Re:Battery Pack Prices Fall As Market Ramps Up
by tialaramex on Thursday December 05, 2019 @03:43PM
(#21716256)
It's not just the debt.
Climate concern means that instead of the choice being between selling your oil for $1 today or hoping to get $2 tomorrow, now it's $1 today or get lynched for pumping oil out of the ground tomorrow.
Worse, the producers don't know when exactly tomorrow is. Probably it's before 2050, but maybe it's before 2040. If enough people get scared it could be sooner. This is one reason many in that industry actually supported global carbon taxes. Having your entire industry phased out smoothly is a nice predictable future. Sure, you'd rather continue to make money forever, but a smooth exit is the next best thing.
Some readers have probably had garden leave, an employer terminates you but pays you salary for a few months to stay home and not work - as an employee you can't tell any secrets or work for someone else. It's unsatisfying, but it's predictable, the mortgage gets paid. Much scarier to show up one morning and find oh, the company went bankrupt, you won't get this month's pay and the tax man hasn't received their cut for the last six months either. Same thing with a gradually increasing system-side carbon tax. Using oil becomes uneconomic, but gradually and predictably. The industry dies but the people running it come out OK. We've opted for a world where it may all go very wrong for them very quickly.
Climate concern means that instead of the choice being between selling your oil for $1 today or hoping to get $2 tomorrow, now it's $1 today or get lynched for pumping oil out of the ground tomorrow.
Worse, the producers don't know when exactly tomorrow is. Probably it's before 2050, but maybe it's before 2040. If enough people get scared it could be sooner. This is one reason many in that industry actually supported global carbon taxes. Having your entire industry phased out smoothly is a nice predictable future. Sure, you'd rather continue to make money forever, but a smooth exit is the next best thing.
Some readers have probably had garden leave, an employer terminates you but pays you salary for a few months to stay home and not work - as an employee you can't tell any secrets or work for someone else. It's unsatisfying, but it's predictable, the mortgage gets paid. Much scarier to show up one morning and find oh, the company went bankrupt, you won't get this month's pay and the tax man hasn't received their cut for the last six months either. Same thing with a gradually increasing system-side carbon tax. Using oil becomes uneconomic, but gradually and predictably. The industry dies but the people running it come out OK. We've opted for a world where it may all go very wrong for them very quickly.