Edison pegged our climate problem 100 years ago

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Today's Agenda

Nobody owns the environment, but everybody will pay for its destruction.
Apple's fast-growth days are still behind it.
The Fed's work isn't done yet, rate cuts or no.
Twitter has some toxic-content problems of its own.

The Tragedy of the Commons, Global Edition

The world's biggest problem is that the world's biggest problem will always be somebody else's problem until it isn't.

A far less Yogi Berra-ish way of putting this is that human civilization's biggest threat, the despoilment of our environment, is the ultimate example of a tragedy of the commons. That's when a thing is freely available to all the people, so all the people use it up as quickly and irresponsibly as possible, until that thing is gone and all the people suddenly feel all the regret. You can see this most immediately in the oceans, writes Noah Smith: Nobody really owns them, and through overfishing, pollution and climate change we are destroying them. Noah admits we could always grow fish on farms, but is that the world we want? Not to mention the very real risk that making life's cradle inhospitable to life will likely bring many other nasty repercussions.

Thomas Edison recognized this problem 100 years ago, in relation to energy production, writes Liam Denning. He wondered why we burn every resource we can find instead of relying on renewable stuff. This has lately dawned on much of the rest of humanity, but not quickly enough. Liam suggests assigning hard prices to the environment as if it were a scarce commodity as oil once was, because that's what it is.

Meanwhile, even in relatively green Germany, one of the world's biggest users of wind energy, there is a Nimby-driven backlash against wind turbines, notes Leonid Bershidsky. Even some environmentalists oppose them, claiming they hurt birds, forests and such. The wind industry must address this — with better energy storage, say — or Germany will go back to burning stuff again.

In the U.S., the best hope at the moment may be an unsavory but time-honored one: lawsuits, namely against Big Oil. As Noah Feldman writes, this isn't a particularly efficient way to solve social problems, but it has at least assigned hard costs to tobacco's dangers and the opioid crisis. This could be a start to gauging the true value of the commons.

Smartphone Land in Bad Decline

Apple Inc. last night reported a grim quarter to end a grim fiscal year of falling iPhone sales, so the stock naturally … rose today. Because Apple is a software company now, not an iPhone company, according to the market. But Shira Ovide writes investors have gotten a bit ahead of themselves in pricing Apple like some kind of reborn growth phoenix.

Not only is the smartphone market that is still Apple's lifeblood in secular decline, the global economic backdrop is no great shakes, either. Both hammered Samsung's sales and profits in the latest quarter, notes Tim Culpan. And there's not much Samsung can do but hunker down, folding phones or no. The same goes for Sony, which also reported last night.

The Fed's Work Is Far From Done

The Federal Reserve may be done cutting interest rates for now, but nobody should mistake this pause for a sign all is well with Fed policy, Bloomberg's editorial board warns. The central bank is still far too captive to markets, its communication is still too muddled, and its effectiveness is iffy. Any down time it has now should be devoted to solving these problems and getting ready for the next recession.

Further Central Bank Reading:

New ECB honcho Christine Lagarde will need all her skills to win over bank dissenters and recalcitrant politicians. — Bloomberg's editorial board
Hoping for more Fed rate cuts now is tantamount to hoping for a recession, because that's what it will take. — John Authers

Twitter Signals Some Virtue

In the Social Media Brady Bunch, Twitter Inc. is the Jan to Facebook Inc.'s Marcia. But the overlooked middle child won a round last night by declaring a ban on political advertising, just as Facebook — which has apparently chosen political advertising as the hill on which it plans to die — was reporting its earnings. This was a savvy, cost-free way of shaming a rival, writes Shira Ovide, though Twitter still has its own problems with deeply toxic non-ad content.

Much of that content comes from the Twitter account of one President Donald Trump, notes Leonid Bershidsky, from which Twitter has derived much free advertising and social capital.

Telltale Charts

After a tiny bump, America's coal jobs are about to fall again, Justin Fox writes, as the coal industry stubbornly refuses to return to greatness.