Argonautica

It was the absence of human dominion over nature that drove King Lear mad: chaotic weather symbolised political anarchy in the realm and an unstable body politic. The problem with the weather - as Lear and his Fool found on the heath - was that energy generated by the wind was inherently capricious and unreliable. It was the genius of Shakespeare that he recognised that it would be difficult to construct a drama where Lear got so upset with a lump of coal, a bundle of firewood or a cake of dung: those were all stored energy at the command of man.

Since the financial crisis of 2008 we have had a bear market in fossil fuels and a bull market in almost everything else, based on cheap money, inexpensive energy, and free trade, all of which are now in the rear-view mirror. Investors lost interest in energy: cast out by the high priests of ESG into the financial wilderness, to live out the remainder of its days in penitence for its sins. Like the Israelites emerging from Sinai, with oil now back over $100 per barrel, fossil fuels are now being…