Also, when people dump shares hella quickly, the value of those shares immediately plummets. By definition something nobody wants is worth very little. If you can’t find a buyer (which often you can’t if suddenly that business can’t make money) then you are, by definition (and almost instantly) worth a whole lot less.

Machines that produce something nobody wants are only good for scrap. The owners of those machines (usually via shares) are then by extension worth much less than before. It’s unavoidable.

Definition of shares: http://www.answers.com/topic/share

The reason why very wealthy people diversify their portfolios is indeed this whole problem of suddenly being worth nothing. The more well-considered definitions of diversification include stocks which “hedge” - one stock is sure to go up as another goes down, but both generally grow with the state of the economy.

This whole push to Nuclear from the powers that be is partly about reducing the risk that the existing distribution mechanisms for energy will suddenly be worth nothing. If we start getting our energy from wind, solar, etc, then we no longer have to distribute our energy along big transport routes of boats, trains, trucks etc. to monolithic power stations.

Given that the vast majority of money is made through distribution and not production (that’s my guesstimate), hence the push.

On your wealth != cash comments, I was thinking shares rather than cash itself, and shares can be dumped hella quick.

You don’t cite any sources and I don’t have any so I guess it’s just a case of I reckon vs you reckon on that one but I reckon individuals have oil investments in shares which they can dump quickly rather than owning companies and infrastructure directly.

Obviously they’ll have other slower moving investments but I’d expect that to be more along the line of property which isn’t really likely to be hit by a move away from oil & coal.

I agree with your sentiment that we should move to cleaner energy sources, I also agree that many rich people are against the change because they stand to make a packet out of the current status quo, but I disagree that a major change is likely to hit richies on average any harder than it hits everyone else.

Most of the billionaires in the world are billionaires “on paper”, because their wealth is tied up in investments that have a large market value. Very little of their wealth (usually) is tied up in cash.

I’m not saying they’ll end up on the bottom, but they’ll certainly move waaaay down. Perhaps far enough that they won’t be able to fund their lavish lifestyles with the dividends from companies whose profit is derived from creating an unsustainable burden on the environment.

Yes, after the CO2/global warming crisis there will be another crisis. And yes, it will largely be driven by our unsustainably large population. But that’s hardly a rational argument for not solving the current problem.

There is no single fix that will solve all these problems in one fell swoop.

What, exactly, is the problem with saving the environment, if by extension we can save ourselves too? Isn’t this a win-win situation?

Also, I’m somewhat inclined to get nit picky about ’saving the environment’ as removing the imminent threat of carbon emission just moves us on to the next thing that’ll kill it (my bet is on overpopulation and general resource consumption outpacing resource renewal)