Global economics and finances - impacts

[JimD]

An almost perfect storm for Brazil.

Deep recession due to the collapse of commodities and general trade.

Rapidly rising unemployment.

Drought in the country leading to severe water shortages and huge problems in the Amazon.

Massive government corruption scandals ongoing disrupting government.

Zika virus impacting the population and will effect tourism.

The Olympics are here this year and that will truly screw the economy as they are going to lose huge amounts of money.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/27/with_zika_outbreak_brazil_s_slump_is_becoming_a_nightmare.html

[Sigmetnow]

Hedge fund managers in the U.S. are freaking out, while individual investors remain calm.  Make of that what you will.  (But keep any soon-needed savings in cash.  )

Hedge funds reeling from the recent stock market turmoil are rallying around a hot tip: Buy nothing
http://www.efinancialnews.com/story/2016-01-21/hedge-funds-hot-idea-is-to-retreat

[Laurent]

Interesting graphics about economy...

It’s time to worry about the economy
http://qz.com/607162

It’s a funny thing about globalization. It works on both the way up and the way down.

For the last year the US has been an economic bright spot, in stark contrast to once high-flying emerging markets that powered global growth in the aftermath of the Great Recession.

The first two of the so-called BRICs—the formerly fast-growing emerging market nations of Brazil, Russia, India, and China—are suffering through downright nasty recessions. China is slowing fast. Outside the emerging markets, Europe inches along. And Japan remains Japan, last we checked, meaning very little growth.

And now the brightness in the US appears to be dimming, at least a bit. The latest benchmark update on the US manufacturing sector shows activity continued to decline in January, marking four straight months of contraction. The strong US dollar—it’s up about 13% against the currencies of major trading partners—is a key culprit.

But the US isn’t alone. China’s manufacturing sector is shrinking, too, leaving us with the troubling specter of the world’s top two manufacturing economies in open retreat.

[JimD]

Woah!  Doggies!

http://mishtalk.com/2016/02/26/world-trade-plunged-13-8-in-us-dollar-terms/

The value of goods crossing international borders plunged 13.8% in 2015 according to the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Policy Analysis’s World Trade Monitor. Much of the slump was due to a slowdown in China and other emerging economies. The start of 2016 sports a similar pattern....

It is going to leave a mark.

[Laurent]

The economic damage from climate change may be more than you think — much more.
https://engineering.stanford.edu/news/economic-damage-climate-change-may-be-more-you-think-%E2%80%94-much-more

"We estimate that the social cost of carbon is not $37 per ton, as previously estimated, but $220 per ton," said study coauthor Frances Moore, a PhD candidate in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources in Stanford's School of Earth Sciences.

[Laurent]

Rockefeller family charity to withdraw all investments in fossil fuel companies
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/23/rockefeller-fund-divestment-fossil-fuel-companies-oil-coal-climate-change

Started by John D Rockefeller – who made his fortune from oil – the fund singled out ExxonMobil, calling the world’s largest oil company ‘morally reprehensible’
John D Rockefeller, who was the richest person in US history when he died in 1937, made his fortune from Standard Oil a precursor of ExxonMobil.
John D Rockefeller, who was the richest person in US history when he died in 1937, made his fortune from Standard Oil a precursor of ExxonMobil. Photograph: Jessica Rinaldi/Reuters

Rupert Neate in New York
@RupertNeate

Wednesday 23 March 2016 21.39 GMT
Last modified on Thursday 24 March 2016 00.15 GMT

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A charitable fund of the Rockefeller family – who are sitting on a multibillion-dollar oil fortune – has said it will withdraw all its investments from fossil fuel companies.

The Rockefeller Family Fund, a charity set up in 1967 by descendants of John D Rockefeller, said on Wednesday that it would divest from all fossil fuel holdings “as quickly as possible”.

The fund, which was founded by Martha, John, Laurance, Nelson and David Rockefeller, singled out ExxonMobil for particular attention describing the world’s largest oil company as “morally reprehensible”.

John D Rockefeller, who was the richest person in US history when he died in 1937, made his fortune from Standard Oil a precursor of ExxonMobil.

“There is no sane rationale for companies to continue to explore for new sources of hydrocarbons,” the RFF, which has relatively small total holdings of $130m (£92m), said in a statement. “We must keep most of the already discovered reserves in the ground if there is any hope for human and natural ecosystems to survive and thrive in the decades ahead.

“We would be remiss if we failed to focus on what we believe to be the morally reprehensible conduct on the part of ExxonMobil. Evidence appears to suggest that the company worked since the 1980s to confuse the public about climate change’s march, while simultaneously spending millions to fortify its own infrastructure against climate change’s destructive consequences and track new exploration opportunities as the Arctic’s ice receded.”
Exxon knew of climate change in 1981, email says – but it funded deniers for 27 more years
Read more

An Exxon spokesman told CNBC: “It’s not surprising that they’re divesting from the company since they’re already funding a conspiracy against us.” The RFF denied that it was conspiring against Exxon, and a spokesman said the claim was “a complete mischaracterization of our program work”.

The RFF’s accusation of morally reprehensible conduct is in reference to New York state attorney general Eric Schneiderman’s investigation, launched in November, into whether Exxon lied to the public and shareholders about the risks of climate change.

The investigation, which has also been taken up by California’a attorney general, follows reports that internal company documents from the 1980s and 90s show Exxon’s in-house scientists were warning company executives about the dangers of climate change, while Exxon was publicly claiming that climate science was not proven.

At the time, an Exxon spokesman said: “We unequivocally reject the allegations that ExxonMobil has suppressed climate change research.”

The RFF acknowledged that the family has made a lot of money from oil, “but history moves on, as it must”. “Needless to say, the Rockefeller family has had a long and profitable history investing in the oil industry, including ExxonMobil,” it said. “These are not decisions, therefore, that have been taken lightly or without much consideration of their import.”

RFF is not the first Rockefeller family organisation to vow to divest from fossil fuels. Last year the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) said it was withdrawing all of the $45m it had invested in fossil fuels.

However, the much wealthier Rockefeller Foundation, whose endowment tops $4bn, is understood to be opposed to divestment for now.

[JimD]

Sort of self explanatory I guess

Brexit is nowhere near the biggest challenge to western economies.....

In July of 2014, we wrote about the huge imbalance with respect to China’s M2 money supply and nominal GDP relative to the US. At the time, China’s M2 money supply was 71% higher than the US but its economy was 56% smaller, which we said was an indication of the overvaluation of the Chinese currency. Since that time, the yuan has fallen by only 6.8% relative to the dollar. We haven’t seen anything yet.

Today, the circumstances have significantly worsened. Money supply has continued to grow faster than GDP. With over $30 trillion of assets in its banking system and an underappreciated non-performing loan problem, we are convinced that China is headed for a twin banking and currency crisis. Money velocity has reached historically low levels which reflects China’s extreme credit imbalance and its crimping impact on its ability to generate future real GDP growth....

That is utterly devastating. It’s what we see in the US, EU and Japan too, but ‘we’ have thus far been able to export our deflation -to an extent- to … China. No more. China has started exporting its own deflation to the west. Beijing MUST devalue its currency anywhere in the range of 30-50% or its export sector will collapse. It is not difficult.

That it will have to achieve this despite the objections of Donald Trump and the IMF is just a minor pain; Xi Jinping has more pressing matters on his mind. Like pitchforks....

The air is leaving the balloon.


https://www.theautomaticearth.com/2016/07/deflation-is-blowing-in-on-an-eastern-trade-wind/

[JimD]

....But the rationale for this measure is to shore up an unsustainable mercantilist growth model. As many analysts have stressed, China has for years has had investments and exports consist of an unheard of level of over 50% of GDP. China desperately needs instead to have a much larger consumption share of GDP. But in the wake of the criss, it instead ramped up investments that have been mainly funded by borrowing, with the boost in GDP from each dollar of borrowing falling over time. So the investment-driven model is nearing its sell-by date, yet the economic mandarins are doubling down.

And as Evans-Pritchard outlines, the result of this last-ditch effort to preserve Chinese growth will be to kill its export markets. Germany, the world’s other relentless exporter, is achieving a similar result by insisting on running trade surpluses, refusing to fund its counterparts (which is inherent to running trade surpluses) and insisting that the problem is that their partners aren’t competitive enough and inflicting crushing austerity and labor-squeezing policies on them.....

Factory gate prices within China are falling at a rate of 2.9pc, further amplifying the deflationary impact. Analysts fear that Beijing is engaged is an undeclared policy of beggar-thy-neighbour mercantilism, trying to avert an industrial crisis at home by exporting its overcapacity in steel, shipbuilding, chemicals, plastics, paper, glass, and even solar panels, to the rest for the world.

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/07/china-destabilizes-global-economy-by-exporting-deflation-through-currency-devaluation.html

[JimD]

Oh my is this interesting data.

Something funny happened when I didn’t look: the global trade numbers were adjusted down. By a lot. The post-Financial Crisis recovery in trade is suddenly a heck of a lot less vibrant than it looked. And it has completely stalled out over the past two years....

...Turns out, the recovery of global trade was a lot weaker than the original data had indicated. Today’s WTM level of 133 is where it had first been under the old data in October 2013! Two-and-a-half years of painfully slow growth wiped out in one fell swoop!

So we did something vile. We overlaid the old data and the adjusted data, for all to see. This chart includes the old data released as of July 2015 (blue line) and the new adjusted data released today (red line):....

This goes a long way towards explaining why the global economy seems so mediocre when the news is always so upbeat.





And this is huge.  One cannot overstate how screwed up this is.  You cannot run an economy on overcharging mostly poor people for prescription drugs.

There’s another aspect to this “perplexing” economy: Pharmaceutical products are the single largest category in US wholesales, and thus in the goods-producing sector. In dollar terms, they account for over 12% of total wholesales. They’re even bigger than groceries. Year-over-year sales have soared 10%, in a sluggish economy, not because of volume increases, but because of price increases.

Yet, drugs are small and expensive, and shipping volume is relatively small. Since much of the wholesale increase came from price increases, shipping volume has been minimally impacted.

But without these soaring drug sales, the remainder of the goods-producing economy (“ex-drugs”) at the wholesale level has been heading south for over two years, including in May. This is reflected in the crummy US transportation data over much of last year and so far this year. The growth in drug sales due to price increases covers up part of the weakness in the goods-producing sector “ex-drugs.” But the freight data, where drugs play a smaller role, bring the weakness of the goods-producing sector “ex-drugs” to the foreground.

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/07/22/global-trade-meets-reality-world-trade-monitor-wtm-adjusted-cass-freight-index/

[TerryM]

There’s another aspect to this “perplexing” economy: Pharmaceutical products are the single largest category in US wholesales, and thus in the goods-producing sector. In dollar terms, they account for over 12% of total wholesales. They’re even bigger than groceries. Year-over-year sales have soared 10%, in a sluggish economy, not because of volume increases, but because of price increases.

(My bold)


I believe that groceries have a much lower markup than pharmaceuticals, so if I'm reading this right, the average American family is now paying more for medicine than for food.


This sounds like a dystopian sci-fi plot.
 The Aliens have infected the earth with a killer virus that can only be held in check by the daily ingestion of a substance controlled by the Alien Overlords. Baby's starve as the price of the elixir is increased, until a hero, with natural immunity, arrives and allows himself to be bled out, so that his blood can be used as a vaccine to save the world.


When does our hero arrive?


Or, are these pharmaceuticals being sold to health insurance providers at discounted rates with the highly inflated figures used to justify rate increases whenever the CEO needs another Gulfstream?


Terry

[GeoffBeacon]

Terry

I believe that groceries have a much lower markup than pharmaceuticals, so if I'm reading this right, the average American family is now paying more for medicine than for food.

See the Green Paty Leader, Jill Stein, on how the pharmaceutical companies captured Obamacare. She wiped the floor with Fox. Excellent stuff.

[TerryM]

Geoff


I was intimately aware of the horrors of healthcare in America pre ObamaCare. It was one of the reasons for my return to Canada in 2004. If ObamaCare is to be euthanised in the near future, some thought must be given what will replace it.


My heavily insured healthcare costs were my family's largest expense for two years prior to my departure, but I was in very poor health on a number of fronts.


At that time and place medical costs were hiked ~ 400% so that insurance could pay 80%, and still break even. One of my neurologist's used to present a bill that showed not only what the insurance provider billed for an office visit, the 20% co-pay, and also what he billed the provider. IIRC the insurance billed for $200, and paid 80%, or $150. My co-pay was $50 / visit & the doctor was paid $52, by the same company. Each visit cost the insurance company $2.00, which was more than made up for by my premium.


The plan did pay a higher percentage of costs, but only if you agreed to use only the 3d or 4th string doctors that they had on call. One visit to one of these quacks was enough to convince me.


I assume a similar scheme is being run today & that this is the reason for the ridiculous pharmaceutical costs that JimD's post exposed.


As a hasty post script:
One of my Canadian neurologist refused to believe that I could have been billed $10,000 for an IVIG treatment in the States. According to him the serum costs &68.00 per vial and such a markup would be unconscionable. Another neurologist who had interned at Sxxxx Kxxxxxxxx set him straight.


Terry

[Tom_Mazanec]

Bank of England - Climate change could cause $4 trillion - $20 trillion losses:
https://qz.com/1596486/climate-change-could-cause-20-trillion-in-losses-says-bank-of-england/?utm_source=reddit.com

[sidd]

Climate change exacerbates inequality:

"the impact of warming on annual economic growth, which over the course of decades has accumulated robust and substantial declines in economic output in hotter, poorer countries—and increases in many cooler, wealthier countries"

"per capita gross domestic product (GDP) has been reduced 17–31% at the poorest four deciles of the population-weighted country-level per capita GDP distribution, yielding a ratio between the top and bottom deciles that is 25% larger than in a world without global warming. As a result, although between-country inequality has decreased over the past half century, there is ∼90% likelihood that global warming has slowed that decrease"

Open access: read all about it
 
https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/04/16/1816020116

sidd

[b_lumenkraft]

Taking the freedom to x-post this interesting post from Interstitial to give it it's designated home.

This was OT in climate change, the ocean, agriculture and food so I posting my response in who should be democratic nominee for president in 2020

  Note that the financial "bailout" was loans that, overall, were repaid with interest.  The taxpayer made a net profit.  And the world avoided a domino effect of bank failures that would have made the Great Recession look like a picnic.

If all the banks needed were loans the Federal Reserve would have supplied the money and congress would not have been involved. That is what the Federal Reserve does is loan banks money. Banks made a lot of loans to people they knew couldn't afford them. They didn't care if people borrowed too much money because they bundled them up with good loans and sold them on the market as mortgage backed securities. They made more money in fees the more people borrowed. As long as the security didn't go below the original loan amount, its called breaking the buck, the financial institutions were fine. Once it did they were responsible for the difference. The banks knew this mess would hit them so they donated a record amount to politicians the previous election cycle. When it became obvious to wall street that these mortgage backed securities had too many bad loans in them the market turned down and Lehman brothers was the first institution to owe more money on these securities then the company was worth and they went bankrupt. Problem is these mortgage backed securities were repackaged with each repackaging the financial institutions made more money but also became liable if the security broke the buck. Once one firm went down all institutions that made these securities would go bankrupt. The next day congress gets a huge and complex bailout package to vote on that was clearly created long before the previous day. Before congress is allowed to look at the bill they are asked to vote on it without debate. The bailout basically had the banks identify the questionable loans and sell them to Fredie Mac. Fredie Mac is a quasi-government institution and congress footed the bill. That was the troubled asset relief program. While not all of those loans defaulted and some money was recovered by foreclosing.
So far unwinding those bad loans has cost taxpayers 8.5 trillion dollars.
https://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/real-cost-2008-recession-12908/
That still makes me angry.
Except for Lehman brothers all the other financial institutions got off with only some increased regulation. They made a profit the following quarter. A short time later congress quietly gutted most of the new rules.
Ironically in anticipation of all this banks pushed for stricter bankruptcy laws for individuals to recover more money
Elizabeth Warren fought the 2005 bankruptcy act for individuals and made a forceful stance for stricter banking regulations knowing that the regulations put in place were insufficient to stop the same thing from happening again. She upset big money fighting for the common person and that is why I think she would make a great president. Unfortunately I doubt she will get the nomination because she pissed off big money.

[Tom_Mazanec]

More potential financial rewards than risk in addressing AGW:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-04/companies-see-1-trillion-in-climate-risk-but-more-in-potential-reward?srnd=climate-changed

[Sciguy]

Investment funds are making money by investing in large scale renewable energy projects.

https://cleantechnica.com/2019/06/05/european-fund-manager-raises-e850-million-for-clean-energy-infrastructure/

London-based fund manager Glennmont Partners announced Tuesday that it had successfully raised €850 million ($957 million) during its Third Fund investing in clean energy infrastructure projects in Europe, the largest amount that has ever been raised for a green energy only fund with a European mandate.

The largest fund managers focusing exclusively on investment in clean energy infrastructure in the world and boasting over €2 billion in assets under management after only 11 years in business, Glennmont Partners has invested in 192 megawatts (MW) of solar projects, 548 MW of wind, and 119 MW of biomass. Formerly BNP Paribas Clean Energy Partners, before a management buyout renamed the company to Glennmont Partners, the team has been working together since 2007.

This Third Fund (Fund III), which originally sought to raise €600 million, reached such a high level through increased interest in sustainable themes among investors and due to the demonstrated success in investment, operations, and divestments in the assets in Fund I and Fund II.

Further, Fund III will for the first time invest funds into offshore wind projects across the European Economic Area (EEA), in addition to targeting solar PV, onshore wind, bioenergy, and small-scale hydro. Fund III will span ten years and target to-be-built and recently-operational assets with stable, predictable cash yields underscored by regulated and contracted revenues.

[Sciguy]

GE invested in coal and natural gas instead of renewables.  How'd that work?

https://electrek.co/2019/06/06/ge-renewable-energy-transition/

General Electric’s profitability collapse over the past few years can be largely attributed to the company’s inability to judge the accelerating pace of the global energy transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewables, a new study claims.

The analysis comes from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA), which says that “GE made a massive bet on the future of natural gas and thermal coal, and lost,” concluding:


GE destroyed an almost unprecedented US$193 billion (bn)1 or 74% of its market capitalization over 2016-2018.

IEEFA acknowledges a number of “other management missteps,” but claims that “this value destruction was driven in large measure by the collapse of the new thermal power construction market globally—a collapse which caught GE entirely by surprise.”

GE’s investors have lost billions as well, as the formerly most valuable company in the world now has a current market capitalization of $87 billion. IEEFA hits another few key points early in its study:

GE has lost more than a half-trillion dollars in market value since its all-time high of $600bn, back in 2000.

Much of GE’s precipitous drop came in 2016-2018, when it badly misjudged the acceleration of the energy transition post-Paris Agreement.

GE assumed wrongly that demand for natural gas and coal would continue to track global economic growth.

The full report delves into the timeline of how GE’s Power division doubled down on natural gas and coal, and how quickly it fell apart within the past three years, before concluding that global investments must be rapidly and dramatically aligned to match the goals of the Paris Agreement.

[bligh8]

June 21, 2019
How climate change impacts the economy


"The Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018, warned that if we do not curb greenhouse gas emissions and start to adapt, climate change could seriously disrupt the U.S. economy. Warmer temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather will damage property and critical infrastructure, impact human health and productivity, and negatively affect sectors such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries and tourism. The demand for energy will increase as power generation becomes less reliable, and water supplies will be stressed. Damage to other countries around the globe will also affect U.S. business through disruption in trade and supply chains."

"if global temperatures rose 2.8˚ C from pre-industrial levels by 2100, and if they increased by 4.5˚ C. The study projected that if the higher-temperature scenario prevails, climate change impacts on these 22 sectors could cost the U.S. $520 billion each year. If we can keep to 2.8˚ C, it would cost $224 billion less. In any case, the U.S. stands to suffer large economic losses due to climate change, second only to India, according to another study. "

"For example, it's not just whether a building is underwater or not," he said. "What's important are the harder-to-define things like when does societal risk perception shift? It may be that buildings lose their value before the water actually arrives, once people realize that eventually the water's going to arrive. We need deeper thinking about the interconnection between physical and social systems."
https://phys.org/news/2019-06-climate-impacts-economy_1.html

bligh

[Tom_Mazanec]

Business sector has to get on the job of fighting AGW:
https://www.dw.com/en/the-role-of-the-business-sector-in-tackling-the-climate-crisis/a-49244192

[sidd]

Burke et al. at NBER with more evidence that the poorer nations are worse affected by climate change.

doi: 10.3386/w25779

Alas, behind a paywall. I give some excerpts:

" We find that local-level growth in aggregate output responds non-linearly to temperature across all regions, with output peaking at cooler temperatures (less than 10°C) than estimated in earlier country analyses and declining steeply thereafter. Long difference estimates of the impact of longer-term (decadal) trends in temperature on income are larger than estimates from an annual panel model, providing additional evidence for growth effects. Impacts of a given temperature exposure do not vary meaningfully between rich and poor regions, but exposure to damaging temperatures is much more common in poor regions. These results indicate that additional warming will exacerbate inequality, particularly across countries, and that economic development alone will be unlikely to reduce damages, as commonly hypothesized. We estimate that since 2000, warming has already cost both the US and the EU at least $4 trillion in lost output, and tropical countries are greater than 5% poorer than they would have been without this warming. "

"global disparities in the aggregate economic impacts of warming are more likely to be driven by differences in temperature exposures rather than in underlying vulnerabilities."

"recent warming has likely reduced output in most districts in our sample"

"we do not find consistent evidence across our sample that recent warming has amplified within-country inequality"

"we find no strong evidence to support the notion that future economic development will protect economies from the impacts of warming"

I attach fig 2. The caption for fig 2 is

"Figure 2: District-level GDP growth responds non-linearly to temperature. a. Quadratic
response of growth in GDP per capita to annual temperature fluctuations, controlling for linear
and quadratic precipitation, district and state-year fixed effects, as well as data source fixed effects
(n=154,244 district-year observations). Blue lines show 1000 bootstraps. b. Results are robust to
higher order polynomials and cubic splines, and to alternate weather data. The main effect from
(a) is shown in black, with the light blue region the 95% confidence interval. The country-level
temperature response from Burke, Hsiang and Miguel 2015 (BHM) is shown by the dark blue
line. c. Based on the temperature response function in (a), most regions in the would experience
reduced economic growth for an additional 1 ◦ C increase in temperature above the 2001-2015
average temperature. Our temperature-output response is estimated on data from the countries
outlined in black"

sidd

[Tom_Mazanec]

Financial System threatened by AGW:
https://www.marketplace.org/2019/08/05/floods-fires-and-financial-risk-what-climate-change-could-do-to-the-financial-system/

[Tom_Mazanec]

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/08/15/china-allies-challenge-un-chiefs-climate-vision/
Emerging economies are calling on rich countries to meet their pre-2020 climate targets and ramp up climate finance, at a meeting in Brasilia.
Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China (Basic) put the onus on industrialised nations to lead carbon-cutting efforts, in a draft declaration seen by Climate Home News. Observers did not expect the content to change significantly before the statement is finalised on Friday.

[TerryM]

https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/08/15/china-allies-challenge-un-chiefs-climate-vision/
Emerging economies are calling on rich countries to meet their pre-2020 climate targets and ramp up climate finance, at a meeting in Brasilia.
Environment ministers from Brazil, South Africa, India and China (Basic) put the onus on industrialised nations to lead carbon-cutting efforts, in a draft declaration seen by Climate Home News. Observers did not expect the content to change significantly before the statement is finalised on Friday.

So wonderful to see the new government of Brazil hosting such an ambitious, altruistic & progressive accord.
Terry

[rboyd]

So wonderful to see the new government of Brazil hosting such an ambitious, altruistic & progressive accord.
Terry

Excellent sarcasm. Bolsonaro has unleashed the the soy farmers and ranchers upon the Amazon, rapidly increasing the level of deforestation.

Illegal loggers are ramping up a “brutal, fast” assault on the Brazilian Amazon with the blessing of the far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, the sacked head of the government agency tasked with monitoring deforestation has warned ... Days earlier, during a meeting with foreign journalists, Bolsonaro had publicly questioned Inpe’s data suggesting an alarming spike in Amazon destruction and accused Galvão of peddling “lies”.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/09/bolsonaro-blessed-brutal-assault-rainforest-sacked-scientist-warns

[Human Habitat Index]

Global debt hits a new record at $247 trillion. Global debt has hit another high, climbing to $247 trillion in the first quarter of 2018

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/11/global-debt-hits-a-new-record-at-247-trillion.html

Who/what is it owed to ?

The future ; Our biosphere ?

[nanning]

Cumulative externalized costs?
The suppressed combined conscience of stewardship?
The price of insanity?

[Human Habitat Index]

Also expressed by negative interest rates and inverted yields where long term bonds pay less interest than short term bonds.

[Tom_Mazanec]

India will lose 10% of its economy if climate change is not addressed by 2100: Study
The study that makes projection for the business as usual scenario and a scenario where the countries have come together to implement the Paris Agreement suggests that all countries – the rich, the poor, the hot, and the cold ones – will suffer economically by 2100 if nothing is done.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/climate-change-impact-india-will-lose-10-of-its-economy-by-2100-study/story-vLP3tuDnIHUrTVoHyGd6WJ.html

[petm]

Not (directly) caused by climate change, but would definitely impact it if this is anywhere close to true.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Why Economic Collapse Will Precede Climate Collapse
http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2019/09/08/why-economic-collapse-will-precede-climate-collapse/

It’s encouraging to see that the terms “climate crisis” and even “climate collapse”, which even five years ago were ridiculed as doomerism, are now considered perfectly reasonable descriptions of our current state. That doesn’t mean there is any consensus on how to address it, or any widespread willingness to change our lifestyle to match this new worldview. And it certainly doesn’t mean that climate collapse can be avoided or significantly mitigated. Still, it’s a start.
Lost in this new awareness, however, is that our global industrial economy is once again teetering on the edge of what will be a long drawn-out but ultimately permanent collapse. That’s a concern because if the more pervasive effects of economic collapse come first, there’s a good chance climate collapse will once again be ignored as our attention focuses on the more immediate existential crisis of economic suffering.

[Tom_Mazanec]

Poor countries will hold the rich to account on climate finance
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/10/poor-countries-will-hold-rich-account-climate-finance/

Like many climate-vulnerable developing countries, the Philippines prioritises access to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) for its climate finance needs.

There are other various international and local sources of climate finance, but the GCF remains the largest and is specifically designed for direct access by developing countries, promoting a paradigm shift towards low emission and climate-resilient development.

The main concern surrounding the fund now is its replenishment. To date, the GCF has raised $10.3 billion, most of which were pooled in from, or pledged, by developed countries – or those considered to have caused global warming and climate change, and those urged by the Paris Agreement to take the lead in mobilising climate finance for developing countries.

Only one-fifth of climate finance going to adaptation, finds OECD
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/13/one-fifth-climate-finance-going-adaptation-finds-oecd/

Analysis by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – the group representing 36 of the world’s most developed countries – found that only 19% of climate finance mobilised in 2017 went to projects that helped communities adapt to climate change.

The vast majority of the money went to efforts to reduce emissions with 8% identified as serving both goals.

European Central Bank should ‘gradually eliminate’ carbon assets: Lagarde
https://www.climatechangenews.com/2019/09/04/european-central-bank-gradually-eliminate-carbon-assets-says-lagarde/

The European Central Bank should phase out climate-warming investments by preferring green bonds, Christine Lagarde said as she pitched to become the bank’s first female president.

Lagarde, a veteran French conservative politician and former head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is seeking approval from the EU parliament to head the ECB – the most powerful economic institution in Europe.

Answering questions from members of the EU parliament’s economic and monetary affairs committee, Lagarde suggested the bank should “move towards more green products” and pledged to “continue to look at that and how the ECB can be an actor in this”.

[nanning]

- Why has there been no success in eliminating tax havens?  (apart from AGW's Dorian)

[vox_mundi]

Fed Rushes to Plug Cash Shortage in Short-Term Loan Market
https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/fed-injects-cash-fourth-day-124014326.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/fed-rushes-to-plug-cash-shortage-in-short-term-loan-market/

The Federal Reserve has had to pump some $200 billion into the U.S. financial system this week amid signs that banks and other borrowers were running low on cash.

The New York Fed injected another $75 billion Friday through an overnight repo operation. That followed operations of the same size on Wednesday and Thursday, and $53.2 billion on Tuesday, with each of these prior agreements rolling off the morning after they’re completed.

The actions, commonplace in pre-financial crisis times, temporarily add cash, with the Fed taking government securities as collateral. Wall Street bond dealers submitted about $75.6 billion of securities for Friday’s Fed action, lower than the previous two days’ levels. Many analysts are already predicting the Fed will do a similar operation on Monday.

The capital injection marks the first time the central bank has moved to support the so-called repo market since the 2008 financial crisis.

... There are signs of investor apprehension about future funding levels, which is manifesting in different ways.

Treasury bill sales on Thursday were met with a poor reception, as investors demanded to be compensated via higher yields for locking up cash. ....

-----------------------

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquidity_crisis
and: https://www.minneapolisfed.org/research/economic-policy-papers/liquidity-crises

Liquidity crises that induce or exacerbate deep recessions, as in 1930 or 2008, are situations in which individuals and firms want to build holdings of liquid assets. Heightened risk, or a perception of it, substantially increases demand for these assets. This reduces the supply available for normal transactions, leading to production and employment declines.

... Several mechanisms operating through the mutual reinforcement of asset market liquidity and funding liquidity can amplify the effects of a small negative shock to the economy and result in lack of liquidity and eventually a full blown financial crisis.

[sidd]

This article could go in a number of different threads, but i post here: Diehard capitalist republicans in the USA are beginning to rethink

"an increasing belief among thinkers within the GOP that the party strategy of pursuing unfettered rights for capital no longer delivers for the American economy, "

"Tucker Carlson’s populist turn on Fox News"

"Marco Rubio, for instance, has written reports on financialization and China, Senator Josh Hawley is taking on big tech and increasingly Wall Street, and Congressman Doug Collins and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are investigating Google for antitrust violations."

"Investors are not starved for capital, but rather productive investments are increasingly difficult to find.  This retroactive tax cut creates a windfall for those who have already invested in capital assets based on past decisions, rather than encouraging future capital formation. "

"Romney is saying that such a cut would be bad for business, because the current finance-friendly model of capital deployment isn’t helping capital formation anymore. "

"the proposed change would accrue primarily to high-income Americans. In 2018, 91.4% of Americans reported no long-term positive gains, while the top 1% of income earners paid 72.0% of all capital gains tax. The average tax paid on gains for taxpayers in the middle quintile is $280 – far less than the top 1% that pays $157,890 on average."

" what is fascinating is to see how petty Norquist looks shorn of any intellectual rationale for what he’s doing. He seems silly and out of touch advocating capital gains tax cuts in today’s world, like the liberals in the 1970s seemed arguing from the premise America was endlessly affluent as stagflation was hitting. There’s a real lack of ideas within the libertarian right, and it shows. "

" Republicans are beginning a shift towards a party that is socially conservative but economically heterodox."

"My best proxy is the quiet collapse at Boeing, which combines a corrupt defense and political establishment, monopolization, financialization, Chinese power, all leading to crashed civilian airplanes. So far, neither party has grabbed this problem directly, because neither has a totally coherent way to understand the breakdown of productive integrity. But Romney’s observation about the role of excess financial power is getting close to the core of the problem."

https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/the-republican-debate-over-big-finance

Amazing. Republican dinosaurs in the USA seem to be waking up. Slightly and slowly.

sidd

[Sciguy]

Cross posted from the Oil and Gas forum:

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-47-Trillion-Death-Sentence-For-Oil-Gas.html

The $47 Trillion Death Sentence For Oil & Gas
By Cyril Widdershoven - Sep 23, 2019, 5:00 PM CDT
Join Our Community
 
The future of hydrocarbons is becoming bleak if plans presented by international banks, representing around $47 trillion in value, will be fully implemented.
Around 130 international banks, all present at the UN climate change summit in New York, have committed themselves to decrease their support and investments in the oil and gas sector the coming years. The banking groups have signed the so-called Principles for Responsible Banking, which entails a promise by financial institutions to fully support the implementation of the Paris Agreement, by decreasing hydrocarbon investments while promoting renewables. This statement is going to be a major earthquake for oil and gas companies, threatening upstream and downstream operations worldwide, forcing oil & gas producers to either reduce their impact on the environment or to seek new sources of investment. It is already becoming more difficult for oil and gas companies to find new financing, and on top of this, a large group of institutional investors, representing a value of $11 trillion, are already actively divesting their oil and gas assets.

International banks, such as Deutsche Bank, ABNAmro, Citigroup, Barclays, and ING, are joining the framework. Under the title of action against global warming, the largest financial institutions now seem to be headbutting oil and gas operators. The impact of activist shareholders and NGOs is sending shockwaves through the sector. If the framework is successfully implemented, the hydrocarbon sector shouldn’t fear unrest in the Middle East, but rather their current financiers.

[Sciguy]

Over the past two years, the African Development Bank has prioritized investments in renewable projects over coal.  They announced that they will no longer fund coal projects last month.

https://www.devex.com/news/african-development-bank-commits-to-coal-free-financing-95698

NAIROBI — The African Development Bank will no longer finance coal projects, bank president Akinwumi Adesina announced this week at the U.N. Climate Action Summit. It was the first public announcement by the bank committing to end financial support for coal.

“Coal is the past, renewable energy is the future,” Adesina told the audience. “For us at the African Development Bank, we are getting out of coal.”

The last coal investment the bank made, which was in 2015, was a supplementary loan of about $4 million for a small, 125 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Senegal that it originally financed in 2009, according to Oil Change International, a U.S.-based advocacy organization.

https://www.afdb.org/en/news-and-events/african-development-bank-to-reach-29-3-million-africans-with-electricity-by-2020-17806

“The African Development Bank is today at the forefront of investing in renewable energy in Africa. The share of renewable energy in the Bank’s energy portfolio increased from 14% when I became President in 2015 to 100% last year,” President Adesina said. “Our support last year alone provided 3.8 million Africans with access to electricity. And, with adequate financing, we expect to reach 29.3 million people with access to electricity between 2018 and 2020.”

The Bank has also committed to triple its climate financing to 40% of new approvals by 2020, and is deploying programs and actions to combat fragility and strengthen resilience.
This, the President explained, includes the Sahel region with a US $261-million program; the Horn of Africa with a $281.6-million program; and, for Lake Chad, now seriously affected by the degradation of its productive ecosystems, a US $101-million program to restore the productivity of the basin ecosystem.

The Desert to Power initiative spearheaded by the Bank aims to turn Africa’s deserts into new sources of energy, by working with partners to develop 10,000 MW of solar power systems across the Sahel. The initiative is expected to provide electricity to 250 million people, with 90 million of these provided through off-grid systems.

“We have already started with development of a 50 MW solar power system in Burkina Faso,” Adesina said. “The initiative will protect the Great Green Wall of trees established to protect against desertification in the Sahelian zone, from being cut down by energy-poor households for use as fuel wood. When completed, we expect this to be the largest solar power system zone in the world.”

[Sciguy]

The investors of the $13.4 billion University of California endowment and $70 billion pension fund are divesting from fossil fuels.  The reasons aren't political pressure but that the investments are too risky.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2019-09-16/divestment-fossil-fuel-university-of-california-climate-change

We are investors and fiduciaries for what is widely considered the best public research university in the world. That makes us fiscally conservative by nature and by policy — “Risk rules” is one of the 10 pillars of what we call the UC Investments Way. We want to ensure that the more than 320,000 people currently receiving a UC pension actually get paid, that we can continue to fund research and scholarships throughout the UC system, and that our campuses and medical centers earn the best possible return on their investments.

We believe hanging on to fossil fuel assets is a financial risk. That’s why we will have made our $13.4-billion endowment “fossil free” as of the end of this month, and why our $70-billion pension will soon be that way as well.

So what’s the bottom line?

In April 2014, when Jagdeep arrived to become UC’s chief investment officer, UC Investments had a total of $91.6 billion in assets under management. As of June 30, the total portfolio stood at $126.1 billion. In five years, that includes $2.4 billion in value added above our benchmarksand a savings of $1 billion in reduced costs of management.

During that same time frame, we made no new investments in fossil fuels and four years ago, we sold our exposure to coal and oil sands. We found them too risky — and it’s worth noting that Jagdeep joined UC from one of Canada’ sovereign wealth funds in the heart of the oil sands region. We continue to believe there are more attractive investment opportunities in new energy sources than in old fossil fuels.

[vox_mundi]

The Federal Reserve is in Stealth Intervention Mode
https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/guid/03BDDD9A-F676-11E9-8550-0570F53F9A58

What the central bank passes off as ‘funding issues’ could more accurately be described as liquidity injections to keep interest rates low.

The Federal Reserve has gone into full intervention mode.

Actually, accelerated intervention mode. Not just a “mid-cycle adjustment,” as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in July, but interventions to the tune of tens of billions of dollars every day.

Think I’m in hyperbole mode? Far from it.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPONTTLD

Unless you think the biggest repurchase (repo) efforts ever — surpassing the 2008 financial-crisis actions — are hyperbole:

https://mobile.twitter.com/NorthmanTrader/status/1186964037034283008

Something’s off. See, it all started as a temporary fix in September when, suddenly, the overnight target rate jumped sky high and the Fed had to intervene to keep the wheels from coming off. Short-term liquidity issues, the Fed said. Those have become rather permanent:

And liquidity injections are massive and accelerating. On Tuesday, the Fed injected $99.9 billion in temporary liquidity into the financial system and $7.5 billion in permanent reserves as part of a program to buy $60 billion a month in Treasury bills. The $99.9 billion comes from $64.9 billion in overnight repurchase agreements and $35 billion in repo operations.

But market demand for overnight repo operations has far exceeded even the $75 billion the Fed has allocated, suggesting a lot more liquidity demand. Hence, on Wednesday the Fed suddenly announced a $45 billion increase on top of the $75 billion repo facility for a daily total of $120 billion.

Here’s the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the branch involved in such actions:

“Consistent with the most recent FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] directive, to ensure that the supply of reserves remains ample even during periods of sharp increases in non-reserve liabilities, and to mitigate the risk of money market pressures that could adversely affect policy implementation, the amount offered in overnight repo operations will increase to at least $120 billion starting Thursday, Oct. 24, 2019.”

And, consequently, on Oct. 24 the Fed injected $134 billion in temporary liquidity.

These actions are surprising. What stable financial system requires over $100 billion in overnight liquidity injections? The Fed did not see the need for these actions coming. It is reacting to a market that suddenly requires it.

... The central bank keeps chasing events, and its policy actions are turning ever more aggressive while it insists that everything is fine. The bank’s actions are saying things are not fine. Far from it.

... It may well be that our financial markets have permanently devolved into a Fed-subsidized, wealth-inequality-generating machine benefitting the few that own stocks. But one has to wonder why the rate cutting and liquidity injections haven’t been able to produce sustained market highs.

[Sciguy]

Investment fund managers are starting to short real estate at risk from climate change.  In the US, the 30-year mortgage is the chief financial instrument that people use to buy their houses.  If the house is literally underwater in 30 years, a lot of people will be defaulting on those mortgages.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-will-break-the-housing-market-says-david-burt-who-predicted-the-2008-financial-crisis-2019-11-01

Climate change will break the housing market, says David Burt, who predicted the 2008 financial crisis

Published: Nov 4, 2019 1:56 a.m. ET

Risk to the housing market from underestimated climate change echoes lessons from the 2008 subprime-mortgage debacle — as does the chance to capitalize on these miscalculations.

That’s the view of David Burt, whose old firm and its timely escape from the financial crisis just over a decade ago featured in Michael Lewis’s book “The Big Short.”

The first serious market ripples from industry nonchalance, Burt says, could materialize as early as next year.

Burt was a consultant at Cornwall Capital, the firm that made about $80 million when it shorted the subprime mortgage market whose eventual implosion left the housing market in a shambles and lured well-positioned investors to pick through the bones. Cornwall was profiled in the Lewis narrative and one of Burt’s colleagues was played by Brad Pitt in the movie adaptation.

[nanning]

From: https://www.theguardian.com/business/live/2019/nov/20/donald-trump-tariff-stock-markets-general-election-sterling-pound-uk-brexit-business-live?page=with:block-5dd5138d8f083aa6d57877b0#block-5dd5138d8f083aa6d57877b0

[TerryM]

^^
I'd never considered it as "shadow banking", but I invested a little over $100k in the wife's (State) pension plan at a return that makes me blush.
If you or a spouse are enrolled in such a plan check out the benefits of "buying" additional years. (As long as it's a government that isn't likely to go under.)
Terry

[Tom_Mazanec]

An intensifying climate crisis threatens more than half of the world’s GDP, research says
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/19/davos-climate-crisis-threatens-more-than-half-of-the-worlds-gdp-wef-says.html

Industries seen as “highly dependent” on nature generate 15% of global GDP ($13 trillion), while “moderately dependent” industries generate 37% ($31 trillion).

[gerontocrat]

If this hits the UK it will hit everywhere.
Sort of fits the BAU until Bust current trajectory.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/climate-regulations-could-trigger-banking-crisis-worse-than-2008
UK could face ‘banking crisis worse than 2008’ if City fails to prepare for fossil fuel collapse

Report from climate activist groups says City is unprepared for potential collapse in value of fossil fuel assets

The UK could suffer 500,000 job losses and be forced to spend £674bn of taxpayer cash to rescue its banks and ensure financial stability, unless the City prepares for the value of fossil fuels to collapse as a result of climate crisis regulations, research shows.

The report, published by a collective of climate activist groups known as the One for One campaign (pdf), suggests those financial repercussions could eclipse those linked to the 2008 banking crisis, which forced tohe government to bail out major lenders including Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group, and cost the UK roughly $556bn (£457bn).

It illustrates the risks that are likely to emerge if banks and insurers fail to hold enough capital to cover the potential losses they are likely to face as a result of climate regulations meant to achieve net zero emissions targets over the coming years.

Those prospective regulations will probably make it harder for carbon-intensive companies to sell their products like oil and gas to customers, so they will instead be forced to buy greener sources of energy. This will reduce the value of carbon-heavy assets including shares or loans for fossil fuel projects or their related companies, which will in turn harm the institutional investors like bank, insurers and fund managers that hold them.

Globally, the report estimates that banks would probably need a total of $4.9tn in international bailouts if fossil fuel assets collapsed in 2030, putting 13.6 million jobs at risk worldwide.

One for One campaign, which is backed by groups including Positive Money UK and the Sunrise Project, is calling for coordinated action from governments and financial regulators to address what it says are critical weaknesses in the banking and insurance sectors. That would involve banks and insurers holding one pound worth of capital in reserve to match every pound used to finance or insure fossil fuel projects.

“If we don’t have rules in place to ensure fossil fuel financing is backed by adequate levels of capital, it will be impossible to transition to a low carbon economy without triggering serious financial instability,” Joshua Ryan-Collins, an associate professor in economics and finance at the University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, said.

“Banks and insurers need to have buffers in place to absorb shocks arising from collapses in the value of oil, gas and coal assets as new regulation kicks in and demand falls as renewables scale up,” he explained. “Enhancing capital requirements for dirty assets should also encourage banks to shift their lending away from unsustainable activity, which in itself will reduce transition risk.”

[etienne]

Like Jacques Chirac a former French president once said :

De toute façon, les merdes volent en escadrille.

Which google translates "Anyway, the shits fly in squadrons."

[gerontocrat]

Another squadron of shits flying in..... with a host of spokepersons so ready to "tell us lies, tell us sweet little lies". (the Anthem of social media influencers and gurus).

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/17/banks-still-investing-heavily-in-fossil-fuels-despite-net-zero-pledges-study
Banks still investing heavily in fossil fuels despite net zero pledges – study

Financial institutions signed up to GFANZ initiative accused of acting as ‘climate arsonists"

Banks and finance institutions that have signed up to net zero pledges are still investing heavily in fossil fuels, research has shown, leading to accusations they are acting as “climate arsonists”.

The Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) initiative was launched by the former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, as one of the main UK achievements in hosting the Cop26 UN climate summit at Glasgow in 2021.

The UK boasted at Cop26 that 450 organisations in 45 countries with assets of more than $130tn had signed up to GFANZ, to align their investments with the goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels.

But its members have poured hundreds of billions into fossil fuels since then, according to data compiled by the pressure group Reclaim Finance.

GFANZ is made up of numerous smaller groupings that require members to reduce their exposure to fossil fuels. But at least 56 of the biggest banks in the net-zero banking alliance grouping (NZBA) have provided $270bn to 102 fossil fuel companies for their expansion, through 134 loans and 215 underwriting arrangements, according to Reclaim Finance.

Paddy McCully, senior analyst at Reclaim Finance, said: “GFANZ members are acting as climate arsonists. They’ve pledged to achieve net zero but are continuing to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into fossil fuel developers. GFANZ and its member alliances will only be credible once they up their game and insist that their members help bring a rapid end to the era of coal, oil and fossil gas expansion.”

GFANZ companies are also failing to divest from fossil fuels. In the net zero asset managers grouping (NZAM), another part of GFANZ, at least $847bn in assets in more than 200 fossil fuel companies were held by the 58 largest members, as of last September, according to the report published on Tuesday.

The report also found that few of the GFANZ members had put in place watertight investment polices that would stop them financing new fossil fuel projects, even though all are supposed to be shifting their portfolios to be in line with the 1.5C goal, confirmed at Cop26.

Lucie Pinson, executive director and founder of Reclaim Finance, accused the alliance of greenwashing. “It is business as usual for most banks and investors [involved in GFANZ], who continue to support fossil fuel developers without any restrictions, despite their high-profile commitments to carbon neutrality,” she said. “Their greenwashing is all the more damaging as it casts doubt on the sincerity of all net zero commitments, and undermines the efforts of those who are truly acting for the climate.”

One of the biggest banks involved in GFANZ is HSBC, which announced restrictions on oil and gas financing last month. But it has approved 58 transactions worth $12bn in capital to fossil fuel developers, since joining a GFANZ grouping in April 2021, according to the Reclaim Finance report.

A spokesperson for HSBC told the Guardian: “HSBC’s aim is to reduce emissions in line with a 1.5C pathway, promote energy security, and ensure energy affordability and access, as part of our commitment to a net zero future. In line with our 1.5C-aligned 2030 financed emissions targets and updated energy policy we will no longer provide new finance or advisory for the specific purposes of new oil and gas fields or related infrastructure, or for the most carbon-intensive oil assets. To accelerate an orderly transition to net zero, we continue to support clients who are playing an active role in the energy transition, including through regular engagement on their transition plans.”

The spokesperson added that fossil fuels were still likely to be necessary for a transition period. “The International Energy Agency’s seminal Net Zero 2050 report outlines that an orderly transition requires continued financing and investment in existing oil and gas fields to maintain the necessary output and security of supply – with 2020 financing levels maintained through 2030 and declining to half thereafter,” they said.

However, Reclaim Finance pointed out that the IEA has also made clear that no new fossil fuel development can take place if the world is to remain within the limit of 1.5C of heating, above pre-industrial levels. It has identified the fossil fuel developers in the report as those engaged in expansion of their assets, such as new drilling and new mining.

LGIM is the biggest UK company in the NZAM initiative, yet in September it held at least $13bn of assets in fossil fuel developers, the report found.

A spokesperson for LGIM told the Guardian: “LGIM is one of the founder members of the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative established as part of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and as part of our commitment to the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative and in partnership with and on behalf of our clients, LGIM has set its own interim net zero AUM [assets under management] target of 70% by 2030, and continues to make progress towards this climate transition. Financing the transition is vitally important and certain fossil fuels will need to be part of the transition to renewable alternatives. By divesting from entire sectors like oil and gas, we won’t achieve any real world outcome and investors lose their ability to exert a positive influence via active engagement.”

A spokeswoman for GFANZ said: “This report focuses on an important aspect of the energy transition. It’s clear a lot of work needs to be done to ensure the world is deploying capital consistent with a 1.5C pathway, which is exactly why GFANZ was created. Based on research GFANZ commissioned last year, we know that investment in renewables needs to be four times the levels going into fossil fuels by 2030 to restrict climate change consistent with the aims of the Paris agreement.”

She added: “GFANZ members will detail how they are financing the transition of the energy sector when they publish their interim targets and transition plans. This will allow government, investors and civil society organisations to track progress. We call on financial institutions not in GFANZ to join the alliances that comprise GFANZ to provide transparency and become part of the solution.”

[gerontocrat]

Bloomberg warning on economic impacts of El Nino and AGW in general. Article picked up by several financial press platforms.

But Wall Street only cares about - highTech / AI, possible Fed pause on interest rate rises, and the last jobs report.

ps: If, like me, you do not subscribe to Bloomberg News and you want to read a news item from them try copying the title into google search. You may find it reprinted eslewhere on a site with no paywall (yet). Same applies to other paywalled sites

https://www.tbsnews.net/bloomberg-special/return-el-nino-threatens-new-levels-economic-destruction-649090
Return of El Niño threatens new levels of economic destruction

The world’s most potent climate phenomenon risks sparking a chain reaction of dangerous weather, food shortages and blackouts that can disrupt supply chains and stoke inflation.

As the world struggles to recover from Covid-19 and Russia's war in Ukraine grinds on, the arrival of the first El Niño in almost four years foreshadows new damage to an already fragile global economy.

The shift to a warming phase from the cooler La Niña can generate chaos, especially in fast-growing emerging economies. Power grids strain and blackouts become more frequent. Extreme heat creates public health emergencies, while drought adds to fire risks. Crops are lost, roads are flooded and homes are destroyed.

According to Bloomberg Economics modeling, previous El Niños resulted in a marked impact on global inflation, adding 3.9 percentage points to non-energy commodity prices and 3.5 points to oil. They also hit growth to gross domestic product, especially in Brazil, Australia, India and other vulnerable countries.

Combined with more extreme weather and hotter temperatures due to accelerated climate change, the stage is now set for the world's costliest El Niño cycle since meteorologists started keeping track. It also adds to the dreaded risk of stagflation, in which inflation stays high even as the economy contracts. The Reserve Bank of India said it is carefully watching the climate phenomenon; Peru announced in March that it plans to spend more than $1 billion to counter climate and weather effects this year.

"With the world grappling with high inflation and recession risk, the arrival of the El Niño comes at exactly the wrong time," said Bhargavi Sakthivel, an economist for Bloomberg Economics based in London. While policy interventions tend to manipulate demand, El Niños typically affect supply. "Central banks are more limited in what they can do."

In Chile, for example, El Niño could trigger heavy rains, which could in turn restrict access to the mines that supply almost 30% of the world's copper. Lower production and delayed shipments will have an affect on the price of the metal used in goods like computer chips, cars and home appliances.

Or consider China, where sweltering temperatures are already killing livestock and stretching power grids. Drought last summer prompted Communist Party officials to shut off power to many factories in China for nearly two weeks, disrupting supplies for manufacturing giants including Apple Inc. and Tesla Inc. Authorities anticipate more power shortages this summer.

Even the price of a cup of coffee could go up if Brazil, Vietnam and other top suppliers get hit.

"When you have an El Niño occurring on top of the long-term warming trend, it's like a double whammy," said Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.

The effects last for years. Economists at the Dallas Federal Reserve warned in 2019 that damage from El Niño cycles was "likely to have a persistent negative impact on output growth" and can even "possibly permanently alter income trajectories."

Climate researchers also found compounding economic effects. Dartmouth scientists estimated that the 1997-1998 El Niño led to $5.7 trillion in lost gross domestic product the following five years. Their modeling estimates that by the end of this century, El Niños will have blocked some $84 trillion in GDP.

The risks are most acute in the tropics and the Southern Hemisphere. El Niños can trim almost half a percentage point off annual GDP growth in India and Argentina, according to Bloomberg Economics modeling. Peru, Australia and the Philippines can see reductions of about 0.3 percentage point.

Steep price increases worsen the impact. Even back in 2000, the International Monetary Fund warned that strong El Niños can add 4 percentage points to commodity-price inflation — and that's before taking into account the current impact of climate change.

Overall rising temperatures amplify the effects of climate phenomena. The last three "cool" La Niña years — 2020 to 2023 — were hotter than every El Niño year before 2015. The World Meteorological Organization calculates there is a 98% chance the combination of the accumulation of greenhouse gases and the return of El Niño will make the next five-year period the warmest yet, pushing global temperatures into uncharted territory.

"El Niño will only worsen the impacts of climate change that we are already experiencing — hotter heatwaves, more severe drought and more extreme wildfire,'' said Friederike Otto, a senior lecturer at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment.

The El Niño-Southern Oscillation Explained
The impact of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation — as the cycle including both El Niño and La Niña is formally known — is so profound because it involves a massive shift in the vast Pacific basin which covers one-third of the planet.

Getting Ready
This year has already shattered weather records in Asia. Now the official start of El Niño is underway, according to the US Climate Prediction Center, and the conditions are projected to intensify in the months ahead.

What scares many scientists is that in recent years — even without El Niño — the world has seen a growing number of weather events that at times resemble scenes in a Hollywood disaster movie.

Greg Mullins, a firefighter in Australia for more than 50 years, recalled the fear he felt facing a 60-foot wall of flames in a 2020 blaze in Batemans Bay on the east coast.

"We were just dodging falling trees, the sparks and embers, it was just incredible," he said. "I've fought fires in America, I've studied bush firefighting in France, Spain, Canada — I know my fires. And there's never been a fire like that."

El Niño winters often mean less rain and snow in the northern US and Canada, adding to the drought worries that plague the region. It also dries out timber, potentially making next year even worse for fires like the Canadian blaze that turned New York skies orange last week.

In Southeast Asia, drier conditions also worsen the annual smoke plumes that gather over Singapore when farmers in neighboring countries burn land to grow oil palm, pulpwood and rubber trees.

As temperatures rise, power grids across the world strain to keep up. That stokes higher demand for fuel, including coal and gas. "Increasing volatility in weather will lead to higher risks and frequency of energy security events," said Saul Kavonic, head of integrated energy and resources research at Credit Suisse Group AG, referring to blackouts triggered by fuel shortages.

While El Niño typically means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, and therefore less disruption to oil and gas operations in the Gulf of Mexico, most of the US is still facing elevated blackout risks this summer in the event of widespread extreme heat, according to a recent warning from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., the regulatory body overseeing power grid stability.

The rapid switch to renewable energy in many countries has added to the risk of blackouts. Solar farms go dark just as electricity demand peaks in hot summer evenings, and drought constrains the use of hydroelectric power.

Outages are disruptive regardless of the weather; during intense heatwaves, blackouts can have life-or-death consequences. Heat stroke can lead to severe neurological damage and even be fatal. Very high temperatures also increase the risk of heart attacks, strokes and injuries at work.

Food Issues
While some crops benefit from El Niño — higher rainfall in California benefits avocados and almonds — many staples including palm oil, sugar, wheat, cocoa and rice are produced in areas likely to face more challenging growing conditions.

Charanjit Singh Gill, 67, a rice farmer in Punjab, is starting to think about what he'll do if the monsoon doesn't generate adequate rainfall for his 35 acres.

"There is no way out but to spend more money running diesel-fired generators to pump groundwater," he said. During the 2015-16 El Niño, his production costs surged by 35%, he said.

The world's poor will face the most dire consequences. Acute food insecurity is already at a record high of 222 million people due to the combined effects of conflict, economic shocks and weather extremes.

The 2015-16 El Niño led to higher malnutrition rates and forced displacement and exacerbated outbreaks of cholera and typhoid, according to the United Nations. Nearly two dozen nations issued humanitarian appeals of more than $5 billion.

Growing Stresses
No two El Niños are alike, and the effects of this cycle will hinge on its duration, intensity, and timing. These climate phenomena are "never black and white," said Walter Baethgen, a senior research scientist at Columbia University's International Research Institute. "In the middle of an El Niño year, where you expect a drought, you can have a big storm and have a flood."

Still, even if the world dodges a major El Niño this year, climate-induced stresses will continue grow with the increasing amount of greenhouse gases blanketing the planet.

To understand the oscillation between El Niño and La Niña in the overall context of climate change, think of a person on a rising escalator, either standing on tiptoe or squatting. They may look taller or shorter, but they're still heading in the same direction.

"The escalator is only going up," said Mike McPhaden, a senior scientist at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "There's a huge amount of heat stored below the surface that's ready to erupt."

Disclaimer: This article first appeared on Bloomberg, and is published by special syndication arrangement.

[gerontocrat]

What happens in China doesn't stay in China...

If prolonged, the short-term benefits to some could be out weighed by long-term hits to global economies.

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/business/2023/08/28/economy/china-economic-slowdown-global-alarms/
China’s worsening economic slowdown is rippling across the globe

China’s economy was meant to drive a third of global economic growth this year, so its dramatic slowdown in recent months is sounding alarm bells across the world.

Policymakers are bracing for a hit to their economies as China’s imports of everything from construction materials to electronics slide. Construction equipment-maker, Caterpillar, says Chinese demand for machines used on building sites is worse than previously thought. U.S. President Joe Biden called the economic problems a "ticking time bomb.”

Global investors have already pulled more than $10 billion (¥1.4 trillion) from China’s stock markets, with most of the selling in blue chips. Goldman Sachs Group and Morgan Stanley have cut their targets for Chinese equities, with the former also warning of spillover risks to the rest of the region.

Asian economies are taking the biggest hit to their trade so far, along with countries in Africa. Japan reported its first drop in exports in more than two years in July after China cut back on purchases of cars and chips. Central bankers from South Korea and Thailand last week cited China’s weak recovery for downgrades to their growth forecasts.

It’s not all doom-and-gloom, though. China’s slowdown will drag down global oil prices, and deflation in the country means the prices of goods being shipped around the world are falling. That’s a benefit to countries like the U.S. and U.K. still battling high inflation.

Some emerging markets like India also see opportunities, hoping to attract the foreign investment that may be leaving China’s shores.

But as the world’s second-largest economy, a prolonged slowdown in China will hurt, rather than help, the rest of the world. An analysis from the International Monetary Fund shows how much is at stake: When China’s growth rate rises by 1 percentage point, global expansion is boosted by about 0.3 percentage points.

China’s deflation "isn’t such a bad thing” for the global economy, Peter Berezin, chief global strategist BCA Research Inc., said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. "But, if the rest of the world, the U.S. and Europe, falls into recession, if China remains weak, then that would be a problem — not just for China but for the whole global economy.”

Here’s a look at how China’s slowdown is rippling across economies and financial markets.

Trade slump
Many countries, especially those in Asia, count China as their biggest export market for everything from electronic parts and food to metals and energy.

The value of Chinese imports has fallen for nine of the last 10 months as demand retreats from the record highs set during the pandemic. The value of shipments from Africa, Asia and North America were all lower in July than they were a year ago.

Africa and Asia have been the hardest hit, with the value of imports down more than 14% in the first seven months this year. Part of that is due to a drop in demand for electronics parts from South Korea and Taiwan, while falling prices of commodities such as fossil fuels are also hitting the value of goods shipped to China.

So far, the actual volume of commodities such as iron or copper ore sent to China has held up. But if the slowdown continues, shipments could be impacted, which would affect miners in Australia, South America and elsewhere around the world.

Deflation pressure
Producer prices in China have contracted for the past 10 months, meaning the cost of goods being shipped from the country is falling. That’s welcome news for people around the globe still struggling with high inflation.

The price of Chinese goods at U.S. docks has fallen every month this year and that is likely to continue until factory prices in China return to positive territory. Economists at Wells Fargo & Co. estimate that a ‘hard landing’ in China — which they define as a 12.5% divergence from its trend growth — would cut the baseline forecast for U.S. consumer inflation in 2025 by 0.7 percentage points to 1.4%.

Slow tourism rebound
Chinese consumers are spending more on services, like travel and tourism, than on goods — but they’re not yet venturing overseas in large numbers. Until recently, the government had banned group tours to many countries and there is still a lack of flights, meaning it’s much more expensive to travel than it was before the pandemic.

The pandemic and weak economy have curbed incomes in China, while the years-long housing market slump means homeowners feel less wealthy than before. That suggests it may take a long time for overseas travel to rebound to the levels they were at before the pandemic, hitting tourism-dependent nations in Southeast Asia such as Thailand.

Currency impact
China’s economic woes have pushed the currency down more than 5% against the dollar this year, with the yuan close to breaching the 7.3 mark this month. The central bank has escalated its defense of the yuan through various measures including its daily currency fixings.

The depreciation in the offshore yuan is having a greater impact on its peers in Asia, Latin America and the Central and Eastern Europe bloc, Bloomberg data show, with the correlation of the Chinese currency to some others rising.

The weak sentiment spillover may weigh on currencies like the Singapore dollar, Thai baht, and Mexican peso as correlations rise, according to Barclays Bank PLC.

"With the weaker China economy it’s very difficult to be optimistic on the Asian economies and currencies and we’re more concerned about the metal-exposed currencies,” said Magdalena Polan, head of emerging market macro research at PGIM Ltd. Weakness in the construction sector may see currencies of commodity-led economies, such as the Chilean peso and South African rand, suffer, she said.

The Australian dollar, which often trades as a proxy for China, has lost more than 3% this quarter, the worst performer in the Group-of-10 basket.

Bonds lose appeal
China’s interest rate cuts this year have reduced the appeal of its bonds to foreign investors, who have cut their exposure to the market and are looking for alternatives in the rest of the region.

Overseas holdings of Chinese sovereign notes are at the lowest share of the total market since 2019, according to Bloomberg calculations. Global funds had turned more bullish on the local currency bonds of South Korea and Indonesia as central banks there near the end of their interest-rate hiking cycles.

Luxury stocks
Companies from Nike to Caterpillar have reported a hit to their earnings from China’s slowdown. An MSCI index that tracks global companies with the biggest exposure to China has retreated 9.3% this month, nearly double the decline in the broader gauge of world stocks.

A gauge of European luxury goods and Thailand travel and leisure also track losses to China’s onshore equity benchmark. The sectors are "accurate reflections of how global investors may take indirect exposure to China and the outlook as China’s economy continues to weigh,” said Redmond Wong, a market strategist at Saxo Capital Markets in Hong Kong.

Luxury goods firms such as Louis Vuitton bags-maker LVMH, Gucci-owner Kering SA and Hermes International are particularly vulnerable to any wobbles in Chinese demand.

[SeanAU]

(China's economic slowdown is as greatly exaggerated as Mark Twains death was.)

I was thinking to add this to the energy transition thread,
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,3286.msg382097.html#msg382097 ;
but figured why not here as it's about global economics as much as anything.

Some old things I had saved that popped up from a great source.
https://www.jasonhickel.org/research

"The climate crisis reveals that our civilization has never really been organized around science, contrary to the usual Enlightenment narrative. It is organized around capital. Science is embraced when it serves the interests of capital, and is often ignored when it does not."
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1479127795330686984

People often assume that capitalism is defined by "markets and trade". But markets and trade existed for thousands of years before capitalism. Capitalism is only 500 years old. So what is distinctive about this economic system? Three things (well, more, but three for now):
1. First, and most importantly, it is defined by enclosure and artificial scarcity. The origins of capitalism lie in a systematic effort by elites to restrict people's access to commons and independent subsistence, in order to render them reliant on wage labour for survival.
Over the past 500 years, this has taken the form of privatization of commons, forced dispossession, destruction of subsistence economies and - particularly in the colonies - taxing people in a currency they do not have in order to induce them to seek wages in that currency.
This continues today, with attempts to ensure an artificial scarcity of access to essential goods such as housing, healthcare, education, transit, and so on - goods that could very easily be provided, at high quality, on a universal public basis

2. Second, capitalism is organized around - and dependent on - perpetual expansion, meaning ever-increasing production of commodified goods.  It is the only intrinsically expansionary economic system in history (meaning it basically has a crisis if it doesn't continually expand).
Crucially, under capitalism the purpose of increasing production is *not* primarily to meet human needs, but rather to extract and accumulate profit.  That is the overriding objective. (It is also the main objective of innovation).
It's important to distinguish here between small businesses, which quite often operate with a steady-state, use-value logic (and which obviously preceded capitalism), and corporations whose main objective is expansion and accumulation (which define the capitalist era).
- 1600 CE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_East_India_Company
This introduces a constant pressure to depress real wages and attack environmental protections wherever possible (in the absence of countervailing political forces).  The result is a system that, left to itself, automatically generates inequality and ecological breakdown.

3. Finally, capitalism is notable for precluding democratic decision-making. Even in countries that prize political democracy, democratic principles are rarely allowed to operate in the sphere of production, where decisions are made overwhelmingly by those who control capital.
The result is that decisions about what to produce, for what purposes, for whose benefit, and under what conditions are generally made in the narrow interests of the capitalist class (workers, the people actually *doing* the production, rarely get a voice at all).
It is worth pondering how our production priorities (and our treatment of labour and nature) might be different under conditions of economic democracy.  Existing evidence suggests that democratic conditions lead to less exploitation, more equality, and more care for ecology

In sum, the tendency to equate capitalism with "markets and trade" naturalizes a system that is not natural, and prevents us from having a clear-eyed view of how it operates and how we might want to do things differently.
https://twitter.com/jasonhickel/status/1515977488110915587

Less is More
“A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times.  Jason Hickel takes all we've been told about growth and development and turns it inside out, offering instead a radically possible vision of a post-growth future. If you’re looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.” 
— Kate Raworth, economist and author of Doughnut Economics

The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause. Capitalism demands perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: degrowth.

If we want to have a shot at halting the crisis, we need to slow down and restore the balance. We need to change how we see nature and our place in it, shifting from a philosophy of domination and extraction to one that’s rooted in reciprocity and regeneration. We need to evolve beyond the dogmas of capitalism to a new system that’s fit for the twenty-first century.
https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more

Another Myth about Capitalism Exposed - Capitalism Improves Poverty Rates? No!

Capitalism, Global Poverty, and the Case for Democratic Socialism
by Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan

Over the past several years, a new narrative about global poverty has become entrenched in mainstream discourse. It holds that extreme poverty—a condition of absolute deprivation associated with severe calorie and nutrient deficiency and an inability to access basic goods—is the natural condition of humanity, and afflicted some 90 percent of the world population before the rise of capitalism liberated people from misery. This narrative relies in large part on a graph showing the proportion of people living in extreme poverty since 1820, declining from a starting point of 90 percent. The graph was originally developed by the former World Bank economist Martin Ravallion and was later popularized by Steven Pinker in his bestselling book, Enlightenment Now. It has since circulated widely on social media.

This narrative suffers from several empirical problems, however, which we explored in a recent article published in World Development.

Given these issues, the standard public narrative about the history of extreme poverty needs reassessment. Toward this end, we took an empirical approach to examine the social impact of capitalist expansion and integration using data on real wages (with respect to the cost of basic needs), human height, and mortality since the long sixteenth century, for five world regions (Europe, Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and China). This data points to three conclusions.

First, it is unlikely that 90 percent (or even 75 percent) of the global population lived in extreme poverty prior to the rise of capitalism. Historically, unskilled urban laborers in all regions tended to have wages high enough to support a family of four above the poverty line.

The second conclusion is that the rise of capitalism coincided with a deterioration in human welfare. In every region we assessed, incorporation into the capitalist world-system was associated with a decline in wages to below subsistence, a deterioration in human stature, and a marked upturn in premature mortality. In parts of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, key welfare metrics have still not recovered.

Our third conclusion is that in those regions where progress has occurred, it began much later than the Ravallion/Pinker graph suggests. In the core regions of Northwest Europe, welfare standards began to improve in the 1880s, around four centuries after the emergence of capitalism.

Extreme Poverty Is Not a Legitimate Benchmark for Social Progress
It is important to clarify immediately that extreme poverty is defined in terms of subsistence goods. It refers to the inability to access basic food, shelter, clothing, and fuel; it does not refer to higher welfare standards such as access to electricity, modern health care, refrigerators, and so on, which are available today.

It is not difficult to meet basic subsistence requirements, and historical data suggests that human communities are normally capable of doing so, even in pre-industrial contexts, with their own labor and with the resources available to them in their environment or through exchange.

The crucial implication of this finding is that extreme poverty should not be used as a benchmark against which to measure progress. Extreme poverty should not exist, period. The fact that up to 17 percent of the world population lives in extreme poverty today (according to Robert Allen’s data on cost-of-basic-needs poverty) should be understood as an indictment of our economic system. It is a sign that severe social dislocation remains institutionalized in the capitalist world economy.

 Yes, the prevalence of extreme poverty is lower today than it was at the height of the colonial period, but this is not sufficient reason for celebration. The colonial high-water mark was an effect of capitalist policy and should never have existed.
https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/capitalism-global-poverty-and-the-case-for-democratic-socialism/

[morganism]

Income-based U.S. household carbon footprints (1990–2019) offer new insights on emissions inequality and climate finance

Abstract

Current policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase adaptation and mitigation funding are insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. It is clear that further action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and achieve a just climate future. Here, we offer a new perspective on emissions responsibility and climate finance by conducting an environmentally extended input output analysis that links 30 years (1990–2019) of United States (U.S.) household-level income data to the emissions generated in creating that income. To do this we draw on over 2.8 billion inter-sectoral transfers from the Eora MRIO database to calculate both supplier- and producer-based GHG emissions intensities and connect these with detailed income and demographic data for over 5 million U.S. individuals in the IPUMS Current Population Survey. We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines. In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution. Results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.


Abstract

Current policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and increase adaptation and mitigation funding are insufficient to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C. It is clear that further action is needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change and achieve a just climate future. Here, we offer a new perspective on emissions responsibility and climate finance by conducting an environmentally extended input output analysis that links 30 years (1990–2019) of United States (U.S.) household-level income data to the emissions generated in creating that income. To do this we draw on over 2.8 billion inter-sectoral transfers from the Eora MRIO database to calculate both supplier- and producer-based GHG emissions intensities and connect these with detailed income and demographic data for over 5 million U.S. individuals in the IPUMS Current Population Survey. We find significant and growing emissions inequality that cuts across economic and racial lines. In 2019, fully 40% of total U.S. emissions were associated with income flows to the highest earning 10% of households. Among the highest earning 1% of households (whose income is linked to 15–17% of national emissions) investment holdings account for 38–43% of their emissions. Even when allowing for a considerable range of investment strategies, passive income accruing to this group is a major factor shaping the U.S. emissions distribution. Results suggest an alternative income or shareholder-based carbon tax, focused on investments, may have equity advantages over traditional consumer-facing cap-and-trade or carbon tax options and be a useful policy tool to encourage decarbonization while raising revenue for climate finance.

https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000190