Expect Opec members to keep their feet on the production accelerator
Ali Al-Naimi, Saudi oil minister
Judging from Monday’s market reaction, including an oil price fall of 5 per cent, traders were surprised by data showing that, in contrast to past history, Opec members increased production in the face of lower international oil prices. They shouldn’t be. Because of the market’s new supply dynamics, it is in the individual and collective interest of many Opec nations to pump out as much as they can, and this will be the case for a while. Read more
The real climate battle after a sweltering 2014
The announcement that last year was the warmest on record puts another nail in the coffin of climate denial. Not that one was needed. The pseudo-debate about climate science has always been about politics, not science.
There are two main sources of climate denial. The first is libertarian ideology, which opposes government more than climate change. Climate change requires public policy, and for libertarians, that’s enough to declare it false. Since libertarianism is the elixir of financiers and wealthy peers, climate denial haunts Wall Street, the City of London, a surprising number of FT readers, and the House of Lords.
The real climate fight, however, is not about ideology, which is more hobby than vocation. The real climate fight is between oil giants like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Koch Industries, and the general public. Read more
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Smog in Harbin, northeast China © Getty Images
When the leaders of the world’s biggest economies gather this weekend at the G20 summit in Antalya, Turkey, they must recognise the real scale of subsidies for fossil fuels and accelerate their eradication.
In 2009, G20 leaders agreed to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies while providing targeted support for the poorest”. They acknowledged that “inefficient fossil fuel subsidies encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.
While that commitment has been restated at many summits since, action to implement it has been unacceptably slow. Read more