The Political Page, T+213 -- August 21, 2017

A reader alerted me to this story; thank you.

I never know where to place these stories or even post them in the first place. It's like preaching to the choir. Anyone coming to the blog "on purpose" is paying attention to energy and anyone paying attention to energy knows that one doesn't buy a Tesla to protect the environment.

Perhaps the interesting "thing" in this story is not the story itself, but that it was published by "MSN" news. And perhaps, we finally have a number suggesting how much fossil fuel contributes to US and global electricity (it's a lot).

So, here we go, over at "MarketWatch," MSN: want to fight climate change? Don't invest in Tesla.

"Whilst (sic) the electric vehicles and lithium batteries manufactured by these two companies (Tesla and China's Guoxuan High-Tech) do indeed help to reduce CO2 emissions from vehicles, electricity is needed to power them," Morgan Stanley wrote. "And with their primary markets still largely weighted towards fossile-fuel power (72% in the US and 75% in China) the CO2 emissions from this electricity generation are still material."

In the business world, they use the word "material." In mathematics and physics, the word used for "material" is "nontrivial."

Does it bother anyone that Morgan Stanley appears to be building an ETF built on CO2 emissions?

It could be worse (actually it was): in February (2017), Morgan Stanley advocated for looking at "gender diversity" when analyzing companies.

Quick, name ten Fortune 500 companies with transgender CEOs.