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Ever since I discovered (two days ago) that, according to Google, I’m a “public figure”, whatever that means, I’ve felt an urge to shower the world with my opinions. By a happy coincidence this week has presented us with an abundance of opinion-provoking events.
Obviously, we begin with the U.S. elections. Here, I must start with a confession that the regular readers of this Substack won’t find the least bit surprising. I don’t really have a lot of faith in humankind. I do believe we’re all born basically good but life makes us, shall we say, complicated. Sometimes frighteningly so.
If this week taught us anything, it is that the mental crisis gripping the West is painfully real and that it runs deeper than many, including me, imagined. If there are people who earnestly cry at the prospect of losing their women’s rights and being returned to a life of slavery, then things have officially gone too far and it’s time for emergency treatment.
Then again, many might be doing the dramatics for social media attention, which is bad enough, of course, but way better than the alternative, that alternative being there are actual human individuals with functional brains who not only believe the propaganda they consume, they literally inhabit a fantastical world of the propagandists’ making. And the propagandists are insane.
Oh, yes, the other thing we learned this week is that democracy still works and we are not beyond all hope as a species. It’s a minor little thing but as a public figure I thought it was my duty to mention it. And here comes my second confession: I didn’t think what happened would happen. I cannot begin to tell you how enormously happy I am to be proven wrong.
This week, more than 73 million Americans (presumably, that is. Maybe some tourists voted, too. I would’ve.) voted for Donald Trump as their next president. Another 69 million voted for Kamala Harris. Millions from the second camp, I understand, were dismayed, shocked, and outraged at the outcome of the vote. They really, really expected their girl to win. I mean, Beyonce and J Lo spoke at her rallies and a dozen or so more stars threatened to leave the U.S. if Trump won. That should have worked, right? By the way, are the planes flying already?
Anyway, as mentioned, I was a bit shocked, too. The reason was simple. Ahead of the election, there was much talk about vote manipulation and about the current administration’s utter refusal to let go of the reins. My perception was that they wouldn’t stop at anything to turn the vote in their favour, so some surprise was in order — because some of us assumed the incumbent puppeteers would succeed. Boy, did we overestimate them. Or rather, what we did, and I’m embarrassed to say it, is that we underestimated the regular American. My deepest apologies.
The regular American came out in force to state his and her disagreement with how their country was run. They came out in force to remind both their rulers and the world that there was a difference between fantasy and reality, and the latter always wins.
This public figure, for one, is very grateful for that reminder and I can only hope more of my fellow Bulgarians keep it in mind in six months when we vote yet again, as we will probably have to. A big thank you to all who voted to stymie the flow of dollars to local alphabet soup NGOs because that’s what you did. I like you a lot. Beer’s on me should you decide to stop by.
Anyway, while we were laughing, with some horror, at the meltdowns on X, fate, nature, and circumstances gave us another gift: Germany’s coalition government crumbled in on itself. This was not exactly unexpected, at least for those following events with a keen mind, but the timing was truly wonderful. It was as if Trump’s win had started an immediate domino effect.
Speaking of dominoes, did you hear about the $1.2 billion that hedge funds shorting the transition earned just this week? Green stocks tanked with such a bang after the Tuesday vote, that anti-transition funds got $350 million from just two companies: Sunrun and Plug Power. Yet “every stock that was in the renewable basket collapsed”, per one transition fund manager.
This was hardly a surprise, given that “Renewables have been in trouble for “a long time”, with investors losing patience with many of these stocks,” per that same transition fund manager, as quoted by the FT. In other words, green companies were already struggling despite the IRA billions. Now they’re going to struggle more. But we hit a global total of 2 TW in solar capacity, so that should be all right. Or not, as it happens, because this just means more frequent negative electricity prices and more natural gas demand. It’s almost too beautifully disastrous for words.
What’s even more beautiful because it’s not a disaster, is the panic in climate science circles. As suggested by posters on X, many prominent climate change figures are freaking out about the Trump presidency, expecting imminent planetary collapse because Trump will obviously ban everything green, and let’s do everything we can to prevent this while the pro-greens are still in power. Incidentally, certain money flows might dwindle but that’s neither here nor there because scientists are in science for the science not the money, of course.
Emotions are running high in the wake of the U.S. elections, to such an extent that one Reuters columnist whom I normally respect, suggested Europe could interfere with Trump’s plans for more oil and gas production by… refusing to import U.S. LNG, in retaliation for the tariffs Trump has already threatened Europeans with.
Let me indulge in some rephrasing: Europe, which is already on edge about gas supply because this winter is expected to be colder, the Ukraine’s not renewing its transit contract with Gazprom, and Norway and Azerbaijan don’t have the volumes to secure its supply, is going to retaliate against Trump’s tariffs by refusing U.S. LNG. Sounds totally plausible, yes. About as plausible as Russia deciding to give away its gas to Europe for free as a thanks for the sanctions.
Speaking of plausibility, let’s end on the most plausible of all notes: the IEA’s warning that we need to reduce our oil consumption to 85 million bpd by 2030. In response to this warning, Enverus this week played the blunt instrument, reporting that this would translate into an annual demand reduction of between 3 and 4 million bpd.
“This is a tall order considering oil demand growth outside of COVID-19, recessions and geopolitical supply outages has shown sustained gains since the late 60s. For added context, 85 million barrels per day is six million barrels less than the demand levels experienced during COVID-19,” according to Enverus Intelligence Research’ Al Salazar.
Here’s to the power of reality, the inevitable collapse of dystopian fantastical worlds, Christian Lindner, now former finance minister in the Scholz coalition, and to short sellers of solar and wind stocks. And don’t forget to shed a tear for a climate scientist.
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