The world's fossil fuel companies risk wasting billions of dollars of investment by not taking global action to fight climate change seriously, according to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Fatih Birol, who will take the top job at the IEA in September and is one of the world's most influential voices on energy, warned that companies making this mistake would also miss out on investment opportunities in clean energy.
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The World Bank and Bank of England have already warned of the serious risk climate action poses to trillions of dollars of fossil fuel investments and the G20 is investigating the risks. The think-tank Carbon Tracker has estimated that over $1tn (£0.6tn) of oil investments and $280bn of gas investments would be left uneconomic if the world's governments succeed in their pledge to limitglobal warming to 2C.
The warnings are based on policy proposals that are entirely creatures of human decisions rather than hard economic realities. Then again, all demand is ultimately the product of human decisions.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 15 2015, @05:59PM
Ah, it must be time to ramp up the panic just ahead of the Climate Change Conference. We had this the last time as well - all sorts of hyperventilating in the months leading up to the conference.
You mean the Climate Change Conference that happened a week ago?
There goes that hypothesis...
see for yourself, Jul 7-10. [commonfuture-paris2015.org]