“net-zero” carbon emissions by
2050.1 It’s not conclusive, however, that that’s even possible.
And, from publicly available information, it doesn’t appear that
the Company has fully considered the risks involved with
attempting decarbonization on such a schedule.
Claims about the need for decarbonization, especially by
some activist-generated date, are based on assumptions that
are either counterfactual or insufficiently examined. For
decades, claims have been made that carbon emissions must
be reduced by some arbitrary date on which it will be too late
for human civilization to sustain its existence.2 Decade after
decade, those deadlines came and went and none of those
apocalyptic claims held up. Nonetheless, climate activists
haven’t learned their lesson and continue to demand
decarbonization by a certain deadline, assured that this time
a climate catastrophe will ensue if their demands aren’t met.
While such demands are silly and should be ignored outright,
attempting to meet them can have serious ramifications.
Propagating climate-catastrophist lies – and acting on them
by reducing fossil fuel energy production – has real economic,
social and political consequences.
Attempting to meet net-zero goals raises the price of fossil
fuel energy while subsidizing other unreliable sources of
energy. This has a ripple effect on the entire economy – when
the price of energy increases, the price of everything else
increases.
Additionally, decarbonization is meaningless if other countries
don’t cooperate, and there is abundant evidence they won’t.3
The only thing it will do is make the US reliant on other
nations, which can have negative geopolitical effects. For
example, the US and other Western nations have become
reliant on oppressive regimes like Russia for reliable fossil fuel
exactly when it was most politically inconvenient to.
The US government has never mandated net-zero by statute
or authorized regulatory action4 and is unlikely to do so, which
contravenes the assumptions of “stranded asset” analysis. If
decarbonization is neither required nor technologically
feasible, the Company will pointlessly contribute to economic
and political turmoil while harming its shareholders in the
process.
1 www.duke-energy.com/our-company/environment/
global-climate-change
2 www.nypost.com/2021/11/12/50-years-of-predictionsthat-the-climate-apocalypse-is-nigh/
3 www.theepochtimes.com/across-the-world-coal-poweris-back_4671888.html;
www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/03/
india_and_china_coal_production_surging_by_700m_
tons_per_year_thats_greater_than_all_us_coal_
output_835483.html;
www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2022/06/03/
india_and_china_coal_production_surging_by_700m_
tons_per_year_thats_greater_than_all_us_coal_
output_835483.html;
www.breitbart.com/environment/2022/04/21/worldsworst-polluter-china-increases-coal-production-bythree-hundred-million-tons/;
mishtalk.com/economics/global-net-zero-climatechange-targets-are-pie-in-the-sky
4 www.npr.org/2022/06/30/1103595898/
supreme-court-epa-climate-change