ENVIRONMENTAL STRUGGLES

While Europe is often thought of as the EV headquarters of the world, and Tesla, the world’s most famous EV company, is located in the United States, China is taking over. Beijing has been on the cutting edge of the electric vehicles sector for a while now, and all but controls EV markets. Way back in 2018 Oilprice reported that “China Indirectly Controls EV Markets” because of its near-monopoly at various levels of the supply chain, most notably in the case of lithium ion batteries.

MoA—The answer to the question OPEC++ or a dead shale industry? is in. The shale oil industry will die. It may come back in the future but that will be years from now. The coronavirus pandemic has cut oil demand from 100 million barrels per day to some 75 Mbpd. Oil prices have fallen from $60 per barrel to $20/bl. On Thursday OPEC+, the original oil producer cartel plus Russia, agreed formally to cut output by 10 million barrels per day. The real promised cuts would have been smaller. But the agreement depended on the commitment of all OPEC members.

BILL SPENCE—No less than 23 former fire chiefs and emergency leaders attempted to warn the government for months in 2019 that more resources were urgently needed to tackle bushfires. What did the government do? Some would say, “nothing”. But actually, that is not true. On top of ignoring the warnings from their own fire experts, government officials spent most of their time actively opposing any moves to limit climate damage and prevent bushfires.

GEORGE WUERTHNER—Collaboration is always a one-way street. It is about reducing the areas protected as wilderness. It is a philosophy of “splitting the baby.” As King Solomon recognized, if you truly love a child (or a wild place), you cannot cut the baby in half and get anything that is alive.

JOHN R. HALL—It’s dog eat dog out there, as they say.  Survival of the fittest, strongest, smartest, most voracious, and greediest determines the fate of our tiny blue sphere, and has likely been repeated, on a zillion planets within the unfathomable predatory universe, since the beginning of time (if indeed time had a beginning).