Carbon extraction companies refuse to comprehend smart investment in the emerging economy. Increased investment in fossil fuels is immoral and foolish.

Current investment theory developed without thought of climate science or the systemic risks in today’s economy. Investors keep seeing fossil fuel as their best option. They concentrate exposure to stranded assets, pouring money down an ever-deepening fossil-fuel rathole.

The investment mentality from the 20th century economy doesn’t take seriously that $2 trillion now flows annually into the energy transition. Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies become less and viable, facing a constricted future.

Other parts of the world look realistically at the trend toward renewable energy. Last year, China invested $818 billion in energy transition. The United States falls further behind with the “drill, baby, drill” mentality of the current Administration (incentivized by large political donations from the fossil fuel industry).

Electricity demand is rising. Cutbacks in clean production would lower supply. Electricity from fossil Fuels would increase in cost.

Tell U.S. Sen. Dave McCormick to maintain the Inflation Reduction Act measures. They create hundreds of new clean energy projects, representing hundreds of thousands of jobs and hundreds of billions of dollars of investments in communities around the country. Keep clean energy tax incentives. They’re the single most effective part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

Future success cannot rely on dwindling fossil fuel resources, and their continued use guarantees destruction of life as we know it. On the fossil-fuel path, a few corporations grab what they can at the moment, while causing an unlivable world for the next generation and beyond.

Daniel Erdman

Lancaster