The Energy East Oil Pipeline Is Dead; Market Economics Bit It in the Back Side

TransCanada, the company behind Keystone XL, just pulled the plug on its environmentally disastrous Energy East Pipeline in Canada. Their #1 reason: Basic economics.

This, FWIW, is the reason I haven’t written a fifth book: nothing really new has happened since Bullish on Renewable Energy:

• Market economics are still in the process of uprooting the fossil fuel empire, and

• Environmental concerns are growing, but they’ve still had de minimus impact on a civilization built on the power of money.  Most of the world’s population centers will be completely underwater before our society finds a way to come together to solve the crisis.  But fortunately, that won’t be necessary, because of the power of market economics itself.

If you think this is an exaggeration, look at gun control.  Mass shootings have become so commonplace and are taking so many lives that they’ve ceased to shock us.  But has this militated stricter gun control? Absolutely not. Our leaders couldn’t possibly care less that our nation is littered with the corpses of innocent people in 45 different states (every one except Hawaii, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming).  Our country could be completely under siege, like Sarajevo in the 1990s, with people terrified of leaving their homes, but until Congress sees a path to re-election that doesn’t involve kowtowing to the NRA and the money it wields, the capacity for a madman to amass unlimited firepower will not suffer one iota; in fact, it’s going the other way.  Want an RPG?  Sure.  That right is very clearly protected by the Second Amendment.

For better or worse, it’s about money.  And here on the energy scene, ironically, that’s working in our favor.