Presidents Xi and Putin are laughing at us Cop26 has been a gift to our geostrategic rivals

The gap between rhetoric and fact is a perennial feature of politics. But seldom can the chasm between claim and reality have been as wide as that displayed by Alok Sharma at the Cop26 conference in Glasgow. The British president of the latest intergovernmental climate change gathering told the delegates (and the world’s media) that “the end of coal is in sight”, as a result of the agreement he had negotiated.

Not only was the declaration to phase out coal by the 2040s not signed by the world’s top three consumers (China, India and America, which account for more than 70 per cent of the global CO2 emissions from burning the stuff); the pledge itself was neutered by the addition of the get-out “or as soon as possible thereafter”.

The fact that the leaders of Russia and China did not attend gave President Biden (who did, and was awake for much of the time) the opportunity to castigate them for their lack of involvement.

But Presidents Xi and Putin can at least be absolved of the charge of hypocrisy.

In its inarticulate way, this captures the confusion of the West’s official policy. On the one hand our leaders want to make oil and gas production a thing of the past. On the other hand they know that their own voters can’t get enough of the stuff (not least for heating their homes) and in particular hugely resent any steep increase in its price. As BP’s chief executive, Bernard Looney, explained last week: “If you take away supply, but demand does not change, the only thing that happens is that prices go up.”

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That has been happening in recent months — and it has been a boon for oil exploration and production companies. Their asset values have rocketed up in line with the price of crude. So you might think, if you have a mind for the value of your pension fund: I may be paying more at the pump, but at least my share portfolio will benefit.

Think again, perhaps. The big institutional investors, at the urging of their ESG (environmental, social and governance) committees, have been divesting from industries defined as polluting. And who have been the buyers? Hedge funds, mostly, such as that managed by Crispin Odey, whose European fund has risen in value by more than 100 per cent so far this year. Last month Odey told the Financial Times: “They [the big institutional investors] are all so keen to get rid of oil assets, they’re leaving fantastic returns on the table.” Another hedge fund manager, Josh Young of Bison Interests, observed: “People don’t understand how much money you can make in things that people hate.”

A friend of mine who is a fund manager said it reminded him of the situation some years ago with the tobacco companies: “A number of pension funds felt squeamish about holding their shares, but their clients, whose interests they were meant to serve above all, lost out, because the flow of dividends from the likes of British American Tobacco has continued to be stupendous.”

At least BAT is still a FTSE-listed company, so pension funds can invest in it if they wish. But Thérèse Coffey, the secretary of state for work and pensions, has announced plans to “name and shame” pension funds that prove unwilling to divest from polluting industries.

Two consequences flow from this. The first is that unquoted companies — which the “hedgies” can invest in without the restrictions that apply to big pension funds — will acquire “polluting businesses” at knockdown prices, making potentially vast returns for the people who already have the considerable sums required by such firms of their clients.
The head of the world’s biggest fund manager, BlackRock, made this clear at a panel discussion in Glasgow last week. Larry Fink observed that the disparity of obligation between public and private companies was creating the opportunity for “the biggest capital market arbitrage in my lifetime. We are seeing more hydrocarbons moving away from public entities to private entities.”

And the second consequence of Coffey’s proposals? If BP, Shell and the like are discouraged from investing in more oil and gas developments, then there will be even more dependence (as Biden has already unhappily noted) on countries such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. Leave aside the economics; this is a form of geostrategic self-harm by the West. Or, at least, it will be unless the transition to a post-oil and gas era is far smoother than seems feasible.
It’s true that renewable energy sources such as wind and solar have become more competitive with fossil fuels. But not only is their intermittency a feature rather than a bug; the bizarre paradox is that the world’s biggest supplier of solar panels and wind turbines is China, whose cost advantage in producing them is achieved partly by its continued mass usage of coal energy — which it has no intention of checking in the foreseeable future, as Sharma has discovered, though not admitted.

Instead the Cop26 president chose to praise the corporation bosses who showed up in Glasgow by saying that, when he started his career in finance, “there was a guy called Swampy. He spent his time occupying trees and tunnels and he was the main face of climate action in the United Kingdom. But today the Swampys of the world are all around us, in boardrooms, in government departments and trading floors all around the world. You, my friends, are the new Swampys, so be proud.”

Perhaps they are proud. But I think of the laughter in the dark, from President Xi in Beijing and President Putin in Moscow. And I am worried.

"...Not only was the declaration to phase out coal by the 2040s not signed by the world’s top three consumers (China, India and America,..."

FYI...
--- That Trillion-Dollar Ripoff-- Clinton's Utah Coal Deal
various websites | 7-29-02 | The Heavy Equipment Guy
Posted on 7/29/2002, 3:04:45 PM by backhoe
In light of the attention focused on coal and coalminers over the weekend, let's review one of the more sordid episodes of the late & unlamented Clinton Conspiracy of Criminals...
--- The Utah Coal Lockup: A trillion dollar Lippo payoff?
By: Sarah Foster
When the President signed the Executive Order designating 1.7 million acres of land in southwest Utah as the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, his action placed the area off limits to mineral extraction and development.
The New York Times reported that the monument encloses the largest coal field in the nation, the Kaiparowitz Plateau, which contains at least 7 billion tons of coal worth over $1 TRILLION.

Coal can be burned very, very cleanly now. The only “pollutant” put out is CO2. This is why the global warming loons hate coal. Coal puts out more CO2 than burning natural gas. That we only have an abundance of due to fracking. The UK is paying sky high prices for Putin’s natural gas and from other countries too. The cruel fact is that in NE England, there are loads of places where fracking can be used to yield gas. But fracking is banned in the UK, so they must import it. I believe they still get some natural gas from their North Sea’s oil rigs.

The Germans closed down their nukes after Fukushima. They put their retired coal plants back into service to generate electricity. Given superior German technology, you can count on this coal being burned very cleanly. Unlike the way the cheap-ass ChiComs do it in China. India too depends on coal for electricity. India and China throw the most CO2 into the world’s air, and none of our global warming lunatics will ever come down on them.
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CO2 emissions>
“While China contributed 27 percent, the US (15 percent), the EU (10 percent) and India (7 percent), the rest of the world contributed 41 percent last year, said the projection by the Global Carbon project.

It identifies India, China, the US, the EU, Russia, Japan, Germany, Iran, Saudi Arabia and South Korea as the world’s top ten carbon dioxide emitters.

It also said though global use of coal remains three percent lower than its historical high, it is expected to grow in 2018, driven by growth in energy consumption in China and India.

According to the study, China, India and the European Union are setting the pace representing 40 percent of global carbon emissions.

The study said that while China and India still rely heavily on coal, the US and the EU are slowly de-carbonizing.

As India’s robust economic growth across all fossil fuels — coal (7.1pc), oil (2.9pc) and gas (6.0pc) — continue to soar, the country’s emissions look set to continue go up by an average of 6.3 per cent in 2018, said the study.

“Coal is still the mainstay of the Indian economy and, as in China, it will be a challenge for solar and wind to displace coal, given the strong growth in energy use,” it said.”

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