Jeff Is Perplexed

Here is NYTimes economic strategy columnist Jeff Somers: "It’s a perplexing state of affairs. The evidence that carbon emissions are warming the planet is persuasive. Yet the stock market, which is supposed to be forward-looking, is treating alternative energy companies with disdain and big oil companies with respect." Jeff doesn't get why the oil majors would risk stranding all those assets but concludes by saying markets always get things right eventually. As he waits patiently perplexed for rationality to kick in, he must avert his gaze from the suffering and extinction and misery and chaos. Like Jeff, all the people in my community use market signals to dictate their behavior which is why they have all been buying brand new pick up trucks, the biggest fossil fuel consuming ones they can find. As for investing advice, Jeff only understands the logic of profit: "Pouring money into unprofitable ventures isn’t a good strategy unless those ventures ultimately generate a great deal of cash." Even having admitted that we are experiencing total market failure, his faith in his God is unshaken. What if there is a disconnect between survival and profit, Jeff? What if price has nothing to do with cost? This speech by Galileo in the play by Bertold Brecht says it all: "The movements of the heavenly bodies have become more comprehensible, but the peoples are as far as ever from calculating the moves of their rulers."