Green Lights Dec. 5: Top stories
Don't miss a single story from the best of Callaway Climate Insights.
. . . . Welcome back to Green Lights. Here's our roundup of the best of Callaway Climate Insights. This week, David Callaway looks behind the curtains of Ukraine peace plan talks, the White House call to lower fuel efficiency standards, and the administration’s assault on Venezuela. Have a great weekend and please subscribe to support our climate finance reporting.
. . . . David Callaway surveys the behind-the-scenes efforts for a Ukraine peace plan and he writes that the frantic positioning of energy players here makes it clear that it will be a power asset grab like none other. To say nothing of the purveyors of some of the most sophisticated drone technology out there. Lost in the shuffle will be the courage and sacrifice of the Ukrainian people who gave so much to save their country. They will be told they will share in the new riches of the rebuilding. Just like all the times before.
. . . . Astute investors have always watched the trading of senior executives of the stocks they own for clues to what management is doing, but a new study illustrates how useful this monitoring can be in measuring corporate climate risk, writes Mark Hulbert. The study looked at the trading activity of corporate insiders in the periods following a climate disaster in the area of their operations and found some unique insights into how the executives reacted versus the general market. In particular, those who bought shares in their companies following a disaster tended to do even better in performance than the rest of the market over a defined period, Hulbert writes. As federal regulations on climate reporting ease or get wiped out under the Trump administration, investors have fewer ways to decipher exactly what type of risk each company faces. Hulbert says this one could help shine some much needed light.
. . . . The fact that large auto stocks such as Ford F 0.65%↑ and General Motors GM 2.12%↑ barely moved on the Trump administration’s plan this week to lower fuel efficiency standards to allow them to keep making gas guzzlers should show that investors realize nothing in Washington is permanent. For consumers, as always, cost will play an important role in buying decisions, but so will performance and aesthetics. The only big loser here is the climate, as gas powered vehicles remain responsible for about a third of all carbon emissions in the U.S.
. . . . Tesla surprised investors this week with a rare gain in sales in China in November, only its third monthly gain this year, as it benefitted from expiring tax credits there at the end of the year, but also a factor that many EV skeptics have overlooked — improved technology. While tax credits helped, it was really the company’s improved product that drove the gains.
. . . . Is the Trump Administration’s assault on Venezuela really to stop so-called narco-terrorists? Is it President Donald Trump’s Grenada, an attempt to show power and perhaps divert attention from his low polls and myriad scandals? Is it a genuine effort to remove President Nicolas Maduro and replace 25 years of dictators hostile to the U.S. with a friendlier, more democratic government? You have questions, David Callaway puts it in perspective.
More greenery . . . .
Pika problem: Rising temps threaten Rocky Mountain habitat (Colorado Sun)
Hot jobs: Climate change is harming the workplace (Euronews)
Ouch: Climate change is hiking healthcare costs (Yale Climate Connection)
Why do we rebuild?: Floods and storms ravage Jersey Shore (Rolling Stone)
Something in the air: Air pollution an effective, underused measure of the Paris Agreement (Stockholm Environment Institute)
Good point......especially how this might actually accelerate the transition.....tks for writing (and reading)......dave
Brilliant framing on how automakers react to regulatory shifts. Your point about the muted stock response revealing investor skepticism toward permanancy is dead on. Themarket has learned that policy pendulum swings are the norm now, so betting big on either direction would be irrational. What's intresting though is how this uncertainty actually might accelerate the transition since companies can't afford to abandon EV investment when the next administration could flip it all back.