SUN JOURNAL • April 25, 2020
The bizarre collapse in oil prices reflects a world largely shut. People are no longer driving much or flying at all. Factories are silent. The demand has crumbled. Rich climate activists might buy some of the oil reserves for close to nothing and make sure that the fossil fuel never gets burned. Saudi Arabia, Russia and 21 other oil-producing nations recently agreed to restrict output to buoy it. Why would environmentalists try to help them by cutting the availability of oil? They’d be helping weak or deeply indebted players in the fossil fuel industry stay afloat. What’s been good for the environment is not crashing oil prices but the reason they’re crashing. The world is awash in oil that no one’s buying. It’s demand that we need to dry up — and that happens when technology enables the development of more clean energy at competitive prices. ~ Froma Harro