COVID-19 is making many bearish about bitumen. Deborah Lawrence’s past pessimism has proven unpopular, and correct.
Geoff Dembicki reports for The Tyee. His work also appears in Vice, Foreign Policy and the New York Times.
Deborah Lawrence used to be a stockbroker with Merrill Lynch. Over the past decade, the independent economic analyst has developed a reputation for telling oil investors what they don’t want to hear.
May 13, 2020 - The wheels we humans have set in motion concerning carbon dioxide emissions and climate change are going to take some stopping, and the latest data from Hawaii's Mauna Loa Observatory are another clear indicator of this. Scientists there have logged record concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere, in line with a steady trend that defies even the widespread and stringent slowdown in global activity as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
"The COVID-19 crisis has made clearer than ever the flaws in our system, one that prioritizes military spending and global instability over the well-being of our people."
As the pandemic builds, most people, led by government officials and policy wonks, perceive the threat solely in terms of human health and its impact on the national economy. Consistent with the prevailing vision, mainstream media call almost exclusively on physicians and epidemiologists, financiers and economists to assess the consequences of the viral outbreak.
The coronavirus pandemic is overwhelming to comprehend. There are now hundreds of thousands of confirmed cases. Tens of thousands have died. Nations are on lockdown as the disease continues to spread. The planet is in crisis.
How did this happen?
What are the underlying political, economic and environmental structures that paved the way for this global outbreak? Where do pandemics emerge from? Is our capitalist way of life biologically sustainable?
This story was originally published by The Guardian and appears here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration
Polluting industries around the world are using the coronavirus pandemic to gain billions of dollars in bailouts and to weaken and delay environmental protections.
