The assault by the elites on our basic freedoms and lifestyles using fake climate change data is real and unrelenting. Increasingly, honest scientists are starting to produce research that shows that climate alarmism is a scam and that there is no cause for concern.
Even with that new science, it’s difficult to cut through the propaganda and the climate of fear that has been created. The media are a big part of the problem. They mimic what the elites tell them with no independent research or journalistic ethics. The public itself is part of the problem. They are easily misled and happy to do what they’re told. When you have malevolent elites, compliant media and complacent citizens, that’s a recipe for dictatorial outcomes.
The good news is that the climate change agenda must fail in the end. This is not a matter of opinion. It’s a matter of physics and maths.
The power grid can’t run on solar and wind because there’s not enough non-intermittent baseline power. Cars can’t run on batteries because there’s not enough lithium and cobalt in the world to make the batteries needed. Citizens will not voluntarily confine themselves to 15-minute cities; they’ll want to see family and friends or even the world.
People won’t eat bugs (I’ve tried friend grasshoppers in Korea; they were tasty, but I wouldn’t make a steady diet of it. I enjoy a medium-rare hamburger as much as the next guy). In time, the Green New Scam will fall from its own weight if people don’t put an end to it sooner. Either physics or people power will end it. Hopefully, both.
In the meantime, we’re stuck with what complexity theorists call the ‘interesting in-between’. The climate scam will certainly fail, but it will just as certainly be tried in the years ahead. This puts investors in interesting choices.
Short-run demand for lithium, nickel, cobalt, and copper will be strong even if those commodities cannot possibly create all the batteries needed. China will demand coal to run its coal-fired electricity plants no matter how much the US and Germany destroy their own economies by banning clean coal and natural gas use.
Demand for EVs will crash once enough drivers get tired of waiting for over two hours for a battery charge to finish a three-hour trip. (The 30-minute chargers won’t help if you must wait two hours in line to use one. Don’t forget to bring your dinner with you while you wait.)
These choices are different from the ones investors usually make. Should I invest in something that will fail in 10 years if it makes huge profits in the next five? Should I invest in the oil and gas industry even when the US Government is out to destroy it? The answer to both questions — one pro-green and one anti-green — might be ‘yes’ given the strange mix of short-term madness and long-term sanity we are facing.
F Scott Fitzgerald once wrote:
‘The test of first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless yet be determined to make them otherwise.’
We know our readers have first-rate intelligence. The test, therefore, is the ability to see that the Green New Scam is hopeless and still works for sensible solutions.
Regards,
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Jim Rickards,
Strategist, The Daily Reckoning Australia
