Oil at $40 Possible as Market Transforms From Caracas to Tehran – Yahoo Finance.
Few expected the extent or speed of the U.S. oil resurgence. As wildcatters unlocked new energy supplies, some oil exporters abroad failed to invest in diversifying their economies. Coddled by years of $100 crude, governments instead spent that windfall subsidizing everything from 5 cents-per-gallon gasoline to cheap housing that kept a growing population of underemployed citizens content.
Those handouts are now at risk. (emphasis added)
Bring it on.
Lots of ramifications to the price drop. Cheap energy is good. When green energy is cheap energy, that will be good too.
Added: The Boulder energy vision is expressed in this HuffPo article: The Cheap Oil Curse.
The fact is that markets price energy wrong. They price oil and gas based on current demand and supply, and not based on the costs to the planet in pollution, global climate change, sea level rise, and more. This is, as Lord Nicholas Stern famously put it, history’s greatest case of market failure.
Recent events demonstrate the sheer radicalism of the necessary cure. Business as usual is just too convenient, too easy, and incremental change will not save the planet.
Sure, oil production will peak at some point. But by then the earth could be a very unpleasant place. Sorry, folks, but the argument that we are running out of oil just doesn’t cut it. If only things were that simple.
No sleep is being lost here worrying about climate change and hence sea level rise. Worst case, these changes are on trend” and best case they have stopped. Articles are now appearing that mention global cooling due to the substantially lower sunspots expected for the next few decades. The fear mongering is all getting a little old.
