Coal, Oil and Gas Need the Best Minds

Coal, Oil and Gas Need the Best Minds This week's theme is called, “Coal, Oil and Gas Need the Best Minds.” If you read any major news publication, you’re going to see two big trends. One is due to activist pressure, major banks like the Japanese company Mitsui—which is a trading house that owns banks—are withdrawing their funding of coal-fired plants and their funding of coal mines. The other trend you're seeing is big mining companies are divesting coal, oil and gas. Well, not so much oil, but they're trying to push out quite a lot of coal. They’re bundling them up into separate companies, selling them to people and so on. You're one of the smartest people in the world, obviously. You’re someone who actually takes the time to listen to new insights. I want you to think through what we’re doing. And I want you to think about the opportunities that come up because of this and the problems we’re creating. We know that coal is going to be phased out over time, but it will take a long time Let’s assume that I'm a good parent, and I want my children to have a bright future in the world. I don't want them to…

Are Coal, Oil and Gas Dead?

Are Coal, Oil and Gas Dead? Almost any pundit or forecaster will tell you that oil, coal and gas are dead. But the reality is that they're probably not dead, and they're probably far from dead. There's a reason for this. The balance of power in the world has shifted. Growth today comes from Asia. We may not see it, and we may not know about this while sitting in a nice office in Boston, New York, London, or Los Angeles, but the balance of power has shifted. In the West, if we say that coal is dead and we need to get our institutional investors to withdraw their equity holdings in coal, oil and gas companies, we could probably do that. Although, it would be better to continue investing in oil, coal and gas companies and force them to become carbon neutral because that’s the goal of climate change policy. But it's not going to matter as much because if Indonesia, Vietnam, China, India and other major growth markets of the world today need energy, they know that having a clean, carbon-neutral environment makes sense, and they're making good decisions in that direction. But of course, they need energy,…