QotD: "Guide to being ethical — do NOT what the Greens do"

"Coercive attempts to stop the use of fossil fuels are delivering the same perverse economic consequences as the attempts to close down American saloon bars in the 1920s. The consumers pay more for a substance they choose not to live without, while the producers count the profits...
    "The attempt to starve coal producers of capital has impeded their attempts to build new coal mines but it hasn’t got in the way of profits. The price of coal has risen to a six-year high, which is good news for the coal business but bad news if you’re living in, say, India’s Bihar state, where three out of four households don’t have electricity.
    “'Energy prices will need rise to the level at which the marginal consumer of fossil fuels is incentivised not to be a consumer,' Redburn reports. ''In other words, the 1 to 2 billion people on the planet with zero or unreliable access to modern energy would remain priced out of the market.' ...
    Redburn’s analysts turn the ­tables on so-called ethical investors by forcing them to confront the consequences of fossil fuel ­divestment, a phenomenon that has swept university campuses, shareholder meetings and boardrooms, much as anti-alcohol mania did a century ago.
    “'Given the pernicious consequences of energy undersupply, we would go so far as to argue that the socially responsible investor has a duty to ensure capital is available to the fossil fuel industry, for as long as it is needed'.”

        ~ Nick Cater, quoted in Jo Nova's post 'Like Prohibition is to Moonshine, Green divestment activists are a boon for coal investors'

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