My back of the envelope guess of what the market value of the top 10 oil companies in the world, and all of the coal producers in the world, is about $3 trillion.
If climate change is the worst thing to ever face humanity, and we are opposed to nuclear and we don’t think we can scale up wind and solar in any meaningful way to get us where we need to go, who is on board for buying every last one of the coal companies, and all of the largest oil companies, and then just sitting on the reserves forever?
Maybe I am two days late to be having these thoughts?
Because buying all of the world’s oil companies is not the same as buying all of the world’s oil? Oil is found on private land, on government managed land, and under the sea floor. Oil companies own some of this land but in general they contract with the property owner or government to exploit the oil field for a limited amount of time. If I were an oil company shareholder, flush with cash because environmentalists just bought out my company at an attractive price, and the world was now desperate for oil because existing lease holders shut themselves down … I would start another oil company.