While global markets are fixated on the Gulf, cast a weather eye on the Eastern Pacific where a Super El Nino climate event is developing. It could lead to Climate Whiplash events in terms of flood, storms and drought, food inflation and increasing migration tensions. It never rains, but it pours – and that’s not necessarily good for the most important commodity on the planet: Water!

This morning the wind is blowing again in the UK. In Baku they are preparing for the gabfest that will be COP29. In Florida, Trump is getting ready to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. As the planet experiences its warmest year on record, and chaotic climate events multiply – where do we go from here in climate finance?

Over the next 25 years the global shipping fleet will make a massive transition from dirty bunker fuels to new clean energies to achieve Net-Zero. The technologies are evolving, but are now coming on line. Methanol fuelled ships are now in operation – and they are investible!

Smart pundits are buying Uranium. While China builds out its nuclear fleet, the US looks set to favour fossil fuels while the UK’s nuclear plans are over-engineered and slow. Future economic leadership will be determined by energy.  It’s a game the West could well lose.

Rishi Sunak’s U-Turn on Net Zero is politically expedient, but raises serious long-term questions about the investibility of the UK economy and its place in the world, but… hey, it might just win them some votes (just don’t let your kids know!)

Markets are focused on the immediate debt-ceiling crisis, and the short-term game of guessing rates vs inflation. Down the line are the bigger challenges of the medium and long-term: issues we need to be investing in now to garner long-run returns or just to survive!

Wind power is the not the renewable energy panacea we are told it is. It is part of the climate change solution, but we need to understand it’s limitations, and not allow it to distort energy transition. More should be spent on alternatives like tide, hydro and thermal.

Energy and Food Security are intricately linked – and constitute the biggest and most immediate “no-see-um” threat markets have faced in decades. It’s time to get real about addressing energy transition and security, and climate change by accepting Nuclear energy is the most viable solution in the time left us.

Markets and Politicians share many common traits – they over enthuse on the upside and fail to grasp hidden costs and dangers. The Morning Porridge is resolutely in favour of climate change mitigation, but the current headlong plunge into renewable energies and lithium batteries has the potential to end up an environmental and market disaster.

Climate Change and Energy Transition is one of the great challenges to capitalism and market economies – but there is no reason to fear it. Its complex, but infinitely solvable. The technologies exist to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 at a cost far less than doomsters fear.