• My contribution today to Twitter/X:
Pretty sure we all know the answer to this.
Chaser—the worst tweet of the day, which requires no comment:
• How about this for an alternative protest slogan (suggested by “Lucretia”):
From the river to the sea/Full Israeli sovereign-tee!
I can go for that.
• No oil company has been more sanctimonious about being a “good climate citizen” than BP, which for a while actually tried to suggest meant “Beyond Petroleum.” Hence this Reuter’s headline today ought to read, “Oil Company Decides to Stay in Business, Turn a Profit.”
Exclusive: BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy
LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) – BP has abandoned a target to cut oil and gas output by 2030 as CEO Murray Auchincloss scales back the firm’s energy transition strategy to regain investor confidence, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.
When unveiled in 2020, BP’s strategy was the sector’s most ambitious with a pledge to cut output by 40% while rapidly growing renewables by 2030. BP scaled back the target in February last year to a 25% reduction, which would leave it producing 2 million barrels per day at the end of the decade, as investors focused on near-term returns rather than the energy transition.
And for a preview of headlines to come, here’s Motor Trend:
The Internal Combustion Engine Is Not Dead
A global slump in sales is prompting automakers to rethink the rush to EVs.
Reports of the death of the internal combustion engine have been greatly exaggerated. In the wake of stalled consumer demand and stubbornly high costs, automakers around the world are furiously backpedalling plans to go all-in on EVs within the next 10 years, as well as rethinking their approach to the internal combustion engine. Those who bet biggest on electric vehicles are now ruefully eyeing big hits to their bottom line. Or worse.
Ford, for example, has stopped work on a three-row electric-powered SUV, a decision that will reportedly cost the company $1.9 billion. “We could not put together a vehicle that met our requirements to be profitable in the first 12 months of launch,” Ford Motor Company chief financial officer John Lawler said. Ford’s EV division, Model e, reported a $2.5 billion loss for the first half of this year and is expected to lose between $5 billion and $5.5 billion by year’s end.
• Okay, this is peak IYKYK, but if you do know, it’s really funny:
• Now for the serious part. I think I can share a detail from my private conversation over dinner with Governor DeSantis last year. I brought up hurricane risk, and noted that Miami was wiped out by a Cat 5 hurricane in 1935. But almost no one lived in Miami and surrounding areas at that time. What about today? Gov. DeSantis said Miami didn’t worry him much because modern Miami area building codes were sufficiently robust to withstand a major hurricane. What kept him awake at night, he followed up, was a major hurricane hitting Tampa.
The governor explained that that geography of Tampa Bay is such that the storm surge would be severe, and the potential damage it would inflict extremely serious. And there’s not much that can be done about that prospectively, except to warn the population to prepare. The evacuation orders are out already. I sure the hyper-competent DeSantis is on it. But file this away for when the media attacks him for any disasters that occur this week.
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