Late last year, a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) looked into exactly how much it will take to meet the climate change goals set by the Paris Agreement. The report, composed by the United Nations consortium of hundreds of climate scientists from around the world, found that if the world has any hope of reaching the climate change cutoff set by the Paris Agreement, the international community will have to transition to 100 percent clean energy by the middle of the century.

In the Paris Agreement (which polls show that most U.S. citizens still support, even after President Donald Trump backed out of the agreement in 2017) 186 countries agreed to cap still-rising global temperatures to less than 2° Celsius by 2100, with a goal of limiting warming to just 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. This is a serious challenge, the grand dimensions of which are made all the more clear by the IPCC’s findings…CLICK for complete article 

Commodities were on mostly sound footing in the first half of 2019. The S&P GSCI returned more than 13 percent as of June 30, one of the best first six months in recent memory. It was not without its challenges, though.

In a repeat of last year, crude oil was the top-performing commodity, up 28.76 percent as of June 30. Price action was driven mostly by tensions in the Middle East as well as extended supply cuts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its allies. Global growth concerns began to put pressure on oil in April, but prices surged following June’s attack on two tankers near the Strait of Hormuz, for which the U.S. blamed Iran….CLICK for complete article