There is no good real-world reason why we don't already have a culture that uses renewables for energy. Absolutely none.

Well, no, but what does that have to do with banks?

I can name the politician who killed US wind dead. I can name the politicians who killed the Danish offshore sector. They didn't need any help to do that.

Wind is crucially dependent on market structure. And the banksters don't decide that - the politicians do. Now, it may be that those politicians have been bought and paid for by the banksters, which means that you need to stop the banksters from buying politicians.

They already have. Not in Europe - but have you seen the state of Africa recently?

I am perfectly aware that there is a civil war in Libya. But I don't see how the banksters have much of anything to do with that.

What risk do you mean, exactly? What physical bad consequences result if a bank backs a "risky" project that is deemed to be a failure by current accounting standards?

People lose their homes.

People lose their incomes, which in our current institutional framework means that they will have to rely on charity and hand-outs to get food.

You get gas-fired power plants used for baseload, because of a failure to price in the systemic cost associated with increased gas reliance, and the systemic risk of monocropping your source of electricity.

When you can prove to me that the physical and social consequences of a failed "risky" enterprise are reliably worse and more damaging than the (largely imaginary) economic consequences, then I will believe that banks have a useful role to play.

But... you have more risky enterprises with banks than without. So that's an ass-backwards sort of demand to make.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.