29 April 2020

Day 38 of UK lock down: The End is Nigh


BP has gone from a $2bn profit this time last year to a $500m loss, but is still issuing a dividend to their investors, which looks like delivering a 7% yield , albeit by drawing on their capital & depleting their resources. This is clearly is not a sustainable long term strategy, but then neither was what the fossil fuel industry has been doing to the planet for the last 300 years.
Oil prices are currently at the lowest point for 160 years, although that’s not quite as dramatic as it sounds, since prices were almost as low in the 1970s and late 1990s. Nevertheless, Jeremy Cliffe, writing in the New Statesman, makes the point that, regarding the end of the Age of Oil, it’s now a matter of not if but when.
And the answer to that rather depends who prevails – short sighted investors and their populist politician puppets, or people prepared to seize the moment and change to a regenerative & circular economy.


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