Agree on the corporate myopia issue... but, on none of the bandwagon re the bs in relation to the false value of "alternative energy" in markets, today... or the politics and propaganda supporting it.
There is a massive ongoing propaganda effort that is intending to facilitate both:
1. the transition to the implementation of "alternative" technologies that can't otherwise compete without the exercise of political influence creating new monopolies... and
2. the transition to a political regime that has staked its future on imposing "success" in that fraud...
That effort is a part of plans that have failed to date, and that will continue to fail... as they should... as they are wrong on the technology, wrong on the markets, wrong on the politics, and wrong on the policy... while propaganda is always only propaganda, and not truth.
Market, political and technological reality is... all that the alternatives can accomplish, today... is to enable fossil fuel producers in raising the monopoly price to match the price at the lower viable limit of the alternative... in spite of all other factors in the balance between demand and supply. Alternatives cannot be made to fuel the world economy... without the fact of their massive relative systemic inefficiency totally destroying the world economy.
Owning a Prius won't make you less likely to starve to death if they succeed in destroying the world economy.
Owning a (lost cost) oil well or a nuclear power plant... might.
The rest is noise... generated by the degree to which energy prices (are enabled to) deviate from the free market price because of political tolerance of (or, insistence on) monopoly practices. We will not benefit by supplanting one monopoly scheme in energy with another... the less when that "alternative" monopoly also comes paired with politics that are all about centralizing control, and anathema to anyone who values personal freedom or free markets...
One controlling reality is that oil sands aren't viable today, and will not be... any more than any of the other technology based alternatives are... if we have free market functions in energy, and oil actually trades at free market prices...
None of the alternatives are viable, today... when you consider them in context of the fundamental economic need for them to compete based on COST rather than price... while the parallel need requires them becoming MORE efficient and not less in the aggregate.
Seen in that context, what Teck did was switch horses... from betting on the (in a real free market) inevitability of increasing demand for coal with accelerating global economic growth... because in reality it is far and away both the largest and the lowest cost source of energy... to betting on the politicians succeeding in imposing a modified monopoly regime in pricing that deliberately sustains both the cabal between OPEC members, and the fictional benefits of the technological alternatives... for political reasons.
The "market" "success" of the alternatives... DEPENDS on monopoly being sustained, and on the sustained trend in centralization of markets to enable control. If OPEC fails to sustain its monopoly... the political schemes of the aggregators fail right along with all the investments made in uneconomic alternatives... whether based in technology or alternative sources of fossil fuels.
Teck's errors... are fundamentally based in their broad failure to understand the politics of energy... and craft market based efforts that will succeed in spite of changes in the energy markets, or the political winds... failing both to understand, first, that politicians could succeed in destroying the market value of coal.... and then failing to understand that, even while succeeding in mucking up basic free market functions, politicians really can't repeal the economic reality that the costs of production matter more than the artificial in the prices of the products. Or, if they do succeed in that... in any meaningful measure... it won't matter what "alternative" you're flogging... since there won't be a market left that requires the product.
Bottom line... all the alternatives (and all the politics and propaganda fostering them) are bullshit... unless and until they can compete on the basis of a LOWER (free market) cost of production... compared to oil, coal, or nuclear...
From a systems approach... that would mean that the largest possible and lowest risk near term benefits, today, would come from re-engineering nuclear to make it "actually" safe... while requiring rapidly replacing all of the Rube Goldberg engineering that was foisted on us by GE and others over the last half century... while not re-building future plants on sea coasts or geologically unstable fault zones... or, above ground... while requiring they be designed and expected to fail without doing what they did in Chernobyl or Fukushima.
Still, as a rational investor... I'm not betting on reason winning out... or on politicians and their propagandists behaving rationally in relation to anything other than their efforts in seeking power to control others.
Since the 1970's, predictably as clock work, OPEC alternately raises and lowers prices, first to foster investment sinks in alternatives... and then to put them out of business... which scheme enables OPEC in sustaining significantly higher than market prices. That game won't end... until we end monopoly market practices... or we see comparable energy from alternatives that costs less to produce than it costs to produce the cheapest barrel of oil in the market. And, as I said, the rest is bs and noise.
Relevance to Copper Fox ?
Probably only in the dependence of all commodity producers on markets continuing to function in a way that enable companies to survive... while market and political systems "engineers" continue to think they know better than nature how rivers should flow.
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