technology

i really wish i could find it now, but in something like 2018-2020 i stumbled across an article that introduced me to the concept of the Carbon bubble.

the article was focused on the political ramifications of the bubble, that certain political projects were so entangled with inflated/purely abstract valuations of fossil fuel reserves that they were existentially unable to unwind those positions since the end result would see devaluations in the tens or even hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars.... not to mention, anyone paying any attention to this would refuse to purchase them, because they would be toxic assets. and that huge corporations not visibly connected to fossil fuels had much of their ability to leverage connected to them all the same. municipal funds, pensions, retirement, the exposure in the US to the carbon bubble is systemic.

this means that even minor moves to sell off these assets could cascade into structural crisis.

so, instead, the only move left was to turn fanatical, to refuse to acknowledge any negative externalities and remove any brakes on production / consumption. the first Trump administration was regarded as a herald of the bubble panic, though most earlier presidencies had only symbolically engaged with the problem since the US has been managed by formations with deep ties to oil and coal formations for over a century.

i think about that shit all the time.

edit: to get an idea of the scale/logic

In 2011, the Carbon Tracker Initiative calculated that at that point the world could only burn 20% of its carbon-based fuel reserves if it wished to stay below a 2°C increase that has been agreed upon by the UNFCCC members. This meant that the remaining 80% could not be burned, and so what governments and investors were treating as low-risk assets were actually very likely to become stranded assets. This could have serious economic implications, as the London Stock Exchange, Sao Paolo Stock Exchange, and Moscow Exchange (among others) had an estimated 20-30% of their market capitalization connected to fossil fuels. In the case of London, for example, the fossil fuel reserves listed in the exchange were ten times its carbon budget from 2011 to 2050. As those assets become "unburnable" and therefore lose most of their value (or became liabilities), this will put the strength of the British economy at stake.