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I'd argue that the decreased usage of oil has -to some degree- already started, e.g. Chinas crude imports have dropped the last two years in a row and yet they're still adding ever more EVs at a spectacular rate. There's practically no way but down for those numbers. It's mostly similar for the EU, though they're not as aggressive re EVs.

With PV being the absolutely cheapest form to get energy in most regions of the world already or soon-ish (and even highly useful electric energy at that), I fully expect our capital machines to pour ever more resources into its deployment. This will go on until we have plastered some percentage of the earths surface with PV, there's fundamentally no real constraint to doing so.

Along the way, over the next 10-30 years we will have replaced most major fossil burning things - the only way you will be able to compete with PV power is if you're sitting right on top of a gas field in a location with little sunlight and no grid connection.

Incidentally, with ever-falling battery storage costs, I'd assume the need for large interconnect buildout to be diminishing, but there's lots of inertia in that system so societies might end up with some underused assets. Still better than all the stranded assets I suppose, but still.

I, too, started parsing this as RL=real life and that’s why I found the headline interesting

One weekend Russia attacks Russia, next weekend Twitter attacks Twitter.

I’d assume that hedging buy prices or long term buy contracts are not the same as gambling.

But wouldn’t it be better if the volume at least is shown on open exchanges?

Isn’t that argument somewhat strange or dishonest? To paraphrase you: I‘d rather have naked shorting and the associated manipulation and problems with it than better price discovery for stockholders. In your example, the stockholder isn’t protected either, only an equity firm derives profit from this information. In a more ideal world the stockholders themselves would do this due diligence, which is something that already happens. Also there’s differences between shorting and naked shorting. I could well imagine allowing fully hedged shorting and outlawing naked shorting. Especially considering the issue of fail to deliver, that’s just absurd with our technology.

And here I was, reading the headline and thinking this would be an article about the EU, sanctions and Russian gas.

So let's pick this apart:

- "The authoritarian infrastructure will be built"

I'd argue it already has been built, by Google, NSA et al. Also, I fail to see why these "high levels of government regulation" would be bad, since we've tried the alternative and it obviously doesn't work..

- "The Green New Deal has turned into a jobs program."

I'm no american, but has this been put into law already?

- "the Soviet Union was immensely energy inefficient and polluting"

I do hear that from time to time but no one can provide any sources for this claim. Can you? Not planning on protecting the ol' USSR, but still seems insincere to just throw this around without attribution.

- "Increasing middle class prosperity is inherently incompatible with reducing carbon output."

That's a pretty flat statement. Why would this be so?

- "the Global Climate Strike platform categorically rejects market mechanisms to address climate change."

We tried this, it hasn't worked (so far). Why should we continue with this measure instead of other approaches?

- "Carbon capture and cheap nuclear power"

both of which do not exist. See my comment about LCOE and the link below for cheap nuclear power. With regards to carbon capture, we have some pilot plants but this technology (or rather mix of technologies) is nowhere near ready for the massive scale of deployment we'd need already. That's why the focus is on political solutions imo.

Oops, my calculation was way off (missed a kilo-prefix somewhere), we'd need to cut and store about the entire rainforest per year. So, this is obviously not possible as an all-around solution but might help with some Gigatonnes..

Hi, do you have some source or paper on this approach? I don’t mean to dispute this but have never heard of it before and a quick query didn’t turn up any results, rather the opposite (decay processes happening on the sea floor, not sure whether / or in what amounts those release co2 again).