Oil Has a Reality Check for Those Elated by the Climate Deal

World leaders may have vowed to wean the world from fossil fuels, but prices for oil, coal and natural gas are at their lowest in years. So is that bad news for people hoping to switch the world to cleaner fuels? “Many analysts would take the classical view that a long period of low oil prices would prompt higher demand,” said Bill Hare, chief executive officer at Climate Analytics, a Berlin-based research group. “It depends very much on what governments do to counteract that.”