The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) was built, sold, and attacked as the largest climate investment in U.S. history. […]
Best of times, worst of times: record fossil-fuel profits, inflation and inequality
The 2022 oil and gas crisis resulted in record fossil-fuel profits globally that rehabilitated the oil and gas industry, obstructed the energy transition and contributed to inflation, but their magnitude and beneficiaries have been insufficiently understood. Here we show the size of profits across countries and their distribution across socio-economic groups within the United States, using company income statements, comprehensive ownership data and a network model for propagating profits via shareholdings. We estimate that globally, net income in publicly listed oil and gas companies alone reached US$916 billion in 2022, with the United States the biggest beneficiary with claims on US$301 billion, more than U.S. investments of US$267 billion in the low carbon economy that year. In a network of U.S. shareholdings with 252,433 nodes including privately held U.S. companies, 50 % of profits went to the wealthiest 1 % of individuals, predominantly through direct shareholdings and private company ownership. In contrast the bottom 50 % only received 1 %. The incremental U.S. fossil-fuel profits in 2022 relative to 2021 were enough to increase the disposable income of the wealthiest Americans by several percent and compensate a substantial part of their purchasing power loss from inflation that year, thereby exacerbating inflation inequality. These profits also reinforced existing racial and ethnic inequalities and inequalities between groups with different educational attainments. We discuss how an excess profit tax could be used to both lower inequality and accelerate the energy transition as increasing geopolitical tensions and climate impacts threaten continued volatility in oil and gas markets.
Green economic planning for rapid decarbonisation
Sustainable futures require deep social and economic transformations to address climate change adequately. The current landscape of intergovernmental and market-based coordination is not delivering...
The shale revolution helped make America’s economy great
But will the country’s oil riches discourage a similar revolution in renewables?
The future is made of energy | Orca Notes
A megatrend way bigger than decarbonization is probably the key to abundance and sustainability both.
The New Paper Arguing Biden’s Power Sector Emissions Cuts Are Largely Intact — Even Under Trump
The New Geopolitics Of The Green Transition
The only path forward for tackling the climate crisis hinges on cooperative industrial strategies to coordinate clean energy investment and infrastructure development.
AI boom means US is now ‘investing more’ in fossil-fuel power than China - Carbon Brief
The “data-centre boom” is driving a surge in gas investment in the US, pushing its fossil-power spending ahead of China, according to the IEA
The ‘wicked trinity’ of late capitalism: Governing in an era of stagnation, surplus humanity, and environmental breakdown
Scholars within the fields of political ecology, environmental political theory, and international political economy tend to evaluate the prospects of state-led environmental transitions in general terms – enquiring as to the capitalist state’s inherent properties and their environmental implications. Less attention has been paid to how the state’s green capacities are conditioned by contemporary evolutions in the form and pace of capital accumulation. Capitalism’s directional pattern of historical development poses unique challenges for green state projects. Its drive to raise labour productivity metabolises nature on a growing scale, while generating conditions of overproduction and rendering a progressively larger portion of the population superfluous to the production process.Thus, the question is not simply whether the state can rise to the challenge of climate change, but rather how states are scrambling to govern the intersecting crises of climate catastrophe, economic stagnation, and surplus humanity. This ‘wicked trinity’ compounds the tensions at the heart of the capitalist state, resulting in an increasing inability to perform its role while sustaining its liberal form. This governance trilemma is illustrated by the case of the solar photovoltaic boom, where the spectacular increase in the productivity and scale of solar panel manufacturing have generated oversupply and falling profitability. States have reacted by indefinitely providing subsidies, financing automation technologies thatexacerbate labour superfluity, and relocating solar panel manufacturing to places with authoritarian labour regimes. The case of photovoltaics is a microcosm of the general predicament faced by states as they struggle to govern capitalism’s secular developmental tendencies.
The Gargantuan Lie That is Collapsing The World’s Climate
Thinking we have time left to address climate change, or that “Net Zero by 2050” will save us, is driving us toward full social collapse in ways that become more obvious with every new broken temperature record.
America’s housing was built for a world we no longer live in
The United States is turning 250. Everything we want for the next 50 years starts with fixing housing.
Prime Minister Carney announces the largest clean energy investment in North American history
Canada is starting from a position of strength. We have what the world wants.
Oil and Gas=Peril and Poverty/ Solar and Wind=Prosperity and Protection
2026 has changed the psychological meaning of energy forever
In Deep
The numbers are simply mind-blowing: up to £264 billion for a climate “solution” that will increase emissions. Has the government lost its mind?
One Generation Runs the Country. The Next Cashed In on Crypto.
Sons of top Trump administration officials made billions for their families, but their investors didn’t always fare so well.
The Fossil Fuel System Is Collapsing – and Taking Civilisation’s Safety Net With It
The Iran war is accelerating an irreversible breakdown of a system on which every hospital, harvest and factory depends - and only a rapid transition to energy superabundance can save us, argues Nafeez Ahmed, Divyesh Desai and Sandrine Dixson-Decleve
Cleaning up a coal-fired mess
China’s green-industrial complex makes deep decarbonisation possible, but far from inevitable
