A cynical guide to profits from fighting global climate change

The vague, blatantly inadequate “agreement” wrangled out of the Copenhagen conference—or to give the meeting its official name The United Nations Climate Change Conference—by President Barack Obama is nonetheless a game changer.

Oh, not because any of the countries that the signed on to effort at global saving face have committed to actually do much of anything. But because the very inadequacy of this agreement forces all meaningful action back onto national governments.

If you want to know where the profits—and costs—of global climate change will be for the next decade, then I think you need to study not the technologies of climate change but the nature of the governments and economies that will stumble toward addressing this problem.

The nature of the U.S. economic and political system, for example, tells an investor a great deal about how to make money on global climate change in the next few years.  

Sometimes looking at the challenges of global climate change I think this problem was designed by some mad economist temporary sitting in God’s chair: It plays to just about every weakness in capitalist market economies.

Shall I count the ways? Read more