Juggling Dynamite

In January 2012, I wrote “All that glitters” reviewing the investor experience in Sprott Inc. which was then trading at $6.00 from its much celebrated and heavily promoted Initial Public Offering at $10 at the commodities cycle peak in May 2008. Having once more appeared with confident and seemingly unbowed Sprott representatives at the recent resource conference in Vancouver last week, I was prompted to check in once more on investor returns over the past now 5 years. The answer: -70%. Here is the chart.

“Elon Musk dreams big. It’s hard not to get taken along for the ride — whether it’s a soon-to-launch cross-country Supercharger network that allows Tesla drivers to cross from Los Angeles to New York, an in-the-works reusable rocket that will help pioneer the colonization of Mars, or a hypothetical replacement for high-speed rail called the Hyperloop.

He was the evening speaker at D11 on Wednesday, where he said a mainstream Tesla is three to four years out, shook off electric car naysayers, announced the new nationwide Supercharger network, explained why he’s so excited about Mars, shared his views on immigration and how they diverged from FWD.us and tried to convince other smart folks to join him in doing big-picture stuff.”

See: Tech Renaissance Man

Here is a direct link.

Musk mentions the inspiration he took from the EV1 demise story. You can see the excellent documentary “Who Killed the Electric Car?” here on line.

For the past 5 years I have espoused a general thesis that in a post credit bubble world there is less money–less money to waste on non-essentials, less money to spend on essentials, less money to export to other countries.  Seems obvious: getting more for less is key. (Always is really, but while credit and cash flow are easy many people forget about efficiency).

As one of our largest necessary expenditures, energy is an obvious area of focus.  Countries, like households, must find every intelligent way to stitch up the pocket holes that are draining precious cash flow and escalating debt.  All western countries must focus on reducing their imports and developing domestic energy sources of all kinds for different applications.  The solution is not one type of energy, but many.   This is no time for pig-headed dogma and rigid attachment to old ideas.  We humans must evolve or die–I vote evolve.  Yes we can.

For all of these reasons, it makes perfect sense that North America will continue to develop, consume and sell its own domestic natural gas.  But at the same time, it is critical to comprehend that while Nat Gas is presently serving as a bridge fuel toward stronger fiscal health, it is far from the end goal of free, clean, renewable energy that does not add to our carbon emissions.  See David Suzuki Foundation’s explanation here:  BC’s gas plan is a short-sighted pipe dream

The end goal is literally a smorgasbord of low-carbon energy options that are available and developing as we breathe:

• Solar Photovoltaic
• Passive Solar, Solar Thermal, and Solar Hot Water
• Wind
• Hydropower
• Large-Scale Hydro
• Small and Low-Head Hydro
• Nuclear
• Bioenergy
• Biomass
• wave and tidal
• geothermal
• hydrogen combustion

Along with a whole bunch of other smart solutions being imagined and invented today that most of us have never even dreamed about. See: An inventory of Low-carbon energy.   and Life after Oil and Gas for solutions that are available here and now. (Remember 20 years ago when we could not imagine how or why the world would ever use an “internet”? Same thing with alternative energies today.)  This progress can and will be done.  It is happening, and all the passionate naysayers are just making fools of themselves again.

p.s Just saw the excellent movie “42-The Jackie Robinson Story” last night. Further reminder on how resistant and biased the masses generally are against major turning points in human thought and behavior. Worth some reflection.