Goes without saying

There are certain facts of human nature that cannot be twisted by Machiavellian motives no matter how extreme or sensitive the political circumstances may be surrounding them. The facts of the matter are that human lives need air to breath, water to drink, and food to eat in order to survive. Regardless of the well from which you sip, these facts are undeniable, inescapable, and inalienable. There are no legislations, declarations, or manifestos that can undo these facts of human nature. No academic citations are needed for verification. And yet as hard as these facts may be, the political reality of today will have you think that accepting these facts are a free choice to be made.

Political reality is no match for physical reality. As the world stands, our civilizations’ air, water, and food supplies are gravely threatened by global forces — not by terrorists, not by warring nations or economies, and not by those who we may easily find disagreeable. The greatest global threat to humanity is ourselves. Now political reality will have you believe that the threat is external, that if we remove the danger that lurks outside or the enemy that hides within, we will have saved ourselves. Physical reality would say otherwise.

Physical reality would remind us that there are nearly 8 billion human lives that all depend on natural resources; that these resources can only exist in an environment where they can be replenished; and that there is a quantifiable chance that we will wipe ourselves out by not being good stewards to an environment that has been so life-giving as our Earth. Physical reality would also remind us that extinctions occur. There could be no self-inflicting wound that is greater.

To be reminded must mean to remember, and to remember must mean there is a history. But history, for some, has a capricious tendency to be memoryless or even ungrounded in facts. History has its way of cleaving political reality from physical reality. Some histories are written by those who are powerful, other histories are written by those who are powerless. Political reality will prey on whatever histories it may find convenient given the circumstances, but it can never divorce itself from physical reality as deluded as it may become. Physical reality trumps political reality. Regardless if you are a Republican or a Democrat, conservative or liberal, Tea Party or Green Party, alt-right or alt-left, citizen or non-citizen, physical reality remains intact: all of us need air, water, and food.

There was a time when political reality was once grounded in physical reality, when bipartisanship transcended political bickering, when environmentalism was a shared and not a party-affiliated value. History would remind us that a Republican, Richard Nixon, in the 1970s created the United States Environmental Protection Agency. He did so by appealing to the shared values of both Republicans and Democrats. History would remind us that a Democrat, Jimmy Carter, created the United States Department of Energy. He did so by appealing to the shared values of both Republicans and Democrats. We witnessed an expression of this shared value in successive presidencies — in the Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations.

On January 20, 2017, a new administration, an administration which has articulated its intent to divorce itself from physical reality and buck the trend of its predecessors, will assume office. This new administration has promised on its “first day” to renege on his predecessor’s promise to deliver billions of dollars in mitigation funds to countries facing extreme stresses on their survivability due to more frequent and intense natural disasters. This new administration has promised on its “first day” to cancel his predecessor’s executive orders limiting the construction of energy infrastructure projects that are prone to lethal accidents. This new administration has also promised on its “first day” to lift restrictions on businesses notorious for heavily polluting the country and the planet at large.

All these promises sound like good news to anyone who wants jobs and free-flowing capital without consequence. But for anyone who is mindful of the consequences of our actions, there are real risks and liabilities we are adding to humanity’s survivability balance sheet — risks and liabilities all of us will have to pay on a long enough time horizon. Certain risks and liabilities are worth taking, others are not. The dangers attributed to these risks and liabilities are real, and are grounded in hard facts.

It would appear that the new administration and its followers are unaccustomed to facing consequences such as these, and have chosen their own facts. Perhaps this opinion piece did not meet the editorial standards of Breitbart, and did not reach you. Perhaps you worship conspiracy theories, and you deemed this to be propaganda spouted by the globalist liberal elite. Perhaps making America great for some is a nobler pursuit than making this planet habitable for all. Perhaps my reality is different from your reality.

We have a terrific opportunity to truly unite all Americans, if not the whole world, by reconciling our realities and making environmentalism bipartisan again. The ratification of the Paris Agreement testifies to all of us that we can prevail as one people under a common, unifying goal irrespective of geopolitical orientation and national interest. The new administration has a responsibility to demonstrate by example to the nation and to the whole world how we can “come together as one united people” yet owes its success to irresponsibly peddling and pandering division, fear, paranoia, and hate within its ranks and among its followers. The optimists still watching the spectacle unfold are left wondering how much damage can be undone. Others are wondering how much more damage awaits.

To those followers of the new administration, this is an urgent appeal to you and your leaders: do you not need air to breathe, water to drink, or food to eat just like me? Or shall we civilly (or uncivilly) agree to disagree?

Attack in Kabul amid peaceful protests over energy access for minority group

Demonstrators from Afghanistan's Hazara minority attend a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan July 23, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

Demonstrators from Afghanistan’s Hazara minority attend a protest in Kabul, Afghanistan July 23, 2016. REUTERS/Omar Sobhani

“Islamic State claims responsibility for Kabul attack, 80 dead”
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-protests-idUSKCN1030GB

Saturday’s demonstrators had been demanding that a 500 kV transmission line from Turkmenistan to Kabul be re-routed through two provinces with large Hazara populations, saying they feared being shut out of the project.

The government said the project guaranteed ample power to the provinces, Bamyan and Wardak, which lie west of Kabul, and that altering the planned route would delay it by years and cost millions of dollars. But the resentment felt by many Hazaras runs deeper than simple questions of energy supply.

Oil prices down, equity markets up

It is difficult to separate the signal from the noise when gauging economic barometers, taking guesses now that will most certainly be proven wrong later. And today may have been just another one of those days when false negatives and false positives meld to form a most beautifully inaccurate picture for investment pundits — just another blip on the radar — or we may have witnessed a key structural milestone in a global energy economy centered around oil. The downward trend in oil prices over the last two years has shown to have had a dampening effect on equity prices since the fallout began towards the end of 2014. And so almost any trading day oil prices ended lower, there was a good chance equity markets ended lower as well.

But today was different, both in magnitude and timeliness. Oil prices fell, but equities rose. Crude dropped by nearly 3% [1], but the S&P 500 was just shy of a 1% gain and the Dow rose over half a percent. Small caps did even better with the Russell 2000 Index jumping 2.7% [2]. Now one huge confounding variable in today’s trading were remarks made by Fed Chair Janet Yellen, but taken into account suggest that monetary caution is still at play and so nothing has materially changed (or will change) as far as interest rates and money supply could affect asset prices across the board over the next few months. The irony was that in those very moments that Yellen warned investors that lower prices could continue to hurt the economy, equity markets reacted just the opposite of what’s expected when one inflicts pain onto another. In fact the S&P 500 hit a year-to-date high while crude oil straggled. The only harm done by weak oil prices today seems to have been self-inflicted and well-isolated from broader macroeconomic trends.

A divergence in two commonly correlated benchmarks may be occurring. Monetary policy aside (a not-so-modest thing to say), if today is any signal, it’s that the global economy can sustain itself and decouple itself from the value that oil provides to the economy with the right fiscal controls.

[1] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-oil-idUSKCN0WU01Y
[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-29/u-s-index-futures-little-changed-as-investors-look-to-yellen

Big oil to cut investment again in 2016

Trailing 5-year change in percent value of WTI crude (orange) and the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index.

(Bloomberg) Trailing 5-year change in percent value of WTI crude (orange) and the S&P Oil & Gas Exploration and Production Index (blue).

With crude prices at 11-year lows, the world’s biggest oil and gas producers are facing their longest period of investment cuts in decades, but are expected to borrow more to preserve the dividends demanded by investors.

Over $1 trillion in shareholder value has vaporated from the balance sheets of some of the largest oil and gas companies in the last 18 months. See spreadsheet compiled on 3 Jan 2016 of Equity Erosion in Oil & Gas Sector for lower-bound estimate based on market data from companies doing business in Houston, TX.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-oil-companies-investments-idUSKBN0UH0AB20160103

Equity erosion has cost Houston energy companies $448 billion in the last 6 months

Over $448 billion has eroded from the market capitalization of energy companies doing business in Houston, TX, as falling oil prices have eaten into shareholder value over the last 6 months.

A survey of large oil & gas companies with headquarters and major offices in Houston, TX–the “Energy Capital of the World”–reveals the impact of falling crude oil prices on equity markets. In the last 6 months, over $USD 448 billion in shareholder value has been wiped off the balance sheets of these businesses.[1] Given the Energy Capital is home to over 5,000 such carbon fuel companies, this equity erosion figure is a conservative estimate of the total financial impact that could ripple through the local Houston economy within the coming months.

These estimates come just days after senior research economists at the the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas projected over 249,700 jobs are at stake in eight US states, of which 128,000 are at risk of disappearing in Texas alone.[2]

[1] Data obtained from Google Finance (day-end quotes: 30 December 2014)

[2] “Oil crunch could cost Texas 128,000 jobs, Fed model shows”. http://fuelfix.com/blog/2014/12/18/oil-crunch-could-cost-texas-128000-jobs-fed-model-shows/

Correction: Article understated equity erosion figure. Using P*C2/(1+P) = C2 – C1 = D method, equity erosion figure was revised from $315 billion to $448 billion (where P denotes percent change in value between -1.00 and 1.00, C2 denotes market cap on Dec 2014, and D represents the change or delta in market cap since market cap C1 recorded in Jul 2015)

The new “smart grid” is now the “internet of things”

The “internet of things” surpassed the “smart grid” in December 2013 as the more popular search phrase. That following month, in January 2014, Google coincidentally announced their acquisition of Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash. Now let’s see what major deals will accompany GE’s “industrial internet”–if it ever takes off.

A Summer in India

Hundreds of millions of people across India were left without power on Tuesday in one of the world's worst blackouts, trapping miners, stranding train travelers and plunging hospitals into darkness when grids collapsed for the second time in two days.

India’s electricity distribution and transmission is mostly state run, with private companies operating in Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. Less than a quarter of generation is private nationwide.

The Great Green Fuel Debate

A member of the U.S. Navy watches the USS Roosevelt as it passes the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, while arriving for the 25th annual Fleet Week celebration in New York, May 23, 2012. Credit: Reuters/Brendan McDermid

The U.S. Navy angered Republicans by spending $26 a gallon for biofuels for this week’s Great Green Fleet demonstration, but the Air Force received little attention when it paid twice as much per gallon to test synthetic jet fuel last month.

Despite all the heat Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has been receiving from the more fiscally austere members of Congress, I think it would be insightful to remind ourselves of the high costs and risks the federal government placed on building out the interstate highway system or the infrastructure for the Internet and the social/economic benefits we’ve accumulated since they days when a dial-up connection once cost $35,000 a month.

It’s a worthwhile investment.

The Global Food Crisis: more evidence

The research coming from the New England Complex Systems Institute (NECSI) this month reflects previous concerns I’ve made in earlier articles[1],[2],[3],[4],[5] about the relationships of biofuels and commodities market speculation with food prices and the mechanisms driving these prices upward. Although the evidence doesn’t unequivocally confirm these concerns, this NECSI research paper is a stepping stone toward a general theory of what I’d like to call “ecodynamics”: namely, the study of the interactions of capital flows with natural resources. The abstract of the paper summarizes the fundamental argumentative thread which is worthy of peer-reviewed investigation:

In a previous paper published in September 2011, we constructed for the first time a dynamic model that quantitatively agreed with food prices. Specifically, the model fi t the FAO Food Price Index time series from January 2004 to March 2011, inclusive. The results showed that the dominant causes of price increases during this period were investor speculation and ethanol conversion.

Timothy A. Wise (director of the Research and Policy Program at the Global Development and Environment Institute — Tufts University) posted this very informative article on his “Triple Crisis” weblog (6 March 2012) regarding the NECSI data and food price model. A year earlier, he wrote another succinct piece on food price volatility that initially captured my interest and led me to the NECSI paper mentioned above.