Suddenly...

From Wretchard: The Chinese poor eat by flashlight — ‘suddenly’

While no one was looking China was running out of coal.

[...]

Now not just China but the whole world is in a bidding war for ‘fossil fuels’. The scarcity was easy to predict. When you discourage something there is less of it. The lights will stay on in rich precincts but it’s lights outs for the poor.

The minor mystery is how momentous trends like the real estate bubble and the power crisis can stay lurking unnoticed below the fold for so long. But nobody saw the fall of the USSR, 9/11, the GFC, Brexit or Covid coming either.

Read the rest here.