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Dude diligence

This reddit/hedge fund cage match is everything about green (almost) rolled into one! It’s almost too much (get it?):

Wall Street hedge funds are scrambling, and it’s all because of a online investing forum that has more than 4 million members who self-describe themselves as “degenerates.”

Reddit’s WallStreetBets forum has surged in popularity after retail investors within the group successfully staged a gravity-defying short-squeeze in GameStop at the expense of hedge funds that were betting the physical video-game retailer was on its last legs.

A short-squeeze occurs when investors who are betting against the stock are forced to close out their position by buying the stock, further adding fuel to the fire.

As of Thursday morning, GameStop had a year-to-date gain of more than 2,400%. The rally in GameStop crushed Melvin Capital, a roughly $12 billion hedge fund that has suffered a more than 30% decline due to its short position in GameStop.

OMG, shorter all hedge fund doods: Stop doing what we do all the time because you’re not qualified to run a casino like we so definitely aren’t running, not at all, nosiree!

Bonus fun:

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Do Whales Need Ice?

It’s not a trick question, though at first the proposition can seem off-putting, if not unrelated. In the Chukchi Sea and the adjacent Beaufort Sea, off Arctic Alaska, bowhead, beluga, and grey whales are commonly spotted, while fin whales, minkes, humpbacks, killer whales, and narwhals are all venturing into these seas ever more often as the Arctic and its waters continue to warm rapidly.  Sounds harmless, rightbelugachukchi_small?

The problem, however, is that the major oil company Royal Dutch Shell wants to drill in the Chukchi Sea this summer and that could, in the long term, spell doom for one of the last great, relatively untouched oceanic environments on the planet. Let me explain why Shell’s drilling ambitions are so dangerous. Just think of the way the blowout of one drilling platform, BP’s Deepwater Horizon, devastated the Gulf of Mexico. Now, imagine the same thing happening without any clean-up help in sight.

You might have heard about “the sixth extinction,” the way at this moment species are blinking off at a historically unprecedented rate. The Arctic seas of Alaska, however, still are sanctuaries not only for tens of thousands of whales, but also hundreds of thousands of walruses and seals, millions of birds, thousands of polar bears, and innumerable fish from more than one hundred species, not to mention all the uncharismatic sub-sea life that eludes our eyes but makes up the food web — phytoplankton, sea urchins, sand dollars, and sea cucumbers, to name only a few. Think of the Arctic Ocean as among the last remaining marine ecological paradises on the planet.

Sometimes the question is not, ‘When will we learn?’ but ‘Will we learn?’ From the looks of current thinking on public education, the trends are not encouraging.

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Fracking Shrugged

trekwtfIn a measure to counteract opposition to the practice of hydraulic fracturing to exploit oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania, an industry group is making an effort to reclaim the word, ‘fracking.’ I know:

“Fracking’s a good word,” says a middle-aged man collecting his mail. “Fracking’s a good word,” says a woman on her front porch. “Fracking rocks,” says a teenage girl on an elliptical machine.

The ad started running in late September, commissioned by the Marcellus Shale Coalition, the beginning of a larger campaign called “Rock solid for PA.”

“Some people will try to use that word in a negative connotation,” says the group’s president, David Spigelmyer. “All we’re trying to do is shine a light on the fact that there’s a lot of good that comes out of that technology. That’s all.”

David Masur has noticed the ads. He’s director of PennEnvironment, a non-profit that opposes fracking. “It’s been highly entertaining,” he says.

Combine that with this story of pinkwashing in the fracking industry and what you have is a nice bouquet of all the modern practices of poisoning layered atop the moral numbing of continual insults refined by public relations professionals.

 

 

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Gasoline Monoculture

Could you get to work if gas became unaffordable? To get groceries? Get the kids to school?

What is obvious is that the kind of monocultural economy that we have, based on gasoline, is unsustainable and vulnerable to price increases not to mention availability.

So many of the “controversies” we have in planning really come down to building a land use and transportation paradigm that is resilient, one that is less dependent on external inputs.

Hello? The extraordinarily limited (~1) diversity of options is not something we can suddenly retro-fit to our society in the face of skyrocketing transportation costs. And so we’ll be left to simply not go to school and work, and spend our days trekking from suburban enclaves to the grocery store and back. Well, what? Why not consider it that way? Do you actually have a perception of how far two miles is? Five? We rigidly ignore any possibility that our way o’ life will ever be interrupted. People have internalized the idea that transportation alternatives are some kind of antagonistic socialism meant for depraved urban scum or hippies or the poor (commutative property could be in order here). Now what?

link via.

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On The Table

Leaving it on the table, that is. A chart from the Economist, via Yglesias. Interactive even.

Everyone who doesn’t watch Fox News knows that gas prices in the U.S. are the lowest in the 1st world; what might be less appreciated is how little we tax this precious little commodity. Like R.A. says in the original, the ultra low prices fuel the dependency – we can’t get off the stuff. And then we have to castigate any ideas for getting onto trains or sidewalks. And vociferously defend… the obscene oil company profits that are a result. It’s a thoroughly embarassing state of affairs.

Except we’re not embarrassed. Power of Pride, I guess.

But hey… pssst: gas is getting more and more expense anyway. And as it does, we’re still not diverting any of the money to other services or incentivising better habits or planning for the $5 $7 gas that is as sure of a thing as the drink in my hand right now.

Bumper sticker idea of the day: More expensive lessons, please.

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Self-Sanctioning

$5 per gallon gasoline is still in your future.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) isbeing chaired by Iran at the moment. And Iran thinks the run-up of the price of crude to over $90 a barrel is just dandy and requires no new OPEC meetings or adjustment of production quotas among members.

Meanwhile, the US is back to using 20 million barrels a day of petroleum, an increase of 4.4 percent over last year this time. The US, the superhog of gas hogs, uses nearly a fourth the world’s daily petroleum production despite having only a twentieth of the world’s population. Increased US demand, along with rapidly growing demand in Asia, helps account for the relatively high petroleum prices. Some analysts think you could see another big run-up in oil prices in 2011 reminiscent of 2008, with gasoline prices going to $4 a gallon by this summer and then ultimately going on up to $5 a gallon.

That and everything that goes with it will be re-run from 2008. You remember that time, when the whole country gathered around the national dining room table to contemplate living closer to work, buying lighter cars and building trains? Me neither.

And good to remember that as some will scream bloody murder at $4 gas, others would be relieved at such a bargain. Evil relativism. Good thing we just elected a bunch of know-nothings deciders to lead us on all this important stuff, i.e., we’re so screwed.

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Going Away

Not me, this time – malheureusement. But oil refineries. They’re going away. They’re not leaving today. But they’re going away. The article makes for an almost wistful, Christmas Eve nostalgia for how, pretty soon, we’re not going to have them to kick around any more. And boy will we regret that. Except we won’t.

Gasoline demand, which many analysts had long expected to keep rising for decades, is down sharply in the recession. And refiners are increasingly convinced that even after the economy recovers, demand will not grow much in coming years because of the rise of alternative fuel supplies and the advent of tougher efficiency standards for automobiles.

…

Plagued by boom-and-bust cycles of rapid expansion followed by sharp belt-tightening, refining companies have often struggled to operate at a profit. That is a contrast to the production side of the oil business, long a road to riches.

“Oil production creates wealth, but oil refining has often destroyed it,” said Costanza Jacazio, an analyst at Barclays Capital in New York.

Even so, these are unusually harsh times for oil refiners. The recent drop in gasoline demand could result in more refineries being closed in the coming year.

Talk about shock and… aw. But this has very little to do with eco-anything, really. It’s just an economic situation, itself in transition, and away from where the fossil fuel industry thought they would ever go or be, which is not far from here – or actually about 2007. This is itself a problem with the imagination of your average B-school go-getter, seeing just far enough to be able to carve out their own little piece of the bottom line as it exists as the status quo. Then having the proclivity to channel all remaining energy into protecting that little slice of heaven. Instead of being able to recognize the shortcomings even of a system beneficial to them and foresee workable, if not equitable, adjustments to that system. Imagination fail, like a tractor beam. Like a circle, baby.

And this is transferrable to many issues and realms, including the political and HCR. If you doubt that, check out another op piece today, and witness the depravity that was Phil Gramm circa 1993. Hunted with dogs, indeed.

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Expensive-r gas

I saw this article in the Guardian UK over the weekend, which features Dr. James Hansen of Goddard Institute of Space Studies waxing darkly about green:

Hansen said current carbon levels in the atmosphere were already too high to prevent runaway greenhouse warming. Yet the levels are still rising despite all the efforts of politicians and scientists.

Only the US now had the political muscle to lead the world and halt the rise, Hansen said. Having refused to recognise that global warming posed any risk at all over the past eight years, the US now had to take a lead as the world’s greatest carbon emitter and the planet’s largest economy. Cap-and-trade schemes, in which emission permits are bought and sold, have failed, he said, and must now be replaced by a carbon tax that will imposed on all producers of fossil fuels. At the same time, there must be a moratorium on new power plants that burn coal – the world’s worst carbon emitter.

It’s a cheeky lede and all, but the point is taken. All you Nether-philes out there, get serious about getting serious. But then the chorus about a global economic slowdown and its effects on measures to counteract rapidly-advancing climate change pipes in.

Governments are putting plans aimed at mitigating carbon dioxide emissions on hold at a time when concerns are focused on finance rather than ecology and when the collapsing price of oil and gas is undermining incentives to invest in renewable energy.

Another blow to the sector is the tumbling price of permits for emitting carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. In countries where emitters must buy these permits, like those in the European Union, low prices mean emitters have fewer incentives to make their production process more efficient or move to less greenhouse gas intensive fuels.

So… let’s say we have identified a dependable correlation between the price of gas (natural or petrol) and the value of carbon-emitting permits, such that as the price of gas falls, efforts to raise efficiency AND demand for carbon permits also flag. What to do? Call the psychic hotline? Follow your heart?

How about we look into this conundrum and… wait for it: raise the price of gas ON PURPOSE!

Brilliant. villainous. sneaky. shrewd. under-handed. UnAmerican. Exactly.

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raising eyebrows

… but not in a good way. I saw this commercial a couple of times during what turned out to be the final Pistons-Magic playoff game last night. At first, I thought “they’ve got to be kidding.” On second viewing, I spotted all the serious green placement in the ad, and knew they weren’t.

The guy talking has a green corduroy sport coat; big potted plants are conspicuously placed among the vehicles and the simulated browsing – plants, at a car dealership? And then there’s the color of one or two models, the sign, the whole motif seamlessly jammed against the point of the campaign – a guarantee of $2.99 per gallon gas for two years, for the first 12K miles each year – as if they obviously make sense together and one simply is the other.

But they don’t and they are not. Guaranteeing a lower-than-actual, set gas price is not ecological. It begs no further investigation. Just an example of the acumen of the marketing geniuses pointing their best at our stupid. That’s what you’re always up against if you’re going to wade into TV land. The only legitimate space in the creative imagination of advertisers is that reserved for further convincing of how stupid we can be. It seems to be the only place where they believe there lies any potential at all.

Now, here is someone who thought much more highly of us, who could use green like it was just a color or something. Rest in Peaceful Collage, Sir.

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M’aider

They think we’re stupid with the gas tax holiday malarkey. It’s hard to draw any other conclusion. Such proposals must rank among THE most paternalistic displays of faith in your fellow countryman’s inability to understand even minimally how phenomena like a government or taxes work. Clinton and McCain really have religion on this point – and they’re serious about it. A dearth of evidence to the contrary and all that but still, it makes you wonder whether it’s merely a game to satisfy a sick curiosity about just how much can be pulled over on all of the people some of the time.

Even the jingoist Friedman is right on the money on this one; what does that tell us?

Don’t answer that. Maybe it will provide some daylight between those who subscribe to such and those who don’t.

Now this is a much better idea.