
By Andy Rowell
For years, environmentalists have warned that due to climate change, there will be billions of barrels of oil that we will never be able to burn. These reserves will become what has increasingly been called "stranded assets."
To give you one example: In a new report, Friends of the Earth argued that "The coal, oil and gas in reserves already in production and development globally is more than we can afford to burn. There is no room for any new coal, oil or gas exploration and production.
"Fossil fuel corporations continue to focus on new fossil fuel exploration and development," Friends of the Earth added. "This is increasing the amount of "assets" the world economy cannot afford to use—assets which will become 'stranded.'"
To make matters worse for the industry, it has become increasingly clear over the last few months that the coming electric vehicle revolution will also have a huge impact on oil demand. As Reuters pointed out last week, "Investors may be entering the age of 'stranded assets,' and it very likely could be driven as much by technological change as by climate change."
The writing has been on the wall for oil investors for a while as they bet on an industry beset by low prices, increasing competition from renewables and the threat of global action on climate change.
But still belligerently people invest in fossil fuels, with devastating results.
The Wall Street Journal on Sunday ran the headline, "From $2 Billion to Zero: A Private-Equity Fund Goes Bust in the Oil Patch." The Journal reported how "A $2 billion private-equity fund that borrowed heavily to buy oil and gas wells before energy prices plunged is now worth essentially nothing, an unusual debacle that is wiping out investments by major pensions, endowments and charitable foundations."
The Houston-based private equity fund, EnerVest, posted this massive loss in one of its energy funds, meaning that the fund has essentially "gone bust" and is worth "essentially nothing." John Walker, EnerVest's co-founder and chief executive, said in a statement to the Journal, "We are not proud of the result."
That surely is an understatement.
Pavel Molchanov, an energy analyst at Raymond James in Houston, argued that the "lesson for everyone is that excessive leverage in a commodity downcycle can be lethal."
And so what happens when more oil companies go bust as the whole fossil fuel industry goes from a downcycle into a potential "death spiral," as some have warned it will do?
The whole industry—from producers to power stations—could be in trouble. Again, to give you one example: Early Tuesday, Mark Campanale from Carbon Tracker tweeted: "Up to 240 gas and 150 coal fired power stations in Europe could be 'stranded assets' says European Env Agency by 2030."
Amid the inevitable bankruptcies, who will pay for the clean up of the oil patch, from the tar sands of Canada to the vast fracking fields of North Dakota to the offshore wells in the Gulf, let alone the vast industry infrastructure outside of North America?
There is already a need to clean up old oil and gas areas, before we even consider the new shale gas and tar sands areas. For example, the InsideEnergy website reported Monday on the "Toxic Legacy" in North Dakota "which looks to clean up old oilfield waste." The website noted that clean up of these old brine pits "could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, with the bulk of that bill potentially falling to the state."
The same theme was touched upon by Tim Gray, executive director of Environmental Defence in Canada in a recent article, "Who cleans up the mess when oil and mining companies go bankrupt?"
Gray's article noted how the Alberta Energy Regulator was appealing a judge's ruling that had given creditors priority access to a bankrupt oil company's assets over its financial obligations to clean up abandoned wells.
There is no doubt Canada has a huge problem: in Alberta, toxic tailing ponds now cover an area larger than the cities of Toronto and Vancouver combined. It is estimated that it will cost a whopping $44.5-billion to clean up existing ponds, with more waste being added every day.
Who will pay for this toxic legacy if companies suddenly leave or go bankrupt, especially as many predict Alberta will be one of the first oil and gas regions to become stranded? It is likely that it will be Canadian taxpayers.
Gray argued that "clearly change is needed" and that Canada's bankruptcy laws could be amended "so that the cleanup of environmental damage takes priority over creditors."
Otherwise, as he pointed out, we all pay to clean up the mess.
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By Peter Giger
The speed and scale of the response to COVID-19 by governments, businesses and individuals seems to provide hope that we can react to the climate change crisis in a similarly decisive manner - but history tells us that humans do not react to slow-moving and distant threats.
A Game of Jenga
<p>Think of it as a game of Jenga and the planet's climate system as the tower. For generations, we have been slowly removing blocks. But at some point, we will remove a pivotal block, such as the collapse of one of the major global ocean circulation systems, for example the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), that will cause all or part of the global climate system to fall into a planetary emergency.</p><p>But worse still, it could cause runaway damage: Where the tipping points form a domino-like cascade, where breaching one triggers breaches of others, creating an unstoppable shift to a radically and swiftly changing climate.</p><p>One of the most concerning tipping points is mass methane release. Methane can be found in deep freeze storage within permafrost and at the bottom of the deepest oceans in the form of methane hydrates. But rising sea and air temperatures are beginning to thaw these stores of methane.</p><p>This would release a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, 30-times more potent than carbon dioxide as a global warming agent. This would drastically increase temperatures and rush us towards the breach of other tipping points.</p><p>This could include the acceleration of ice thaw on all three of the globe's large, land-based ice sheets – Greenland, West Antarctica and the Wilkes Basin in East Antarctica. The potential collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet is seen as a key tipping point, as its loss could eventually <a href="https://science.sciencemag.org/content/324/5929/901" target="_blank">raise global sea levels by 3.3 meters</a> with important regional variations.</p><p>More than that, we would be on the irreversible path to full land-ice melt, causing sea levels to rise by up to 30 meters, roughly at the rate of two meters per century, or maybe faster. Just look at the raised beaches around the world, at the last high stand of global sea level, at the end of the Pleistocene period around 120,0000 years ago, to see the evidence of such a warm world, which was just 2°C warmer than the present day.</p>Cutting Off Circulation
<p>As well as devastating low-lying and coastal areas around the world, melting polar ice could set off another tipping point: a disablement to the AMOC.</p><p>This circulation system drives a northward flow of warm, salty water on the upper layers of the ocean from the tropics to the northeast Atlantic region, and a southward flow of cold water deep in the ocean.</p><p>The ocean conveyor belt has a major effect on the climate, seasonal cycles and temperature in western and northern Europe. It means the region is warmer than other areas of similar latitude.</p><p>But melting ice from the Greenland ice sheet could threaten the AMOC system. It would dilute the salty sea water in the north Atlantic, making the water lighter and less able or unable to sink. This would slow the engine that drives this ocean circulation.</p><p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/atlantic-conveyor-belt-has-slowed-15-per-cent-since-mid-twentieth-century" target="_blank">Recent research</a> suggests the AMOC has already weakened by around 15% since the middle of the 20th century. If this continues, it could have a major impact on the climate of the northern hemisphere, but particularly Europe. It may even lead to the <a href="https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/39731?show=full" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">cessation of arable farming</a> in the UK, for instance.</p><p>It may also reduce rainfall over the Amazon basin, impact the monsoon systems in Asia and, by bringing warm waters into the Southern Ocean, further destabilize ice in Antarctica and accelerate global sea level rise.</p>The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation has a major effect on the climate. Praetorius (2018)
Is it Time to Declare a Climate Emergency?
<p>At what stage, and at what rise in global temperatures, will these tipping points be reached? No one is entirely sure. It may take centuries, millennia or it could be imminent.</p><p>But as COVID-19 taught us, we need to prepare for the expected. We were aware of the risk of a pandemic. We also knew that we were not sufficiently prepared. But we didn't act in a meaningful manner. Thankfully, we have been able to fast-track the production of vaccines to combat COVID-19. But there is no vaccine for climate change once we have passed these tipping points.</p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/reports/the-global-risks-report-2021" target="_blank">We need to act now on our climate</a>. Act like these tipping points are imminent. And stop thinking of climate change as a slow-moving, long-term threat that enables us to kick the problem down the road and let future generations deal with it. We must take immediate action to reduce global warming and fulfill our commitments to the <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Paris Agreement</a>, and build resilience with these tipping points in mind.</p><p>We need to plan now to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, but we also need to plan for the impacts, such as the ability to feed everyone on the planet, develop plans to manage flood risk, as well as manage the social and geopolitical impacts of human migrations that will be a consequence of fight or flight decisions.</p><p>Breaching these tipping points would be cataclysmic and potentially far more devastating than COVID-19. Some may not enjoy hearing these messages, or consider them to be in the realm of science fiction. But if it injects a sense of urgency to make us respond to climate change like we have done to the pandemic, then we must talk more about what has happened before and will happen again.</p><p>Otherwise we will continue playing Jenga with our planet. And ultimately, there will only be one loser – us.</p>By John R. Platt
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