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While we wait for the March 2019 housing data the IEA notes that CO2 emissions have more than doubled since the early seventies and increased by around 40% since 2000 and they rose by 1.7% in 2018. ​ ​

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Chris Hayes All In with AOC
The Green New Deal March 29, 2019
​

​Top 10 Climate Change Myths - April 2018
Peter Hadfield (Youtube handle "potholer54")
a British freelance journalist author, geologist
​

The impact of exposure to air pollution
on cognitive performance

Over 92 per cent of the world’s population are continually breathing in unsafe air, which has led air pollution to be designated a public health crisis. 

Conclusions
This paper estimates the contemporaneous and cumulative impacts of air pollution on cognition by matching the scores of verbal and math tests given to people age 10 and above in a nationally representative survey with local air quality data according to the exact dates and locations of the interviews.

​We find that accumulative exposure to air pollution impedes verbal test scores. As people age, the negative effect becomes more pronounced, especially for men. The gender gap is particularly large for the less educated.

Our findings about the damaging effect of air pollution on cognition, particularly on the aging brain, imply that the indirect effect on social welfare could be much larger than previously thought. A narrow focus on the negative effect on health may underestimate the total cost of air pollution.

Full Report from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2018

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As I have been pointing out on my chart of TSX INDEXES for Energy, Real Estate, Financial Services, Gold and the Bank of Canada Commodities in $CAD, that...

...the Thompson Reuters CRB chart embedded in the chart shows that global commodities measured in USD has been dropping since 2008, although recently since September (2018), there has been a near term rally in commodities... BUT

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China’s Slower Credit Growth
Underscores Worries Over Economy
​Bloomberg, Aug 2018
​

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It's a big day in the Oil Markets as the price of crude slips below the sentiment price of US$50 the list is growing of oil majors who are withdrawing from further investment in Alberta.  Also yields in the bond markets are continuing their rising trend; ie: the cost to finance is rising.  ​

Al Gore on the Solar Revolution - TED Talk Clip 1.50 min
2 solar home systems sold every minute in Bangladesh

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Zombie real estate in Vancouver BC is a problem. The owners have placed a high value on keeping them empty when vacancy rates are at historical lows. See the Beautiful Empty Homes  Vancouver archive. ​In March 2016, theGeorgia Straight reported some 10,000 condos were vacant. The city now wants to tax the owners between a ½% and 2% of the assessed value; CBC News Sept 14, 2016.

​The Democratization of Production
​Be lazy like a fox. WikiHouse

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​Tesla's Powerwall 2 and Solar Roof Launch

The sun provides more than enough energy in just one hour to supply our planet’s energy needs for an entire year. Your home can capture this free, abundant energy source through rooftop solar tiles, turning sunlight into electricity for immediate use or storage in a Powerwall battery. Tesla, October 28, 2016

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Grim expense report: Alberta's debt soars to $10.9 billion
​CTV NEWS August 24, 2016 

MEANWHILE: Tesla Master Plan Part Deux July 20, 2016
The Grand Opening of the Tesla Gigafactory 
Building the world’s largest battery factory
to accelerate a sustainable energy future. July 30, 2016

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While we wait for the April real estate data to dribble in, let's look at the commodity sector that peaked in 2011 and is now threatening to break a major uptrend channel and possibly retest the 2006 lows; a time when the Yield Curve inverted and soon after the BoC and U.S. Fed etal went on a ZIRP to NIRP bender in an effort to spark inflation. Clearly low rates have not produced CPI inflation but a speculative frenzy for Yield.

...the energy high-yield default has soared to a record 13% rate, surpassing the 9.7% mark set in 1999, according to Fitch Ratings.

AND THIS from Bloomberg May 1, 2016 Saudi Arabia's determination to keep pumping more oil into global markets brings to mind its former oil minister Sheikh Yamani, who said back in 2000 that the Stone Age did not end for a lack of stones, and the oil age will not end for a lack of oil.Those working for him at the time, interpreted this as a warning to OPEC about the pursuit of high oil prices: namely, that it would just speed up the development of alternative technologies and drive away customers, leaving oil sitting beneath the ground without buyers.Sixteen years later, the kingdom's leaders seem to have heeded his warning. Both Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and oil minister Ali al-Naimi have said they will no longer subsidize high-cost oil production by limiting supply. If there's oil to be left under the ground, they're determined it won't be Saudi Arabia's.

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Battery Powered Homes

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The aging boom in real estate has been fabulous for sellers unloading risky and depreciating assets. A recent study of "good and bad booms" (abstract below) suggests that as productivity declines over an aging boom, the risk of insufficient collateral becomes evident. The U.S. productivity chart has momentum relative to Canada's.

Abstract: ​Good Booms, Bad Booms
​​by Gary Gorton and Guillermo Ordoñez, February 2016
NBER Working Paper No. 22008 

Credit booms are not rare and usually precede financial crises. However, some end in a crisis (bad booms) while others do not (good booms). We document that credit booms start with an increase in productivity, which subsequently falls much faster during bad booms.

We develop a model in which crises happen when credit markets change to an information regime with careful examination of collateral.

As this examination is more valuable when collateral backs projects with low productivity, crises become more likely during booms that display large productivity declines. As productivity decays over a boom as an endogenous result of more economic activity, a crisis may be the result of an exhausted boom and not necessarily of a negative productivity shock. We test the main predictions of the model and identify the component of productivity behind crises.

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​Canada needs stronger business investment
Glen Hodgson, Conference Board of Canada
​
“2015 was another mediocre year for the Canadian economy, growing by only 1 per cent in 2015 after a technical recession in the first half of the year. The weakest aspect of Canada’s economy this year was the feeble performance of private investment, projected by the Conference Board of Canada to contract by nearly 8 per cent compared to 2014 levels. Much of this contraction is due to the sharp pullback in investment in the oil patch, now expected to decline by 40 per cent over the course of the year. That result for 2015 is depressing enough—but as the chart shows, Canada’s poor private investment performance in 2015 was not a one-time thing.
​
There’s more to this story than just low oil prices as Canadian firms continue to sit on mountains of cash embedded in their balance sheets. As a result, it is no surprise that we are in the midst of a multi-year period where growth in private investment is weak—the lagging edge of our economy—with little sign of a significant turnaround in 2016. A prolonged period of little or no real growth in private investment is bad news for productivity growth, since it suggests we are missing opportunities to invest in new technology, build our productive base and boost the competitiveness of the Canadian economy. What could prompt stronger investment growth? The growing U.S. recovery should boost demand for Canadian exports and eventually cause firms to invest in order to expand their productive capacity and seize the available export opportunities. But until there is evidence that Canadian firms are responding to a stronger order book, private investment will remain the lagging edge of our economy.”

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​Global GDP is slumping
Bob Hoye, Institutional Advisors
​
“The graph of global nominal GDP runs from 1981 to date and covers another “new era” of financial manias. Our era has been fabulous as reckless adventurers have dominated financial markets as well as central banks. As with previous examples, the action has been mainly in financial assets with real estate prices soaring in the financial centres. Although the experiment in ambitious policy has seemed without limit, there was a severe setback in 2009.

​The alert to the “Great Recession” was classic. Credit spreads reversed to widening in June 2007 and commodities reversed to weakening in June 2008. The rest as the saying went, was history. At -5 per cent, the current slump in global GDP is almost as severe as the one in 2009. This was preceded by the reversal in credit spreads and weakening commodities that began in June 2014. Central bankers have been charged with preventing contractions. This diminishes perceptions of risk and accounts get leveraged. Throughout history margin clerks have always trumped central bankers. This time around, central banks are highly leveraged.”
​

Bob Dylan - Things Have Changed

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First In ~ First Out According to StatsCan, in 2001 after the dot.com blowout and the markets then turned to commodities, there were +/- 329,129 employees working in the Oil, Gas & Mining industries per year in Canada and in full year 2014 that number had increased by 60.8% to 529,248. ​This includes "support activities" but not the peripheral jobs in the general economy that depend on the spending by those oil, gas and mining employees.

“The world of commodities has been turned upside down,” said Daniel Yergin, the energy historian and vice chairman of IHS, a consultant firm. “Instead of tight supply and strong demand, we have tepid demand and oversupply and overcapacity for commodity production. It’s the end of an era that is not going to come back soon.”

Some energy experts are even beginning to express concerns that sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Persian Gulf and oil-producing countries will redeem their money from investment firms in the coming year to shore up their balance sheets. If they do, the moves could initiate more instability in global equity and debt markets.

Credit lines drying up for oil companies?

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​Distress (bonds trading over 1,000bps) has been spreading across the HY space. From its starting point in energy a year ago, it has now reached other commodity-sensitive areas such as transportation, materials, capital goods, and commercial services. But it did not stop here and is also visible in places like retail, gaming, media, consumer staples, and technology – all areas that were widely expected to be insulated from low oil prices, if not even benefitting form them.

​In other words, what was until a year ago a purely "energy" phenomenon is now an "everything" phenomenon, despite promises by every prominent economist that plunging energy prices are great news for the economy.

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Imagine $35 Oil for 5yrs A US-Style Canadian housing correction possibility is a potential that CMHC's CEO Evan Siddall discussed at a private audience presentation in New York, November 30, 2015 if oil remained at an average price of USD$35 per barrel for 5 years. The top chart are oil prices since the OAPEC (Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt & Syria) oil embargo. Note the 22 year period of sub-$35 oil prices not long ago.

Donald Sadoway "Science Serving Society"

Energy 2064 with Professor Donald R. Sadoway

The Bill Gates Backed Canadian Building a Better Battery

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"The negative feedback loop of falling stocks in a world of extremely tepid global demand might just make the crazy idea of $10 oil a lot less crazy sounding" Jack Crooks, Black Swan Capital, August 11, 2015 "What risks do asset price bubbles pose for the economy? Credit-financed house price bubbles have emerged as a particularly dangerous phenomenon." Jorda, Schularick, Taylor, Leveraged Bubbles June 2015

“leaning against the wind” and “mopping up after” 

From a monetary and macroprudential policy point of view, our findings help understand the trade-offs involved in the “leaning against the wind” and “mopping up after” strategies. We show that when credit growth fuels asset price bubbles, the dangers for the financial sector and the real economy are much more substantial. The damage done to the economy by the bursting of credit-boom bubbles is significant and long-lasting. Jorda, Schularick, Taylor, Leveraged Bubbles June 2015

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OIL PRICE COLLAPSE of 2015 - Harry Dent