Professor Robert Bell Discusses How Cooling the Earth Will Heat up the Financial Markets
10/2/2007The shift to new energy, just now beginning to gain momentum, will involve huge political and economic changes. Some will be wonderful. Some will not.
In his provocative new book The Green Bubble, Professor Robert Bell, chairman of the Department of Economics at Brooklyn College, predicts that over the next four years, the promotion of renewable energy will translate into frenzied speculation and new fortunes made on Wall Street.
Bell also probes the reasons behind the inevitable advent of a "green bubble," and discusses new energy sources: Which are more likely to be promoted, and how will consumers hear about them? Who will undertake to sell them to the American public? Who will gain and who will lose?
Surprisingly, Bell claims that the exit from oil will not be gradual-it will be a stampede. With the single exception of aviation fuel, he says, adequate and workable substitutes for fossil fuels already exist.
Is this yet another book about global warming?
No, this is a book about why and how there will be an exit from oil, what lies on the other side of the exit, and how to invest and profit from it.
Why did you choose the title The Green Bubble?
Because I wanted to inform the investing public about what I felt would be the obvious conclusion of the renewable energy story. Initially, we will see renewable energy at the center of the world's first global bull market, a market much larger than that of the Internet and telecoms of the 1990s, because this time it includes India, China, Brazil, and Malaysia. This will transform into a speculative bubble as more and more investors risk their life savings and jump in.
Most people think the exit from oil will be gradual. Why do you think it will be fast?
The insurance companies, by their own official declarations, have shifted the issue from a scientific one to a business one. They do not intend to get stiffed when the resultant costs of global warming are calculated, so they are going to push for rapid change, both by substantially increasing premiums-or even refusing to insure activities that produce greenhouse gases-and by investing in green technology. There is also the real possibility that oil has in fact peaked; that is, more than half of the world's resources have already been exhausted. Therefore, it appears that all roads lead out of oil, an exit that is being further speeded by anti-greenhouse-gas zealots.
What about nuclear energy?
Nuclear power plants take too long to build, a minimum of five years, and ten is more likely. This is way too long, considering that the climate crisis is happening today, and that wind turbines can begin pumping electricity six months from the date permits are obtained to build them.
What are the best renewable energy sources to invest in?
In a climate crisis or an oil crisis, everyone will ask the same question: What works now? Not ten years, or even five years from now, but now, today. The answer is: wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, biofuels, and hybrid cars.
Why are hybrid vehicles so important to the renewable energy story?
The general answer is that more and more of the propulsion force of the vehicles will come from electricity, and less and less from the internal combustion engine. The fastest shift will be into hybrid commercial vehicles; especially delivery trucks, because corporate-fleet buyers will purchase thousands of them at a time.
Is there a reason why you devote an entire chapter to wind energy?
Wind works now, and it will get better, much better, in the near future, as batteries improve. As I discuss in some detail in the book, wind energy has essentially unlimited potential for explosive growth.
