King Coal is huddling for warmth with down-and-out oil and gas producers. One out of three of the world\u2019s biggest publicly traded companies in those businesses could file for bankruptcy this year, the Deloitte auditing and consulting firm determined.\u00a0They\u00a0collectively owe $150 billion in debt.<\/p>\n
“These companies have kicked the can down the road as long as they can,\u201d William Snyder<\/a>, head of corporate restructuring at Deloitte, told the Reuters news service. \u201cNow they’re in danger of kicking the bucket.”<\/p>\n Paul Sableman \/ Flickr<\/p>\n<\/div>\n So it\u2019s no wonder that oil, gas, and coal cheerleaders couldn\u2019t control their glee when, only four\u00a0days before Justice Antonin Scalia\u2019s unexpected death, the Supreme Court issued a stay that put the Clean Power Plan on hold.<\/p>\n The Court\u2019s unprecedented move froze the federal government\u2019s most powerful tool for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the nation\u2019s power plants. Should the Obama administration prevail against the 27 states, Peabody<\/a>, and the other dirty-energy leaders that are suing over the Clean Power Plan, this policy will expedite the reduction of our nation\u2019s reliance on coal.<\/p>\n It’s also designed to boost the amount of electricity generated nationwide by renewable energy \u2014 along with natural gas and other options the government wrongly deems to be better for the climate.<\/p>\n But the dirty-energy lobby\u2019s elation is already fizzling.<\/p>\n The Clean Power Plan now has a 75 percent chance of surviving, says lawyer Brian Potts<\/a>, who represents companies on environmental regulatory issues. Between the Supreme Court stay and the arch-conservative justice\u2019s death, Potts had pegged the odds of the Clean Power Plan’s enactment at only 10 percent.<\/p>\n It\u2019s already hard enough to keep track of this policy\u2019s prospects. But, just like the extreme weather climate change delivers, this outlook is unpredictable.<\/p>\n What happens with this high-profile Supreme Court case \u2014 and many others \u2014 will depend on multiple factors<\/a>. Chief among them is whether Senate Republicans block President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia. Then there\u2019s the question of how the lower court rules at a time when the remaining eight justices are evenly split. (In these instances, the lower court\u2019s ruling stands without setting a major precedent.)<\/p>\n Ultimately, no court can save the oil, gas, and coal industries. Fossil fuels are losing their economic edge<\/a> over renewable energy alternatives at a time when opposition<\/a> to their extraction, transportation, and combustion is rising and global markets<\/a> are dissipating.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, these corporations are torpedoing their own financial resilience by overpaying their executives<\/a> and spending too much on\u00a0their shareholders’ dividends<\/a>.<\/p>\n The shift toward a greener energy future won\u2019t be cheap<\/a>. But since continuing to rely on oil, gas, and coal for most of the world\u2019s energy would destroy the planet, we can’t afford not to make this investment.<\/p>\n The biggest questions are how long this unavoidable transition will take and whether it can happen\u00a0fast enough to avert a climate catastrophe<\/a>.<\/p>\n The timing will largely depend on what happens with our political climate. And just like recent\u00a0weather<\/a> in our capital city, where a rapid temperature spike made five inches of snow vanish in a single morning, our political climate is pretty volatile.<\/p>\n The post Scalia\u2019s Ghost Can\u2019t Save Oil, Gas, and Coal<\/a> appeared first on OtherWords<\/a>.<\/p>\n This piece was reprinted from Other Words<\/a> by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bleak news for fossil fuels is piling up higher than an icy Washington snowbank in\u00a0the capital’s\u00a0most precipitation-challenged state. Peabody Energy, the nation\u2019s biggest coal company, is limping toward bankruptcy after its shares sank 99 percent over the past two years. Arch Coal, the industry\u2019s second-largest player, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. King Coal is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519,18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-225935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire","8":"category-latest-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Peabody_energy_coal_gas_oil_dirty\"](\"http:\/\/otherwords.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/9437310577_5269397193_k-600x400.jpg\")
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