Can you cash in if gas goes to $5? Not likely, for these 8 reasons AFP/Getty ImagesOil tankers anchored at Basra harbor, in Iraq.“Is it time to invest in energy?” teases the Wall Street Journal? After all, “as oil prices continue to sink on concerns about weak global economic growth, investors might be tempted to pick up some energy stocks on the cheap.” USA Today nods yes with this teaser: “Former oil exec: $5-a-gallon gas on the way.” Yes, a former Shell president is predicting the “joy ride starts to end later this year.” Oil may hit $100. Risk your retirement portfolio now? Speculate? But what if gas doesn’t hit five bucks a gallon by Christmas? Can you afford the risk? Gamble? Anxiety? The Journal’s Dan Strumpf hit the nail on the proverbial head: “Investors thinking about getting into the sector should have a stomach for volatility and an eye for the long run ... but how long until a rebound takes place is a matter of fierce debate.” Bank of America predicts a bigger collapse of crude prices “to $32 before climbing to $57 a barrel by year-end.” Unfortunately, a helluva other big players disagree with Big Oil’s rosy year-end predictions:1. The Saudi Kingdom oil billionaires warn of a permanent collapse This is just a reminder, because you couldn’t have missed it when NBC News and every other news source reported that Saudi Prince Alwaleed, chairman of Kingdom Holdings and a nephew of former Kind Abdullah said: “Oil Will Never See $100 Again.” Never? Yes, never, as the prince added: “I can assure you that Saudi Arabia is not using the oil price right now to impact the fracking industry in the United States ... there’s an oversupply and demand is not so high.” Yes, the Saudi Kingdom gets it: The world will never see $100 oil again, and America’s high-risk fracking is no sure thing either.2. Warning, the Rockefeller oil heirs are dumping oil stocks So is “one of the biggest names in the history of Big Oil, the Rockefellers” selling, writes the Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson in “The Logic of Divestment: Why We Have to Kiss Off Big Carbon Now.” Last September Rockefeller’s heirs announced they “would be purging the portfolio of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund of ‘risky’ oil investments.” Get it? Even the heirs of the Rockefeller family billionaires see the handwriting on the wall, are dumping oil stocks.3. America’s next generation leaders say let’s dump oil stocks Even more interesting, this revolutionary wave is also driving America’s college students, our next generation of leaders, triggering a revolution across universities, government pension funds and mutual funds in retirement accounts. America’s rapidly moving past the era of fossil fuel: “As climate-change activists pressure public institutions to dump their fossil-fuel investments, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the right thing to do is also the smart thing to do.”4. Philanthropists and institutions are dumping oil investments A revolution is emerging: a “growing number of savvy, social-minded investors are waking up to this risk and moving their money out of fossil-fuel stocks. In September, as the price of oil was entering its free fall, 50 foundations announced they would be ending their investments in fossil fuels over the next five years, a deal orchestrated by Divest-Invest Philanthropy.” Rolling Stone reports Divest-Invest has “secured more than $50 billion in divestment commitments. And these climate-conscious philanthropists are driving toward an even more ambitious goal: $150 billion in divestment commitments before the next round of U.N. climate talks in Paris next December.” Notice that from a politically strategic standpoint, the Divest-Invest Initiative coincides with Pope Francis’ plans to release his new climate change encyclical around Easter. Then in the fall Francis will address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, then the United Nations General Assembly, where he will be teaching 310 million Americans and all 7.3 billion people in the world about his anticapitalist, anti-inequality, antisuperrich economic strategies, as well as his anti-global-warming, pro-climate-change, pro-the-poor, pro-do-the-right-thing moral agenda. And none of this is favorable for the oil industry, putting even more long-term pressure on oil stocks5. Climate-science deniers” like Sen. Inhofe are sabotaging the GOP’s brand “Despite the evidence, many of America’s elected officials have chosen to plug their ears and ignore what the science says. A shocking number of Republicans, over 56%, in the 114th Congress have expressed doubt about the science behind climate change.” And it’s hurting the long-term viability of the Republican Party. Last week the new GOP controlled Senate “voted 98-1 to approve a resolution stating that ‘it is the sense of the Senate that climate change is real and not a hoax.” Initially “the resolution was approved, and co-sponsored, by one of the most outspoken climate deniers in the Senate, Oklahoma’s James Inhofe,” who wrote the GOP’s official science-deniers bible, “The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.” But then just “15 minutes later, the Senate rejected a second resolution that said climate change is real and caused by humans.” Why? At the last minute, “right before a vote was taken, Inhofe took the floor to state that he would be co-sponsoring and approving the amendment on the grounds that yes, climate change is real, but human-caused climate change is not. Inhofe said. ‘The hoax is that there are some people that are so arrogant to think that they are so powerful that they can change climate’.”6. Big Oil is the world’s Biggest Hoax, the GOP has been duped Then the next day after Inhofe got his gavel the “New Senate Environment Chair Goes on a Rant Arguing Climate got Change Is a Hoax,” making a fool of himself on “the Senate floor for a long speech about how human-caused climate change is fake.” Yes, fake. Inhofe ended his rambling rant “promising more of it. So now we’ll have a chance to have hearings, and Mr. President, we’re going to have hearings with prominent scientists to come in and talk about this thing ... We’ll be there to be the truth-squad.” Sadly the real truth is Inhofe just doesn’t understand that the post-carbon world order is rapidly passing his party by. The new truth is that Big Oil is the world’s leading Big Hoax. Why? It’s all about money, the regulation and taxations of carbon emissions. Climate change is no fake, no hoax. Instead, Big Oil is the hoaxer. And the GOP has been hoaxed.7. Wake up Inhofe, wake the GOP, Big Oil’s hoax is hurting you Yes, Big Oil knows climate-science denialism is a Big Hoax. Please, read Mark Hertsgaard’s BusinessWeek op-ed piece again: “Economists from right to left agree that taxing carbon is the most efficient way to cut emissions. A rising, predictable carbon price would unleash the power of the market against climate change, giving both producers and consumers an incentive to shift to lower-carbon energy choices.” Now underline these facts: “Exxon Mobil has been applying a proxy price to carbon since 2007 ... and BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips and Shell also assign an internal price to carbon.” So, “if pricing carbon is good enough for Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, and many of the world’s most profitable companies, how long can climate-change deniers keep a straight face while blocking it for the nation as a whole?” No longer than the Pope’s 2015 addresses to the U.S. Congress and the U.N. General Assembly this fall.8. Warning: Not time to buy oil stocks. Maybe never. Fossil fuel era over Once again: Why do GOP geniuses keep voting in favor of Inhofe’s outdated capitalism-driven Greatest Hoax fantasy? And against their own best economic interests? Simple answer: The GOP needs Big Oil campaign money to survive. So they kowtow to Big Oil. Don’t think independently. And don’t really care about what’s best for America as a whole, nor care for our next generation of kids, for the future of human civilization, for the survival of Planet Earth. All they know is that “capitalism is the solution to all problems,” that’s their selfish ideology. Actually, they can only think about their next election, about holding political power, about pocketing perpetual short-term capitalist profits. No wonder they will lose the presidency again in 2016 ... and again ... and the Democrats will hold till t least 2024. Yet, savvy energy investors are beginning to move past the outdated thinking of Big Oil, capitalists, Koch Bros, capitalists, conservatives. Even as many still believe this is just a temporary down cycle, and soon, as the former head of Shell put it, “$5-a-gallon gas on the way.” Many believe the Saudis, philanthropists, America’s next generation of young leaders will buy the “Big Hoax. Don’t bet on it! Sell oil. Even Saudi Prince Alwaleed agrees. Paul B. Farrell