Saturday, April 14, 2007

International investing + global warming

How will global warming affect income investing?

I'd rather write -- how will the global warming controversy affect income investing?

I don't know whether the planet is getting any warmer or not. After all, local weather varies tremendously for a huge variety of reasons. We now have ways of collecting data from around the world, satellites, etc which we didn't have until recently. When we compare current temperatures to past records, we're not making a fair comparison.

And if it the planet is warming, is human activity the cause? Long before the industrial revolution began, the world was hotter . . . and colder. The amount of light and heat the sun radiates can vary by up to 30%, yet I rarely hear this mentioned, and I've heard that the recent UN study on global warming did not even include that in its model.

If the planet is warming, no matter what the cause, what can we do about it? I'm against proposed solutions that would give government control over people, yet authitarian socialism seems to be the goal of many environmental activists. I believe that if there is a real problem, we need to use our ingenuity and technology to solve it, without condemning the masses of people of the Earth to poverty.

I do think that the issue makes international investing even more important. You can't afford to keep all of your money tied up with the political and economic fortunes of any one country, even the United States.

It appears that there will be a lot of economic activity related to global warming. And I can't really be against the reduction of fossil fuel emissions. Burning fossil fuels is wasteful of fossil fuels. Plus it creates some pollution, which I'm happy to reduce.

So hopefully the controversy will encourage the development of alternative energy sources and ways of cleaning up pollution . . . without discouraging the continued wealth creation of global capitalism.