuel companies. A year later, that number has doubled. According to a report by DivestInvest, a philanthropy helping to lead the movement, more than 688 institutions and 60,000 individual investors worth $5.2 trillion have pulled their investments from fossil fuel companies and have reinvested a portion of their assets into clean energy companies. In September 2015, 436 institutions and 2,040 individuals worth $2.6 trillion had divested. For comparison, the total net worth of investors who had pulled out of the fossil fuel market was just $52 billion in September 2014. Divestment is increasingly seen as one of the stronger moves that private citizens and companies can take to support the move to clean energy. The movement started in earnest in 2011 when college students began petitioning their institutions to remove their assets from stocks, bonds, and mutual funds that invest in fossil fuel companies. What was seen as a gimmick at the time appears to be gaining real momentum a year after the Paris Climate Treaty was signed.
Environment Trumps money! (Score:3)
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:5, Funny)
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Well, that's also a way to put "coal" and "sack" into one sentence...
There's also: "When I visited New Zealand, I saw the Coalsack."
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The only way Trump is going to get coal miners back to work is to use taxpayer money to give every American a sack of coal for Christmas.
Seems like Stein and Cankles already got their coal for Christmas from Trump!
Wisconsin recount: Trump picked up an additional 162 votes!
The Wisconsin recount found "no widespread voter counting errors or hacking.â
Be careful what you ask for, you just may get it!
Strat
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That effort confirms there are not "thousands of people" voting multiple times or "thousands of dead people" voting for someones candidate. So now the Republicans can stop inciting that paranoia during elections.
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While we're on what presidential candidates owe foreign nationals: What does the Clinton Foundation owe the middle east.
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:4, Informative)
Ooh, ooh! I can answer that one! Absolutely nothing whatsoever, because it's a charitable foundation and doesn't have business contracts with countries in the Middle East.
The Clinton Foundation has raised $50m or less from Middle Eastern countries since inception, out of a total of $2bn.
I hope that clears things up for you.
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Ooh, ooh! I can answer that one! Absolutely nothing whatsoever, because it's a charitable foundation and doesn't have business contracts with countries in the Middle East.
I guess that's why all those leaders, politicians and so on in the middle east who were demanding to meet with the State Dept., when Clinton was SoS were left hanging outside. Until they turned around and started dumping millions into the Clinton Foundation. FYI it's just shy of $70m from individual countries, and between $55m and $100m from individuals within those countries, who suddenly got "influential meetings" or preferential treatment or loans.
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The question was, what does the Clinton *Foundation* owe those countries. Not "what pressure may be brought to bear on Clinton as a result of donations to the Clinton Foundation?"
Re the numbers -- got a respectable source to back up the assertion it's 7.5% of all donations vs the 2.5% I quoted? And then another respectable source to explain why these donors had so much more influence on policy than the non-ME donors of the 90%+?
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah... the unsubstantiated claim of possibly buying ... an appointment.
That is an atrocity.
Of course the president elect actually having used his foundation to bribe TWO different state attorney generals not to criminally charge him - is entirely acceptable right ?
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Who cares ?
Clinton is not the Clinton foundation. Nor is Clinton the president-elect.
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:5, Interesting)
An that answer would be none.
I certainly hope so.
You know if you little snowflakes stopped worrying so much over what Trump might do and start telling him what you want done, well this might all work out after all.
I want Trump to either divest from all his business interests or resign from the presidency. Plus release his tax returns like every presidential candidate have done for the last 40 years, and like all his cabinet nominees will be doing for their Senate confirmation hearings.
Re: Environment Trumps money! (Score:4, Insightful)
Your absolutely irrational. His real estate empire is big enough that it can't be divested in a meaningful time frame, and to attempt so would seriously damage that part of the real estate market.
Of course he could get rid of his empire - he could sell it for 10 cents on the dollar to some non-profit, which slowly sells of the assets. If he is really worth 10 billion, that would leave him one billion - or, assuming he retires in 2020, and manages to stay alive another 50 years ("the greatest age ever seen"), 20 million a year just from the capital, without any profits from investment. If he gets a return of 2 percent, that's 20 million a year forever - or more per year than a typical well-educated, well-employed software-engineer makes in a lifetime.
If he doesn't sell, either he's greedy, or he know it's not worth remotely what he claims.
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Wow the red herring here is simply amazing...
You're the one twisting my words around to fit you narrative.
Nixon broke laws, not rules and was punished for it, so they obviously did apply to him.
Nixon resigned before he got impeached and received a pardon. He was never tried, convicted and punished for breaking the law.
What LAW is trump saying doesn't apply to him by not liquidating his assets?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics_in_Government_Act [wikipedia.org]
Or do you simply get all your "facts" from MSNBC and other reputable news sources?
Sorry, I don't watch TV.
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah... calling people who are worried about what a fascist tyrant may do "little snowflakes" would be more impressive if the conservatives in America were not the most censorious little snowflakes in the country.
Seriously - there is nobody more easily offended than a conservative. They may rail against political correctness but they have their own brand of it. The major difference is that theirs is not polite and isn't done out of concern for anybody but themselves. Liberal PC tries to keep you from harming vulnerable people. Conservative PC tries to keep you from being appropriately critical of government policy.
Liberals complain if you use the n-word. Conservatives complain if you burn a flag. Liberals just want trans people to be able to pee where they feel most comfortable, conservatives can't stand that but will defend a politician who enjoyed walking in on nude, underage girls in their dressing rooms.
Liberals say "maybe we should stop shooting unarmed people for walking while black", conservatives call them racist for just daring to be critical about police behaviour. Conservatives consider all unionized public workers to be arrogant thieves more interested in their own power than making things better for members... EXCEPT of course when it's police or border patrol - then they are dutyful public servants who risk their lives and deserve nothing but uncritical respect. And if you dare question that narative it's job-loss and ostracising time.
There is nothing more hypocritical than a conservative complaining about "PC" ness. They are pointing long fingers at a behaviour they themselves engage in more frequently, more passionately and with far more power to call upon.
They complain about liberals who defend traumatized students right to be forewarned if the material they are about to cover relates to the source of their trauma in order to let these students properly mentally prepare themselves to confront this material and so be able to actually participate in the debate. But then they do a name-and-shame campaign of "professors who teach from a liberal perspective" because conservative students can't stand the idea of being confronted by non-conservative ideas in class. At least one professor on the list, who happens to be female, was written up for "teaching from a female perspective".
https://www.cato.org/publicati... [cato.org]
You don't get to complain about political correctness until patriotic correctness no longer exists.
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You wish. True to form - would be to do exactly what every other leader like him in history has done. As soon as his failures risk coming back to bite him - get rid of the institutions that exist to enforce the law upon him. He's already gotten a large chunk of the American electorate believing that the institutions are corrupt to the core - it would not be hard to convince them that the only reason these institutions are bringing charges against him is their corruption - and that this is grounds for disman
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Yes the
Re:Environment Trumps money! (Score:5, Interesting)
Every other country where a leader like him became a tyrant had similar separations of power, they all had constitutions, they all had equivalents to the supreme court. That structure only works if the president plays by the rules. It assumes a measure of sanity.
It assumes he won't drag every democrat in congress from their beds one night and shoot them.
It assumes the same about supreme court judges.
A sufficiently determined leader, with sufficient public support, can dismantle the entire system in a week. It's happened over and over - including at least 6 times in the 20th century. It happened in Italy, in Germany, in Spain.
All the times it happened it followed the same pattern - and the first step was always a campaign like Trumps, always the EXACT same rhetoric as his, always the exact same campaign promises.
Americans are rightfully afraid of the fascist who comes with a smile. But most of them don't. Most fascists come as screaming and shouting orators, bombastic demagogues who rile people up and say things others would consider beyond the pale (and then convince their spectators that the other people believe hte same things but are just too scared to say it).
They all promise to be the one person who can fix whatever ails the nation. It's never "us" it's always "I".
They always sell the contradictory tale of the enemy who is both easy to defeat and an existential threat all at once. These two things cannot both be true - but they always claim it. Trump has followed this one to the letter. Half his speeches described ISIS as if they are far more dangerous to America than they actually are, the other half he spoke of how he will destroy them in a week.
And, in a grand irony, like every fascist before him - he is doomed to lose every war, because fascists NEVER win the war -they can't as they are constitutionally incapable of accurately assessing the strength of their enemies. It's what happens when you believe them a powerful force intent and capable of your destruction - and a weak enemy that's easily defeated all at the same time.
This is your Musolini. This is your Franco.
He is risen, and like many others - he did so through the electoral process.
Your argument is basically that we should pretend his campaign never happened, nothing he said was said. We should let him start with a clean slate, and only act after he's been in government a while... no. That's bullshit. The campaign DID happen. He DID make those speeches. He DID make those promises. He DID promise to violate EVERY amendment in the constitution except perhaps the second (his immigration policy alone would violate everything from the due process clauses to the 4th amendment).
Assume he meant what he said - and realize that this makes him a Tyrant right now. And right now - he is still reasonably easy to defeat.
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So, he's a democrat?
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So, he's a democrat?
He's certainly not a Republican.
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Total disruption of the Middle East with destruction of oil fields would push the cost of other fossil fuels up high enough that coal would become competitive again. That would also bail out Exxon's $500 billion partnership investment with Russia for long term exploitation of Arctic oil. If you cannot beat your competition in the marketplace, then kneecap them.
Trump will be in position to do a lot of kneecapping, before he abdicates and emigrates to some country which has no extradition treaty with the USA
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Yes, but you see, that would be universal basic income: paying people who can no longer efficiently compete with massively cheaper foreign manufacturing jobs and automa
Trump monetizes environment! (Score:2)
Contra-Indicated. (Score:2, Interesting)
If you divest, you are not a stockholder. You have no say in how the companies invest or spend their money. Much wiser to invest and help to steer the company by participating. "If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
Re: Contra-Indicated. (Score:2, Insightful)
Buy 1000 shares of Exxon. Congratulations, you now own 0.000025% of Exxon! Now get out there and exert your influence!
Re: Contra-Indicated. (Score:4, Informative)
Exxon shares probably went up already, Trump wants the CEO as Secretary of State
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"If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem."
Yeah, no. You can be not part of the solution and not part of the problem.
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You think the shares Joe Average can buy in the Royal Dutch Shell Oil Corporation will ever get him enough votes to convince them to stop being an oil company ?
No hope there.
But if Joe Average and a lot of his friends sell their shares, move their retirement funds to ones that won't invest in shell etc. etc. - that drives Shell's share price down, every time somebody divests - it increases supply without an commensurate increase in demand and the value of the company drops.
Enough people divest and the compa
You miss the point, totally (Score:3)
How is that interesting? It is totally dumb to believe you could change their course by owning some stocks. You have to have a majority of stocks with voting rights in your pocket. Furthermore, why should you invest money in a company where you disagree with their goals? It makes more sense in investing money in the future than try to help coal and oil industry to understand that their business model is phased out.
Re:Contra-Indicated. (Score:4, Funny)
Similarly, we shouldn't lock murderers up, we should join in them in their murder sprees, while trying to convince them to stop murdering, or at least murder a little bit more nicely.
only affects lucrativiness of resale of oil stocks (Score:2)
only affects lucrativiness of resale of oil stocks.
it doesn't affect how profitable it is to sell oil. in fact, if you sell off your oil investments at below market prices you are making oil pumping more profitable for everyone else who is doing it.
you know what divesting means? it means SELLING UNDER MARKET PRICE. it's stupid. it's mega stupid. especially when you are divesting from massively profitable global companies!
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Every major investment firm with actively managed funds takes criteria other than profitability into account when deciding what to buy and what to sell. For example, a special situations fund will only buy companies it expects to be rebounding from serious trouble. Taking sustainability issues into account is just fine, and not different in kind from what funds already do.
Obviously large scale divestment matters: it can cause the divested stock's price to fall over the long term. That puts pressure on manag
Re: only affects lucrativiness of resale of oil st (Score:2)
Oil companies have under performed compared to the market average, as oil prices are relatively low these days.
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If your accuse somebody of a false dichotomy, you should present at least one example of a possible option they had excluded. Otherwise you are begging the question.
Not all dichotomies are false.
More to do with dismal futures and performance (Score:4)
By this metric, I "divested" myself last year of a substantial amount of energy sector stocks and reallocated to "green" electric utilities.
What actually happened is the price of oil tanked, there's no limit on supply, the floor went out on the returns and there is no sign of a rise in price in the futures markets.
I'll be more impressed if this trend continues when oil goes on the upswing after growth in consumption rebalances with supply glut. I've got $0.02cdn on this "trend" fast reversing if that's the case - and my $0.02 isn't worth what it was a few years ago for the same reason.
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> perhaps this is a good time to buy low
It may be. But you could have said this for the last couple years with the declining prices of energy stocks, and you'd have been wrong.
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I get nervous when people say that oil supplies are something not to worry about. All it will take is Iran deciding to mine the strait of Hormuz, some terrorists blowing up a refinery, or some well publicized happening to the oil/gasoline infrastructure. We will be back to 2008 gas prices in no time, if not far worse. We might even something like OPEC's oil embargo.
Which is why even though oil seems stable, being able to rely on energy that isn't dependent on countries that don't like us is a good thing.
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Minor correction: "We might even wind up getting hit with something like OPEC's oil embargo." One never knows what might happen on the international stage, and being able to not worry on the whims of other nations can contribute a lot to national stability.
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Your comment could be used to call for a diversion from fossil fuels or for a "drill baby drill" domestic oil policy. If the goal is to reduce reliance on foreign oil then there is more than one way to do that. One way is to develop electric vehicles, nuclear power, and other means to remove fossil fuels from the economy. Another way is to pull out all the stops on fossil fuel exploration within the borders of the USA.
I believe you are correct that we should fear an Iran that can disrupt world oil suppli
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By this metric, I "divested" myself last year of a substantial amount of energy sector stocks and reallocated to "green" electric utilities.
Useful tip: Get out of "green energy" in the next 12 months, the market is about to crash on those, since governments are pulling funds out of FiT programs and loans/allocations to solar and wind power. The green energy market it at peak, just like it was in 2008. You can take my warning or not, but don't cry over it when it does happen and you did nothing.
I gave the same warning to people who were heavily invested in property in Vancouver around 5 months ago, people said that the 15% foreign tax wouldn'
One man's loss is another man's gain (Score:4, Insightful)
The article isn't clear but it implies that most of the divestment comes from removing fossil fuel companies from stock portfolios.
If so then the companies aren't buying those stocks back, somebody else is buying them. It doesn't effect the company one bit, other than maybe drive the price down minutely while it's a sellers market. All that really does is minutely help the buyers who are now taking on the risk and the reward of owning that stock.
Either I'm confused about what they're doing or they are.
They're caring and feeling, more than *thinking* (Score:3, Insightful)
You're confused about what they're thinking. They're *caring*, not thinking. What mostly matters, to them, is what they're *feeling*. It doesn't matter much whether it works or not, it's mostly about the emotions, the math is beside the point.
That may come across as critical; it's not meant to be. Liberals criticize conservatives saying conservatives don't care. The liberal parody of a conservative is an accountant type, working the numbers quite dispassionately. There is a grain of truth to that. We do
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I get the caring, I was doing something similar to this long before they started. In 2007-8 I intentionally avoided moving toward the very safe fossil fuel market.
It was more the tone of the article slanted toward the idea that they were in some way inflicting financial pain that I found confusing which is differeng than doing it for altruistic or ethical reasons.
The post below supplies some evidence that is in fact cutting into their bottom line and forcing the companies to buy back stock at 6x the norma
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You say "caring", I say "having integrity". But hey, you've got the only correct value system, right?
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There's a class of mutual funds you can buy at any financial institution called "ethical funds". These funds basically try to stay away from environment-harming or social harming companies, thus will not invest in oil and cigarette companies, for example. They will traditionally have lower returns than a traditional fund in the same category because well, face it, oil and tobacco make a lot of money.
These funds are surprisingly popular, because people know they get lower returns, but on the flip side, know
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The liberal parody of a conservative is an accountant type, working the numbers quite dispassionately.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess you don't know many liberals.
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The companies (and their CEOs) are indeed buying back their stock:
The current report also found fault with share repurchases, a controversial practice of public companies buying back shares of their own stock. Critics say this artificially inflates a company's share price. In 2014, 23 of the top 30 fossil fuel companies spent a combined $38.5 billion repurchasing shares, a figure six times larger than the $6.6 billion all corporations spent that year on research into renewable energy, according to the report.
https://insideclimatenews.org/... [insideclimatenews.org]
The divesting institutions also repress the stock price by not buying any more or back in... leaving a smaller demand for the stock.
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When there are more sellers than buyers, the price goes down.
If a company buys its own stock to prop up the price, that company runs the risk of running out of cash. Lower stock prices make it more difficult to raise cash.
Also, the execs own lots of stock. When the price goes down, their own finances suffer.
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The article isn't clear but it implies that most of the divestment comes from removing fossil fuel companies from stock portfolios.
If so then the companies aren't buying those stocks back, somebody else is buying them. It doesn't effect the company one bit, other than maybe drive the price down minutely while it's a sellers market. All that really does is minutely help the buyers who are now taking on the risk and the reward of owning that stock.
Either I'm confused about what they're doing or they are.
You forget that the divested funds are then being invested into clean energy technology companies. I have little doubt that such companies can make really good use of additional funding, and that improvements and breakthroughs are already being made because of it.
You'd be correct if the funds in question were only divesting, but they're not. They divesting and re-investing the money into another, more desirable (and potentially very lucrative) area, and that's the part you seem to have missed.
Yaz
Weak... (Score:3)
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Not if they sell puts.
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Wouldn't that be buying puts?
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Yes, you're right.
Isn't this the opposite of what you want to do? (Score:4)
OTOH if you buy up as many shares of the stock as you can, you gain voting power at annual shareholder meetings. Usually this means you get more votes for who gets elected to the board of directors who oversee the top officer of the company. Most of these companies aren't fossil fuel companies; they're energy companies. They dabble in renewables and nuclear power, it's just that most of their operations are in fossil fuels. If you can get enough shares to elect anti-fossil fuel people to the board of directors, they would have the influence to get the corporate officers to decrease future fossil fuel operations and invest more heavily in renewables.
I guess the hope is that instead of investing in fossil fuel companies, you can invest the money in renewable energy companies. And that eventually the renewable energy companies will drive the fossil fuel companies out of business. But as I said, most of these fossil fuel companies are actually energy companies. Unlike pro-renewables people who are mostly anti-fossil fuels, the pro-fossil fuels people are not anti-renewables. They simply prefer fossil fuels because they're cheaper. If renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels (whether naturally or after government subsidies), they will simply shift their operations more towards renewables. So I'm really skeptical the "drive them out of business" plan would work.
So the best course of action would seem to be to invest heavily into fossil fuels companies, elect directors sympathetic to your cause, and have them exert pressure on the corporate officers to steer these companies away from fossil fuels and towards renewables.
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TL; DR version: Thanks for the cheap shares, chumps.
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This.
Shall we explain how dividend yields work? ..... Nah.
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Temporarily (Score:2)
That's a great explanation except that, you know the value of their shares has gone down.
Only temporarily from the selling, and even then only if there are not more buyers looking for even a minor bargain.
It's still smart to invest in companies that produce energy from oil today, because they will be a huge source of renewable energy tomorrow. As they are experts on energy distribution, they have a giant head start and the ability to buy up smaller renewable energy companies...
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Depending on who you are talking about, good luck with that. The distribution that will matter in the future are the electrical grids. The companies that run the grids tend to be heavily regulated, so things probably won't change too much for them.
The companies with expertise in moving oil, natural gas and coal? That expertise
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The point of the divestment campaign isn't to make money elsewhere, it's to avoid losses that will happen. See that's the thing, when stocks go down they go down fast often it's a one day move that will wipe out 50% of the stock or more. You can't time these moves and fossil fuels are on the way out long term. If you want to take the risk that when the collapse in stocks comes that you will be out before it happens go right ahead but what the divestment movement is really about is making sure your retiremen
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Not if the fossil fuel companies have anything to say about it. That's why they put so much effort into attacking AGW climate change, and they now have a President who makes GWB's flip flopping on AGW look like a positive endorsement of the science. The fossil fuel companies, particularly the large ones, are probably in the best position they've been since the early 1990s to basically get whatever they want. Sure, they know their product is fucking the planet up, but let's remember here that the larger inve
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Good Christ, have none of you idiots heard of the cost of capital? If investors selling stock were a net positive, investments wouldn't work. You sound like a Brexiteer crowing about the short-run effect of a lower GBP on exports.
Just don't tell (Score:2)
Whoops. Standard Oil 2.0 (with the Trump Stamp of Approval).
This is just because it's a better investment (Score:3)
It's easy to jump on the bandwagon when it's finally rolling to riches. Wind and solar are now both under the cost of coal and will continue to drop as technology already in the pipeline matures and volume keeps increasing.
I saw someone post that we'd still be using oil in 2050. They are right, but it won't be for energy. There are many other uses that won't succomb as quickly. By that point, we'll probably be spraying solar cells onto everything around us for pennies on the dollar compared to deriving energy from petrochemicals.
We didn't reach peak oil so much as we reached critical mass on true renewables. If we keep resisting the inevitable, the only result that will come from it is being left behind as other countries rake in the bucks from the new businesses created.
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I worked on a solar powered race car in college so I know just how hard it is to turn sunlight into usable energy. You might be able to "spray" solar panels on a surface but to turn that into something that can power a light, run a motor, or do anything else useful requires a lot of hardware besides the solar panels themselves. You can't "spray" a power point tracker into existence, or the wires to connect it all.
Wind and solar are now both under the cost of coal and will continue to drop as technology already in the pipeline matures and volume keeps increasing.
You are so wrong on that. Solar power might be cheap when the sun is shining but it's real e
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The irony of someone complaining that renewables advocates aren't taking into account issues beyond money, and then suggesting nuclear as an alternative...
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Do you know what physicians call "alternative medicine" that works? It's called "medicine". "Alternative energy" is energy that doesn't work. You want to prove me wrong? Go right ahead. Nuclear power is not "alternative" as it right now provides 1/5th of the electricity consumed in the USA.
Nuclear power is here, it's now, it's working. All we need is more of it.
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Right. Cos coal extraction has been a subsidy-free means of production since its inception, and has never had a free pass at anything. Except, oh wait, blowing the fucking tops off mountains, black lung, etc et fucking cetera.
No More Oil Companies (Score:2)
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It isn't, because currently they're making every possible effort to stymie any attempt to reduce emissions. Yes, they may invest heavily in renewables, but in a way this is a huge conflict of interest, as they hold the cards in two decks. With their vast and now much greater political clout, they can basically hand any politician, even a high ranking one, their ass if they apply any serious effort to a meaningful action to reduce emissions (like, say, a carbon tax), but then when the effects of climate chan
good luck with that (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it's not going to work. Stocks don't respond like pork bellies to supply and demand.
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Care to explain the difference between how stocks and futures respond to supply and demand?
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You'll have to work that out for yourself. It's not that hard.
here's a rule proposal for you (Score:2)
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It was the individual investors that called for this. Why would they sue over something they asked for?
Re:Great News! (Score:5, Informative)
This means my investment in oil, shale, and natural gas should reap even larger returns
Not true. They sell their investments to other investors. That by itself has zero effect on your investment. But if this happens enough, it signals the market that these investments may not be as worthwhile, and new investors may offer lower prices as a result. Down goes your portfolio.
Re:Great News! (Score:4, Informative)
Assuming he reinvests as the share price goes down, the per-share dividends will increase (all else being equal).
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The biggest investors in alternative energy research are the major oil companies. The people controlling the fossil fuel based markets are not stupid. They know alternative energy usage will continue to grow in the future. They know all the money they spend on alternative energy development can be recouped by the tax credits the government hands out to companies investing in alternative energy related projects. They all have enough cash and political power to make sure they can eventually control and pro
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Not true. They sell their investments to other investors. That by itself has zero effect on your investment. But if this happens enough, it signals the market that these investments may not be as worthwhile, and new investors may offer lower prices as a result. Down goes your portfolio.
Except there are plenty oligarchs that don't have to consider the public opinion and will invest in whatever is legal and makes money. Look at the tobacco industry, arms industry, porn industry or any kind of business some may find morally questionable and a few "ethical" non-investors don't matter at all. If you sell out slowly you do nothing and if you dump it quick you're just offering arbitrage until the price is back where it should be. There's only two things that matter, whether the underlying busine
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2.6 Trillion last year, double that now... in what universe is 2.6 Trillion dollars "a few" ?
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Nonsense, such churning only can lead to temporarily depression in price if there is any effect at all, some people gets a bargain and then the price rebounds. Portfolio is fine. This "divestment" doesn't in any way harm fossil fuel companies nor their stockholders.
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Evidence seems to show [newyorker.com] that divestment does not lower stock prices. (A consequence of the "efficient market hypothesis", incidentally)
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You have to separate demand for the product from demand for the shares of the company producing said product. The share price reflects the market's confidence in the value of the shares which is only partially informed by the demand for the product. If the divestment campaign gets big enough, investors could become wary of being left holding the bag, and the share price would drop.
But I see no massive selloff scenario that would cause the share price to rise. "Everyone's selling these shares and others are
Re:Great News! (Score:5, Interesting)
The share price dropping gives the corporation the ability to buy back shares at a lower price. This improves the ability of the company to do things like go private or otherwise defend itself from troublemakers in the general public.
A well established company with ongoing profits needs stockholders like a boat needs a hole.
The only harm that such divestitures cause a company are that some employees who have been rewarded with stock options will see the value of those options fall for a few years until the divestiture fad falls off.
Re: (Score:2)
That's all well and good, but it doesn't help the GP whose shares halved in value.
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Basically ZERO maintenance for 100K miles beyond consumables. And electricity is basically 1/5 the cost of oil, even at today's prices.
The vehicle range isn't on par yet, but even so most families with 2 cars have one just for around town and one for trips. That's a very rich target market to pick away at.
Re: (Score:3)
I was a suit at Mobil Oil Corporation.
I asked an intern, "What does Mobil Oil sell?"
He said, "Petrochemicals?"
I said, "Stocks."
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Supply and demand. As less and less investors demand that stock, the price will go down accordingly. For the fossil fuel companies that are also utilities [investopedia.com], they will also face headwinds to their stock prices as the Fed raises interest rates over time as has been rumored.
If the stock price goes down, but they continue to make the same profits, the returns on buying the stock goes up.
If you want to hurt oil companies, stop buying the oil.
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If someone pulls out of an investment by selling, someone else is buying.
Sometimes that someone is the company that issued the stock buying it back to juice the market. That's a sugar high. (And were it not for such a fossil fuel friendly administration coming in, these particular companies might get barred from doing so until they fully fund their pension plans.)
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When enough customers do that, that (fossil) bank will be in trouble.
You have an overly simplistic view of where banks make their money. If enough people stop borrowing from them, that could be a problem. But us little people are like the flea on the tail of a dog when it comes to bothering banks.
this makes it more profitable to actually pump (Score:2)
this makes it more profitable to actually pump gas out of the earth as it makes it cheaper to do so as they will need to pay outside investors less.
what it makes less profitable is selling investments in oil. THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING as oil being less profitable! quite on the contrary! less competing investment means more profits for those that do invest and more profits from more pumping.
it really is like giving money to whoever keeps pumping.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, coal will be deregulated when the EPA is gutted, NASA and NOAA's likely being refunded of climate monitoring, not to mention what looks like a big fat subsidy program for coal, I'm sure for a few years there will be a resurgence, before the universe reminds the Republicans that political ideology doesn't
Re: (Score:2)
The sweet irony of posting a complaint of poor editing to the wrong article.
I think the editor moved the post to this article just to get back at GP. If it was good enough for Reddit's CEO [slashdot.org], after all...