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How Big Business Is Hedging Against the Apocalypse
- devoply 8y ago“we are seeing more opportunities than would have been there normally.” Disaster capitalism at its finest. So the future in fact does look bright for profiting off the collapse where there will be another huge transfer of wealth to those with lots of capital laying around... from those who actually own productive assets and manage them.
- thatfrenchguy 8y agoOr the world will wake up and trial those people ?
- nanaboo 8y agocan't wait for it to happen. Tzar Russia and the French Revolution all over. except it won't be pitch and forks but high-tec weapons vs masses
- ithkuil 8y agoSince the current world order is a result of those events, I'm not that sure a power shift from an elite to another would solve anything else than just raw hatred towards the privileged few of the day. I'm more inclined to think that a more gradual and evolutionary approach to wellbeing and social justice can be more effective.
- pesmhey 8y agoYeah, it was truly a power shift from landed aristocrats to bankers, merchants, and lawyers. Poor people more-or-less stayed poor. And think of it, the entire French Revolution juxtaposed with the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism. I think you’re right. Progress is a marathon, every minute, every day. And it’s slow.
- drilldrive 8y agoYou may be underestimating the power of Guerilla warfare.
- Nasrudith 8y agoThose examples both ended way worse than the entity they replaced. Cheerleading for them is turkeys voting for Thanksgiving and psychopathic.
- mac01021 8y agoI don't think it really hurts anyone that investors are increasingly interested in backing R&D for Zika vaccines or electric cars.
- z5h 8y agoSo if your portfolio depends on the apocalypse, don’t you now have an incentive in expediting it?
- paulryanrogers 8y agoOnly if you look forward to living through it, or your offspring suffering more/sooner.
- eleclady 8y agoExcept the elite won't suffer.
- jacobush 8y agoIn times of upheaval, musical chairs will be played. As a group, the elite stand little to gain from that.
- booleandilemma 8y agoExcept the elite enjoy the status quo.
- stevenwoo 8y agoYour missing the point of view of a large component of GOP support in the USA - if one views the apocalypse as a desired result to per Revelations in the Old Testament, then the second coming of Jesus occurs and the apocalypse happening in Israel is a prerequisite. Cabinet members going back to the Reagan administration openly said this was why the EPA needed to expedite the extraction of mineral resources.
- pesmhey 8y agoHedging is like insurance against improbable events. Some people, though, have been known to commit insurance fraud.
- underpand 8y agoHaving bonds in your portfolio doesn't mean you want a stock market crash
- ryacko 8y agoThe US government is aware. https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/Implications_for_US_National_Security_of_Anticipated_Climate_Change.pdf https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%2... Scientists employed by the US government leaked drafts of a climate change report out of fear of White House interference. https://www.vox.com/2018/11/26/18112505/national-climate-assessment-2018-trump https://www.vox.com/2018/11/26/18112505/national-climate-ass...
- swayvil 8y agoCapitalism destroys the environment by design. I mean the profit-and-loss equation literally works out to "sacrifice everything". Check out the coast of the Dominican Republic : https://gfycat.com/mistyacrobaticbonobo-r-sciences https://gfycat.com/mistyacrobaticbonobo-r-sciences
- opportune 8y agoThe reason you often see images like this in third world countries, but not in first world countries, is that third world countries dump a lot of their trash in waterways/the ocean compared to first world countries. Maybe you already know this, but I think a lot of people see images like this as evidence of the first world fucking over the third world when it's really a local problem.
- ricardobeat 8y agoHe said nothing about third vs first world. The impact of consumerism is the same everywhere.
- PeterisP 8y agoWell, no, the impact of consumerism is not the same everywhere - the first world has much more consumerism, but less environmental impact due to higher standards and regulations. In many senses having an unpolluted local environment is a luxury good that many poorer communities "don't purchase" - i.e. a richer community would choose cleaner air while a poorer community would choose less restrictions on factories because they need these jobs; a richer community would implement proper wastewater treatment because they can afford to divert their resources to that infrastructure, while a poorer community would do without because they choose to spend their resources on more important things they're lacking.
- massysett 8y agoThe first world’s consumer goods come from the third world, and the first world trash gets “recycled” in the third world. First world is just exporting its environmental damage to the third world—and does it in a way that makes it look like it’s the third world’s fault.
- 1e-9 8y agoThe title is misleading as the article doesn't really describe hedging. It gives examples of various individuals and groups who are placing increasing value on technologies and resources related to global warming. Their investments naturally reflect their assessments, which is actually a good thing. If global warming is happening, then price adjustments are needed to encourage conservation, the search for alternatives, and the advancement of needed technologies. This is a beneficial market mechanism where people are incentivized to drive prices up or down based on their best prediction of the future. The government's role should be to provide regulation, penalties, and incentives to prevent conflicts between profit and the public's welfare. As the article points out, the current government role in this area is haphazard and largely unproductive. This situation will surely persist until there is better political agreement on what is happening with our climate.
- gridlockd 8y agoGlobal warming itself is an externality, it's not priced by the market. If you buy into solar for example, you profit from the energy it produces (which is disjoint from global warming) and/or from the price put on global warming by a government. The developments are absolutely dependent on the ongoing doomsday hype (the world ends in 12 years you guys!), not global warming itself. The only thing that I can see the market re-pricing in regards to global warming is land, i.e. you could buy some land in Siberia now because it will be livable in the future. However, that future is so far away it doesn't make sense to buy in this lifetime. Furthermore you could be shorting any business that depends on a stable climate.
- 1e-9 8y agoThere is an enormous number of portfolios that can be constructed to be highly profitable if global warming becomes more widely accepted. There is no need for an actual apocalypse to occur. There just needs to be an increasing awareness that continuing on our current emissions path will lead to disaster if allowed to continue. Those who accept this hypothesis, and invest accordingly, will be helping to avoid an apocalypse. They are the ones who will help drive down the value of things that contribute to global warming, while driving up the value of things needed to combat it. If we are lucky, this process will play out quickly enough that we can avoid irreversible destruction of our environment. Governments could dramatically accelerate the needed changes through appropriate incentives/penalties to make long-term improvements/harms more profitable/unprofitable in the near-term.
- ForHackernews 8y agoIf you're interested in this area, Oasis Loss Modelling Framework is an open-source effort by the insurance industry to try and understand the risks associated with climate change and other catastrophes: https://oasislmf.org/our-modelling-platform https://oasislmf.org/our-modelling-platform
- bernardv 8y agoOr Air Worldwide, or RMS, KatRisk, CoreLogic.
- Animats 8y agoHow do I short Miami and New Orleans on a scale of 30 years?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- formercoder 8y agoBring enough money to a bank with the trade and they’ll make you a market. Probably nothing with that kind of maturity on any exchange.
- dilyevsky 8y agoDefault swaps on state/city bonds (spoiler alert - you can’t)
- 781 8y agoYou make a very big assumption - that people don't care about Miami, a city with global name recognition and so on... I also assume you are not on Instagram, where Miami is huge - it's the 6th global instagrammed city, second US one (London, NY, Paris, Dubai, Istanbul, Miami, LA) - https://www.statista.com/statistics/655550/most-hashtagged-cities-on-instagram/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/655550/most-hashtagged-c... Instead of shorting it you might want to long "defending it".
- hnmullany 8y agoIt's going to be pretty hard to defend it. It's built on porous limestone. So water's going to bubble up everywhere - not like defending NYC
- joncrane 8y agoI think he means invest in seawall manufacturing companies, as opposed to some bizarre financial instrument that allows you to profit from the demise of an entire city.
- vonnik 8y agoI wrote a similar piece a few years ago: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-07/investors-seek-ways-to-profit-from-global-warming https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-03-07/investors... There is no hedge against the apocalypse. But some people will create enormous shareholder value during the runup.
- ValleyOfTheMtns 8y ago"Chaos is a ladder." ?
- _bxg1 8y ago> We are, he says, in the midst of a historic period of mispricing. Because the global economy depends on hydrocarbons, practically every asset in the world relates in some way to oil and gas. Grantham believes hydrocarbons will be priced, or regulated, into submission. In light of that belief, not only oil companies’ stock but practically everything else on the market looks falsely inflated. Good. Let their money burn.
- brandmeyer 8y agoThe flip side of this coin is that there are trillions of dollars of self-interest in ensuring that those resources get mined out and sold.
- D_Alex 8y agoCoal should be the starting point. >Let their money burn. Unfortunately, it will not be just "their money" if the economy has a hard time weaning itself off oil and gas. It will be everybody's money, and lifestyle.
- plankers 8y agoGreat, let our money burn. Will be worse for those with money to lose!
- DubiousPusher 8y agoIf only it were. Periods of economic upheaval fall much harder on the poor.
- plankers 8y agoBring it on, mate. Fucked is fucked, after a point all relativities are pretty meaningless. It would be worth it to see Teslas being reposessed and vacancies in SF high rises.
- ovi256 8y ago>Last April, Texas consumed about 25.7 million megawatts of power. The state of journalism today. Even the august NYT can't afford fact checkers or editors any more.
- bernardv 8y agoThere is increasing recognition by institutional investors that climate change risk is a factor which must be measured and managed. While there are opportunistic trades to be had, the sheer volume of pension fund money slowly shifting to de-risk will have significant impact on industry.
- anm89 8y agoI see this dichotomy which is really sad to me where many people with really good intentions who deeply care about the world just look at things like this as an opportunity to take pot shots from the sidelines about how evil industry and the capitalists are while thinking they are above it. They fail to understand that they are playing the game of capitalism whether they agree with it or not. All the while the amoral(note I'm not saying immoral) players in finance and industry(ie smart money) continue to clean house. And at the end of the day it's really not their priority to look out for the environment (nor is it even desirable to have environmental protection and regulations handled by industry). And so 150 years from now when we're in the Mad max future the compassionate people will get to look back and say "i told you capitalism would destroy the world" while failing to see that it was their responsibility to play the game to make it better.