Links tagged “economics”

Bloomberg News: "Young people are even more wary about taking a job in an industry that they’ve consistently been told has no future given the global push toward clean energy." ... 

Miners who have left the industry aren’t coming back, and more significantly, new ones aren’t joining, Thrasher said. “There’s a perception that the coal industry, if not dead, is dying,” he said. “Young people just have many more choices.” ... Yet that surge in demand is constrained by miners’ limited ability to boost output. Coal companies have been closing mines and cutting staff in recent years amid the global push to rein in the carbon emissions that are driving climate change, and it’s known as the dirtiest fossil fuel. Local and national governments that have rapidly moved to embrace clean energy, are now discovering the potential pitfalls of moving too quickly away from fossil fuels.

Megan Greene, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and a columnist for the Financial Times: "Central banks have always picked winners and losers at their own discretion, according to Greene, and they always will. Hence, “they might as well be thoughtful about it and address one of the biggest crises that we're facing.” Moreover, she argues that, “if you think climate change is as existential a threat as a war, then you can argue easily, I think, that central banks should step in again in the face of this threat.”

Friedman: "Natural gas and coal prices in Europe and Asia just hit their highest levels on record, oil prices in America hit a seven-year high and U.S. gasoline prices are up $1 a gallon from last year. If this winter is as bad as some experts predict — with some in the poor and middle classes unable to heat their homes —I fear we’ll see a populist backlash to the whole climate/green movement. You can already smell that coming in Britain."