June 14, 2022

• It might be the least surprising to folks studying economics, but its effects are widely felt.
• However, it goes beyond diversity and into class make-up of the professional PhD wielding "economist":
• Harvard Business Review has looked at who the economists are and it has found the field lacking in diverse class backgrounds, which is a proxy for gender and race in the USA.

Without an expansion of access to the study of economics—and political economy—there is no way that we will see reality expressed in the papers and analysis produced.

Working class organizations should be pushing members through economic degrees with correct analysis and working class experience and then making sure they have a job at the end using that skill.

That will also mean financing those few professors left who have the correct analysis.

Nothing shows that we need some more classically trained economists in the world more than the current response to inflation and the lack of fully articulated alternative for the future.

• Unsurprisingly, inflation is affecting more than just the G7.
• The median global inflation is now 7.9%, compared to 3.05% last June.

• With the USA economy being pushed into recession by their central bank, you can bet that the recession will be global too.

The International Energy Agency says it would require an immediate cessation of new oil and gas development.

Sixty-two per cent of utility investors and 84 per cent of oil and gas investors do not have — and do not plan to introduce — rules to include only companies that meet specific ESG ratings thresholds in their portfolios.

• Canada is going to be remembered for doing less than nothing to help us reach even the nonsensical and planet killing green washed to grey Net Zero by 2050.
• Carbon Capture and Storage—the process where oil companies capture public money and use it to pump more oil out of the ground—is the tool of choice.

Pourbaix praised a federal tax credit aimed at helping develop the carbon capture component of this plan. But at an eye-watering C$75bn ($50bn) price tag for the project, the companies also want Alberta’s provincial government to help.

• Along with planet killing green washed solutions, the bizarre food or fuel debate is back:

Soaring food prices caused by the war in Ukraine have increased the risk of famine, raising pressure on producers of low-carbon fuels derived from crops and sparking a “food versus biofuel” debate.

You cannot have your corn fuel and eat it too.

“Now is not the time [for governments] to be encouraging the conversion of food crops to energy through artificial policy incentives or mandatory blending targets,” said the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute.

• While only a small amount of these huge staple crops are used for fuel, the environmental impact of using oil (mostly you burn oil and use fertilizer from oil) to produce "green" fuels is an economic effect of subsidies and green washing.
• Biofuels are only green if they do not compete with food and are made with the excess of farming.