[HN Gopher] Big oil coined 'carbon footprints' to blame us for t...
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Big oil coined 'carbon footprints' to blame us for their greed
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 272 points
Date : 2021-08-26 11:32 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| [deleted]
| codingdave wrote:
| I worked in the oil & gas industry about a decade ago. I recall a
| conversation with our CEO directly talking about renewables and
| the environment. He said, very clearly, that this entire industry
| is about money, and they will do whatever makes them the most
| money. If renewable ever paid more than oil, they'd go there. But
| direct from his mouth - it is 100% about money.
|
| If anyone doubts that they are greed-driven, just ask. They don't
| hide it.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Isn't that just capitalism? Replace "oil & gas" with any other
| for profit organizations and the same would be true, no?. E.g.
| if being privacy focused could make Facebook even more money
| than what they're doing now, they'd do it, etc.
| aga98mtl wrote:
| > Isn't that just capitalism?
|
| Soviet Russia was into oil production just as much as anyone
| else. The simple truth is that oil is very useful and the
| externalities are easy to ignore. The blame game is not
| useful for this situation.
| S_A_P wrote:
| I'm not sure how that CEOs response differs from
| <insertanyindustryhere>. It is a rare case that you see a CEO
| decide that some other metric is more important than making
| money.
| qeternity wrote:
| It doesn't. It's a CEO's fiduciary duty to act in
| shareholders best interests.
|
| EDIT: HN, you're really getting juvenile. Save downvotes for
| low quality comments, not 100% factual comments that you
| simply don't like.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| 'best interests' can include priorities other than money.
| qeternity wrote:
| No, they can't. This isn't my opinion. This is opinion of
| the US legal system.
| b3morales wrote:
| No, that's not so; you're under a (common)
| misapprehension:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17529520
| codingdave wrote:
| While the pendulum goes back and forth on this issue, and
| in past decades, it did lean towards profits, I'm not
| aware of any regulatory enforcement of business decisions
| to maximize profits. Quite the contrary, almost all large
| businesses make charitable donations, which is the legal
| basis dating back to a 1956 NJ Supreme Court decision to
| support the legal rights to put social good above
| corporate profits.
|
| Even if that were not the case, we have recently swung to
| the other end of the pendulum, with corporate governance
| groups making an explicit change to work towards more
| than just profits a couple years ago --
| https://fortune.com/longform/business-roundtable-ceos-
| corpor...
| sharemywin wrote:
| The question is about long term interests versus short
| term. having an excellent qtr when you company falls off a
| cliff at the end of the year would probably be considered
| not looking out for share holder's best interest.
| qeternity wrote:
| Sure? All of these evil companies have had many, many
| good quarters (decades worth...which is pretty long term)
| and now have tens of billions of quarterly profits at
| their disposal to invest in wherever the next decades of
| demand will be.
| qeternity wrote:
| > If anyone doubts that they are greed-driven, just ask. They
| don't hide it.
|
| They have a legal obligation to pursue profits for
| shareholders. This is their fiduciary duty.
|
| And they are like this because their consumers are like this.
| If people weren't so "greedy" demanding hydrocarbons at rock
| bottom prices, and instead wanted to pay a premium for solar
| powered EVs, well then hell believe me they would pursue those
| businesses.
|
| But the demand isn't there. Consumers are too greedy. Consumers
| don't want to change their behavior.
|
| EDIT: Downvotes, but no replies. Really HN, we just downvote
| people we disagree with? How about tossing your hat in the
| ring.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Of course this is absurd because consumers have no access to
| information about the emissions that factor into their
| products, and various corporations work very hard to prevent
| this kind of transparency (including misleading people on the
| calculus a la TFA).
|
| Not only that, but most consumers don't concretely understand
| the implications of "climate change" because most people
| can't summon a dozen climate researchers to do a study and
| communicate the results (indeed, in most places the actual
| studies are paywalled). And here too, corporations are deeply
| invested in making sure people believe that climate change is
| just a myth or that the implications aren't as severe as the
| science leads us to believe.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| Do they also have a legal obligation to lie and fund
| disinformation?
| qeternity wrote:
| Complete strawman. I never said this.
|
| Oil companies/execs should be held accountable for
| misdeeds.
|
| But that is a tiny fraction of the problem facing us. Let's
| say they came out decades ago and said "hey, there's
| probably going to be some repercussions for using our
| products" ... do you really think that would have changed
| anything?
|
| We know right now what needs to be done. And yet Biden is
| running around pleading with OPEC to increase production to
| bring gasoline prices down. Why? Because people want cheap
| hydrocarbons, no matter how many downvotes you throw at me.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > Let's say they came out decades ago and said "hey,
| there's probably going to be some repercussions for using
| our products" ... do you really think that would have
| changed anything?
|
| Yes. Big oil's lies and disinformation seeded the
| denialism that took hold in the Republican party decades
| ago.
| qeternity wrote:
| Fine. What would that have changed? You can blame
| denialism all you want but a much more powerful motive is
| economic. For most of their history, fossil fuels have
| been the cheapest source of energy.
|
| It's not as if I see half of the US (Democrats) driving
| EVs, installing solar on their roofs, eating plant based
| diets, etc. Blaming Republican denial is just dishonest.
| thinkcontext wrote:
| I think Exxon et al saying climate change is real and
| their own internal research confirms it would have
| changed policy. Better policies could have meant
| batteries, nuclear, solar, wind, etc could all have been
| cheaper faster. It could have meant a carbon border tax
| which would have hamstrung a lot of US manufacturing
| going to China. The negotiations between Obama and
| Lindsey Graham for a carbon price might have succeeded.
|
| There's a whole "What if?" where the innovation and
| beginnings of a post-denial GOP could have happened
| earlier.
| stephen_g wrote:
| The downvotes are because you are parroting a common
| misconception. There is no 'duty' (legal or otherwise) for a
| company to pursue producing profits for shareholders.
|
| They have to act in the interest of the shareholders, which
| could mean all sorts of things other than producing profit.
| That could include things like "not paying huge amounts of
| money on lobbying and advertising campaigns to spread
| misinformation about renewable energy and try to cast doubt
| on climate change for decades while they knew it was real"...
| nyerp wrote:
| > "Say you have a certain amount of time and money with which to
| make change - call it x, since that is what we mathematicians
| call things. The trick is to increase that x by multiplication,
| not addition. The trick is to take that 5 percent of people who
| really care and make them count for far more than 5 percent. And
| the trick to that is democracy."
|
| > That is, private individual actions don't increase at a rate
| sufficient to affect the problem in a timely fashion; collective
| action seeking changes in policy and law can.
|
| This is actually a description of the politics of "special
| interest groups" and it usually leads to horrible things. If an
| idea is only supported by 5% of the population, we generally do
| NOT want that 5% of the population driving the legislative
| agenda. Instead, ideas need to first gain broad support among the
| general population, at which point enacting legislation may be
| desirable in order to solve collective action problems such as
| preventing free riding.
| majormajor wrote:
| That's not how I interpret that quotation from the article at
| all. "The trick to that is democracy" not "the trick to that is
| lobbying."
|
| Instead of spending your time trying to reduce your own "carbon
| footprint" spend it convincing other people to support
| legislative action.
|
| "Big Oil" wants you to spend your time working just on yourself
| instead of spending your time sharing the information about why
| we need to reign them in. The private individual efforts of 5%
| of people will do less than the evangelical efforts of that
| same group.
| jfim wrote:
| > If an idea is only supported by 5% of the population, we
| generally do NOT want that 5% of the population driving the
| legislative agenda.
|
| It depends. The other 95% of the population might be agnostic
| or unaware of the idea, or the other 95% of the population
| might be opposed to the idea.
|
| If Congress were to pass a law mandating funding for WWVB radio
| until 2050, for example, would even 5% of the population have
| an opinion on it either way?
| [deleted]
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Probably, if you used words they know instead of acronyms
| they don't.
|
| "Do you want the radio signal that allows clocks to sync to
| keep running? Here is a list of devices you might know and
| use that rely on them: ..."
| olyjohn wrote:
| I guarantee nobody would care. Even when you tell people
| the impact it might have on them... they may only have to
| replace one clock, or not any at all. Their cell phone
| clock works just fine.
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| Well if it has no impact on them then maybe it's not so
| important.
| _djo_ wrote:
| There's a difference between them perceiving it to have
| no impact, and it having no impact.
|
| It also may be important enough to keep funding with
| 0.0001% of the budget or whatever it costs, but not
| important enough for a higher level of funding. Still
| requires advocacy.
| calkuta wrote:
| Their business is 100% dependent on our demand for their product.
|
| Who here has made a significant lifestyle change in order to
| reduce their personal contribution to oil consumption?
| arbuge wrote:
| Blaming climate change on the "greed" of oil companies seems to
| me just a way to avoid taking personal responsibility for one's
| own choices as a consumer.
|
| You really can't drive a massive SUV where a smaller vehicle or
| even a bike might work perfectly well and then yell at Exxon
| about their greed.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| And you can't ride a bicycle or train where the infrastructure
| doesn't exist because of pro-car lobbying by the oil companies,
| and then yell at individuals about their 'personal
| responsibility'.
| arbuge wrote:
| I'm going to hazard a wild guess here that there's a lot more
| pro-car lobbying going on by the car companies than there is
| by the oil companies.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| 1. Consumers don't have access to information they need to make
| climate-optimal decisions.
|
| 2. Oil companies lobby hard to make sure people lack the
| aforementioned information, specifically downplaying climate
| change.
|
| 3. SUVs are not even a drop in the ocean compared to industrial
| emissions. You're reaching hard to blame consumers for what is
| transparently industry's fault.
|
| We need to pass carbon pricing and decarbonize our energy
| sector.
| arbuge wrote:
| Regarding 1 & 2, I think there's more than enough information
| out there at this point for anyone to figure out that large
| SUVs are worse than smaller vehicles or bicycles for the
| environment, regardless of whatever lobbying is going on by
| oil companies.
|
| Regarding #3, I don't know if your first statement is correct
| or not, but again it would seem to me that the consumer
| (industries in this case) would have their own share of
| responsibility, not just the oil & gas companies supplying
| them.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Regarding 1 & 2, I think there's more than enough
| information out there at this point for anyone to figure
| out that large SUVs are worse than smaller vehicles or
| bicycles for the environment
|
| That's neither disputed nor relevant. If SUVs were replaced
| with Toyota Corolas overnight, the climate situation would
| be negligibly better.
|
| > it would seem to me that the consumer (industries in this
| case) would have their own share of responsibility, not
| just the oil & gas companies supplying them.
|
| Oil and gas companies are faulted for obstructing efforts
| to change the status quo (lobbying and disinformation
| campaigns), not for supplying energy to their consumers.
|
| Most importantly, we need to pass carbon pricing
| legislation (with border adjustments) so that consumers at
| every point in the supply chain can reason effectively
| about (and share incentives which are aligned with) the
| environment. Here's a site that makes it trivial to write
| your legislator: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/house/
| ivankirigin wrote:
| Blaming supply or demand when you have an unpriced negative
| externality doesn't make sense. Tax carbon, and use the funds to
| pay for decarbonization. We'll get better and cheaper
| alternatives and carbon sinks.
|
| Many quote $100 to $1000/tCO2e. But if we get down to $10,
| getting to net zero and negative won't break the bank.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Who do you think opposes carbon taxes, why, and how do you
| think they express that will politically, and by what means of
| supporting that action?
|
| One of the largely unspoken truths of economics is that wealth
| is power.
|
| Actually, it _was_ spoken, by Adam Smith, in _The Wealth of
| Nations_ , but somehow that short, succinct, critical phrase is
| ignored in favour of a much longer one strung together out of
| multiple sections over hundreds of pages using what for Smith
| was not an _explanatory mechanism_ , as it's often portrayed,
| but of _a statement of ignorance_ , that a cause is unknown.
| TomAbel wrote:
| Controversial thought(not my opinion)
|
| Fossil fuels are good for the world, The reason we used them was
| because we did not have any real alternative at the time. For the
| vast majority of history, people were dirt poor. By utilizing
| fossil fuels we were able to lift billions of people out of
| poverty.
|
| Think about it, you cant really run an industrialized economy on
| 100% reneable energy.
|
| Wind and solar are variable energy sources the more we add to the
| grid the more storage you have use to balance it out.
|
| Hydro(which has its own environmental problems) and geothermal
| are constrained to certain regions which have favourable
| geography.
|
| Fossil fuels are literally stored energy that you can stockpile
| and use when you want to.
|
| We talk about replacing plastic but plastic is one of the
| greatest materials we ever made(its waterproof, light, flexible,
| we can shape it into any form and its cheap so it is accessible)
| just think about all the food we buy at the supermarket most of
| it is stored in some form plastic to keep it fresh( not talk
| about things it does not make sense to store in plastic ie fruit
| that's just silly/wasteful)
|
| Our modern world is built with cement just look around it is
| everywhere, we use asphalt to build our roads and steel to build
| means of transport ships, trains, cars etc
|
| We talk about decarbonization but some countries have not even
| really carbonized to grow their economy to what could be
| considered a decent standard of living. I can't see how we can
| look at 3rd world countries ie India/Africa and other 3rd world
| countries and tell them they can't grow their economies because
| we used up all the carbon "budget".
| majormajor wrote:
| They could certainly _have been_ good for the world and also
| _bad_ for the world going forward. We even have cliches about
| this, "too much of a good thing," etc. It's not a difficult
| concept.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| You can run an industrialized economy on renewable energy. It
| just wouldn't look the same as the one we have developed in the
| presence of fossil fuels.
|
| If there were a colony of modern humans established on an
| Earth-like planet that lacked surface coal seams, didn't have
| limestone deposits for cement, and lacked oil fields, you
| wouldn't expect them to shrug and say "Well, back to the stone
| age, I guess."
|
| No, instead, they'd set up smart grid networks to use power
| when wind and solar were available and consume less energy when
| it was not. They'd use DC-DC converters that were more flexible
| under brownouts, where early energy systems didn't have that
| technology and had to rely on fixed transformers and fixed
| frequencies. They'd connect long distance, high-voltage lines
| between areas with hydro and geothermal energy to regions
| without, using pumped hydro storage when variable energy
| sources had excesses. Yes, they'd run Sabatier process
| factories to generate synthetic hydrocarbons for plastics and
| portable fuels, they'd precipitate calcium carbonate from ocean
| salts and atmospheric CO2 to make cements and ceramics; these
| would probably be less plentiful as a result of their cost and
| because they'd be aware that they don't decay but they wouldn't
| be nonexistent.
|
| Our energy systems are moving bit by painful bit in this
| direction already. Indian, African, and other growing economies
| are growing in a world where renewables are cheap, where we
| have tech that makes them more usable, and where there's a lot
| of knowledge about climate and environmental science so they
| don't have to make the same mistakes we did.
|
| Yes, the industrialized world works the way it does because of
| a history of fossil fuels. It may even have been impossible to
| jump-start the industrial revolution without them. But it
| doesn't have to remain that way.
| me_me_me wrote:
| let me fix it for you
|
| > Fossil fuels 'were' good for 'the current human civilization,
| as it allowed to quickly develop technology at the cost of
| future' because we did not have any real alternative at the
| time.
| [deleted]
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| ngl, their marketing teams are brilliant. yes, they are
| destroying the planet, but they certainly succeeded in driving
| the language/narrative.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Language is way more powerful than people realize. Changing the
| language seems to literally change how we think.
| Stupulous wrote:
| Language doesn't appear to be the driver here. The concept of
| a carbon footprint is what changes how I think, the name is
| just a compelling way of conveying that concept. If it were
| called 'per capita carbon consumption', it would still change
| how we think in the same way, though fewer people might be
| aware of it.
| SCUSKU wrote:
| While I'm no expert in propaganda, Newsspeak was certainly a
| major topic in Orwell's 1984. The purpose of Newspeak was
| solely to build language to control how people think about
| certain topics [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak#Thought_control
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| Doublethink [1] also facilitates control. I expect this
| comment to be controversial, but I will express it
| nonetheless.
|
| Unsurprisingly, doublethink is very prevalent in online
| discussion boards, I have observed it in both progressive
| and conservative spaces.
|
| > Doublethink is a process of indoctrination whereby the
| subject is expected to simultaneously accept two mutually
| contradictory beliefs as correct, often in contravention to
| one's own memories or sense of reality.[1] Doublethink is
| related to, but differs from, hypocrisy.
|
| An example of this within conservative spaces is demanding
| freedom, but supporting fascism, such as the instance where
| the datascientist that reported covid cases from Florida
| was swatted by the police and had her computers and
| hardware confiscated.
|
| An example of this within progressive spaces is demanding
| equality across genders, but at the same time screeching
| about saving women and children from Afghanistan and
| sending men to die like pigs to the slaughterhouse. Or,
| supporting women's education and equality while supporting
| anachronistic systems found within religions that
| facilitate subjugation.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublethink
| teddyh wrote:
| Yet people usually mock Richard Stallman for insisting on
| proper terms being used as a condition for being
| interviewed...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Reminds me of the Negativland album "Free" which discusses
| the use of language and marketing.
|
| Can't find my CD, but there are samples and one says: "The
| right words, said Stalin, are worth a thousand regimen"
|
| EDIT: Found it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXAVvmpNYhM
| seanwilson wrote:
| > But individual and collective action don't have to be pitted
| against each other. Individual choices do add up (they just
| don't, in McKibben's terms, multiply). That vegan options are
| available at a lot of fast-food chains is because enough
| consumers have created a profitable market for them. We do
| influence others through our visible choices. Ideas spread,
| values spread, habits spread; we are social animals and both good
| and bad behaviors are contagious. (For the bad, just look at the
| contagiousness of specious anti-vaccination arguments.)
|
| Strong agree with this. I see people argue all the time that
| individual action won't do anything when it's at least a part of
| getting to a tipping-point where big changes are made.
|
| It's like the public (who want stuff), companies (who want
| money), governments (who want votes from the public and approval
| from companies) and countries are locked in a stalemate all
| pointing fingers at each other over who is responsible and should
| change first. Everyone has to do their part and stop making
| excuses.
|
| Eat less animal products, fly less and drive less where practical
| is the bare minimum everyone should be doing in my opinion
| instead of trying to cling on to unsustainable lifestyles as long
| as they're allowed to.
| datawaslost wrote:
| Huh! It's not every day you see your work called out in The
| Guardian as "insidious propaganda"!
|
| I worked for Ogilvy and Mather in the 00s and made the Carbon
| footprint stuff they mention, at least one version of it. Didn't
| come up with the concept or wording, but was responsible for the
| web implementation in the US.
|
| AMA, I guess
| uhorb wrote:
| Oh cool, thank you.
|
| I've read that oil companies were well aware of how climate
| change is going to develop based on their sales volume and the
| resulting oil consumption.
|
| Assuming that's true for BP. To which detail was the climate
| change impact communicated to you? Was it an explicit
| requirement to focus public interest away from BP?
|
| What is your opinion on the article in this post?
| datawaslost wrote:
| I can't really speak to BP's higher-level strategy, but this
| was the mid-2000s. The fact that an oil company was saying
| _anything_ about climate change felt like a step forward.
| Other oil companies ' ads were all about American workers and
| generic shots of sunsets over oil fields, BP wanted to
| position themselves as the "green" gas station at a time when
| that was becoming more a concern - not just with climate
| change but overall. At that point, BP had a pretty good
| environmental record compared to competitors like Exxon, who
| was still reeling from the Valdez disaster - so the
| requirement would've been to focus public interest _on_ BP,
| not away from it.
|
| But oil companies don't run ads telling people not to buy
| gasoline, so you've got to come at it from a slightly
| different angle. Luckily, "Greener than Exxon" was a pretty
| low bar, so they didn't need to talk about carbon taxes or
| emissions. Personal energy consumption has been a part of the
| discourse since the 70s, and probably fit in well - virtually
| no one will actually change their habits in any meaningful
| way, but will probably come out of it feeling better about
| themselves and BP.
|
| The article itself seemed kinda all over the place. I agree
| that the world would be a better place if her preferences
| would've been enacted fifteen years ago, but I'm not sure
| that BP's advertising campaign had that much to do with it.
| It wasn't 4-D chess, it was "BP = Green = Good", and
| _literally_ blew up in their face a few years later when
| Deepwater exploded.
| rocgf wrote:
| There is this one thing I always wonder about, not just in this
| particular context, but generally about what is seen as
| "greedy" corporations, politicians and so on.
|
| Was the conversation ever blatantly villainous or was it a bit
| more veiled, as is the public discourse?
| datawaslost wrote:
| What would the unveiled villainous conversation sound like?
|
| I think this stuff is a lot less complex than people think.
| Companies just want to increase sales with effective
| marketing that makes them look better than their competitors.
| datawaslost wrote:
| Not my proudest work, but this was pre-Deepwater and BP was
| honestly putting _a lot_ of new money towards green and
| renewable projects. At the time, it felt like a step in the
| right direction.
| rfw300 wrote:
| Do you think it was wrong to do in hindsight?
| datawaslost wrote:
| It doesn't keep me up at night. In retrospect, it was
| probably one of the most dubious things I worked on in a
| decade of advertising, but I (mostly) left the industry
| because it was morally neutral, not outright wrong. It just
| felt like a big waste of talent and money, rather than
| "insidious"
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I know someone who joined Shell with the hope of helping it
| transition to renewable technologies (and who was actively
| lured with that promise), and who later quit after they
| realized that Shell was just trying to get all capable people
| who could be working on sustainability stuff to work for them
| instead, then drip-feed them promises of change while
| tempting them to work on other projects and give up on those
| sustainability things with big sacks o' money. One might
| almost say "embrace, extend (the usage of oil), extinguish".
|
| With hindsight, do you think something like that was
| happening at BP too?
| milkytron wrote:
| > With hindsight, do you think something like that was
| happening at BP too?
|
| I'm pretty sure BP spent more on marketing their
| sustainability initiatives than they actually spent on
| their sustainability initiatives.
| datawaslost wrote:
| Maybe! I think the one thing I've learned from my biggest
| clients is that slight % increases in sales for companies
| of that size equal billions of dollars, so there's so much
| room for waste. It doesn't have to be villainous - they can
| spend $50m on renewable tech and it _just doesn 't matter_
| - it's a drop in the bucket compared to other things, and
| can fail without consequences. I bet it attracted a lot of
| great talent, and I bet a lot of that was lured towards
| more profitable things with big bags of money.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Honestly, the only way for grassroots efforts to do anything is
| to become less dependent on these doubleplus ungood
| corporations. I think your work is incredibly valuable, and
| given the quality of the Guardian recently I wouldn't be
| surprised to learn they're criticising your work because it
| encourages people to consoom less.
|
| Bit of a technical question for your AMA, how do you see the
| tradeoffs in carbon footprints if supply chains shorten?
| There's efficiencies of scale balanced against cost of moving
| materials that I assume means the smallest carbon footprint for
| a given lifestyle requires some extended supply chains, but
| probably shorter than what we have today. Any thoughts on that?
| datawaslost wrote:
| It's interesting how much more complicated and better
| thought-out that stuff is now than it was fifteen years ago.
| I think supply chains and lifecycles are a huge part of
| things, and it was barely a part of our thinking back then.
| It was more like "hey did you know taking a plane burns
| carbon too?"
| Bostonian wrote:
| Big oil is big because billions of people rely on hydrocarbons
| for transport, heating their homes, electricity, and many other
| things. Demonizing "Big Oil" is a way to evade the fact that
| people are not willing to pay large amounts to stop the world
| from warming a few degrees.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Big industry of all sorts routinely tries to manipulate public
| opinion and the machinery of government to keep itself in
| business. That goes for big corn as much as big oil, but big
| oil is the one fucking over the planet.
| lupire wrote:
| Did big oil buy you a big house in the suburbs?
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Now ask me if I have a big house in the suburbs? Answer
| will be no.
| j-pb wrote:
| That is ignoring the trillions of dollar this industry has
| spend on think tanks for the downplay of climate change,
| funding of paid for scientific articles to spread fud, funding
| conservative anti-science parties, lobbying for laws that
| actively hinder progress in renewable energies, hoarding
| patents on renewable energies, buying sustainable competitors
| and killing them.
|
| This is beyond "people don't want to pay more", this is "we
| could get the same energy but cheaper, but that wouldn't allow
| the very powerfull to exhauste an available resource to
| depletion before they move on and leave us all with the
| externalised costs".
| qeternity wrote:
| > That is ignoring the trillions of dollar this industry has
| spend on think tanks for the downplay of climate change
|
| Hahaha oh my. Hyperbolize much? It's difficult to take the
| rest of your comment seriously after this.
|
| > This is beyond "people don't want to pay more", this is "we
| could get the same energy but cheaper, but that wouldn't
| allow the very powerfull to exhauste an available resource to
| depletion before they move on and leave us all with the
| externalised costs".
|
| You don't understand economics. If you make a bad thing
| cheaper, people will consume more of that bad thing,
| depleting it and screwing over the environment even faster.
| Fossil fuels need to be much much more expensive so people
| stop burning them. You can't have it both ways. Oil companies
| may be bad and evil, but you don't even have a tenuous grasp
| on the topic.
| Proven wrote:
| > That is ignoring the trillions of dollar this industry has
| spend on think tanks for the downplay of climate change
|
| Trillions? That's a lot!
| ryan93 wrote:
| They haven't spent any where close to trillions on think
| tanks. People want cheap energy don't need think tanks to
| keep demand for oil high.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Per TFA and many other sources, "Big Oil" (and many other
| industries) lobby and market _hard_ to make sure that people
| misunderstand climate change and lack access to the information
| required to make climate-friendly purchasing decisions. Your
| comment is peak victim blaming.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Obviously not true. People have known about climate change
| for many decades. Every countries media discusses it
| regularly. Scientists have published countless thousands of
| open papers about it. You act like we just found out about
| global warming last week
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| Of course we both know that it's insufficient that the
| media and science discuss it if huge swaths of the
| population distrust those institutions or if they get large
| amounts of conflicting information via their social
| networks.
|
| > You act like we just found out about global warming last
| week
|
| Humanity isn't a borg mind. Just because science has been
| increasing its understanding of climate change for decades
| doesn't mean that the average citizen possesses a climate
| scientist's understanding. And the carbon industries have
| worked hard to ensure that laypeople and especially
| politicians misunderstand.
| ryan93 wrote:
| I actually think everyone understands that dealing with
| climate change means increasing energy costs
| substantially. Oil companies wasted money on lobbying.
| Human nature would have given us the same result
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| I've never met anyone who could estimate with any degree
| of certainty how much a given climate policy (e.g., a
| $15/ton tax on carbon with border adjustments) would
| affect a given product or service (not even gasoline,
| which is a straightforward derivative of oil) because
| supply chains are so opaque. No doubt there are
| economists and other academics who try to get in the
| right ballpark, but even then the error margins are
| enormous and economists account for a minuscule share of
| voters.
|
| > Human nature would have given us the same result
|
| Lobbying _is human nature_. _Human nature already gave us
| this result_. Banding together to overcome special
| interests is also human nature. Everything we do is human
| nature, so this isn 't very meaningful. The meaningful
| question is whether or not we might have implemented
| carbon pricing by now were it not for corporate lobbying
| and disinformation campaigns, and I'm thoroughly
| convinced that the answer is "yes".
| ryan93 wrote:
| Supply chains aren't opaque. Every politician knows that
| energy costs effect everything substantially. Doesn't
| take Nostradamus to know jacking up energy prices pissed
| people off. Flights go up, food prices go up. Gasoline
| shoots up.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| > Supply chains aren't opaque.
|
| So what's the carbon footprint of an XBox Series X? What
| about a 20 oz bottle of Trader Joe's brand extra virgin
| olive oil? If this information isn't readily available to
| consumers, it's "opaque" for all intents and purposes.
|
| > Every politician knows that energy costs effect
| everything substantially.
|
| You give politicians _far_ too much credit.
|
| > Doesn't take Nostradamus to know jacking up energy
| prices pissed people off.
|
| So cut a check to everyone making less than, say, $400K
| (or subsidize things if that's your kink). Perfectly
| feasible with carbon pricing. Moreover, after a while
| corporations will find greener ways to reduce costs. If
| you're a conservative or libertarian, _welcome to the
| free market_.
| ryan93 wrote:
| Wrong every politician knows massive carbon taxes will be
| ultimately borne by consumers. What do you think oil gas
| profit margins are such that they can offset taxes for
| anyone making less than 400,000. Lol thats like 98% of
| the country
| thehappypm wrote:
| People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil. They're
| just responding to demand. We need to make oil less competitive,
| with better alternatives. No point or even value in demonizing
| these companies -- the whole world is complicit.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/climate/koch-brothers-pub...
|
| That is not "just responding to demand," it is actively working
| to inflate demand. Oil companies have worked hard for decades
| to keep people in their cars, including participating in the
| conspiracy to dismantle electric streetcar lines across America
| (along with GM and several tire manufacturers). You say we need
| to make oil less competitive, but oil companies are actively
| working against efforts to do so.
| baron_harkonnen wrote:
| While I do agree that it's overly simplistic to exclusively
| blame oil companies, and for the most part agree that we are
| all complicit, it isn't quite as straightforward as that.
|
| Most of our jobs depend on the creation of demand for products
| and services that didn't exist yesterday. Capitalism isn't
| strictly about fulfilling our needs, but perpetually creating
| new needs, in order to perpetually generate more profit. Those
| needs become real, we're all complicit only in that all of us
| are incapable at this point of honestly living a fossil fuel
| free life.
|
| We can't radically change our society at this point, but it's
| naive and incorrect to assume that our unsustainable way of
| life was the only option. Most indigenous peoples around the
| globe had lived in a way that was sustainable. The Pre-
| columbian population of the America's is estimated to have been
| as high as 112 million people [0]. The societies were large and
| complex and yet still were able to avoid destroying their local
| portion of the biosphere.
|
| Even in our industrial society there have been critics of our
| way of life every generation and there have been people working
| to silence that criticism, and it's not just the average person
| doing this work. One the example that I find particularly
| surprising is that the Club of Rome's _Limits to Growth_ ,
| published in 1972, was a fairly major part of the American
| zeitgeist, so much so that Ronal Reagan specifically attacked
| this idea in his famous quote:
|
| > There are no great limits to growth because there are no
| limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.
|
| Consequently an era of aggressive neoliberalism means that
| ideologically people are _less_ willing to accept that infinite
| growth on a finite planet is a problem than they were 50 years
| ago.
|
| I think it's important not to fall into the easy trap of
| thinking that a bunch of evil oil execs are solely responsible
| for climate change, but at the same time it's overly
| simplistic, and perhaps equally dangerous, to simply say "this
| is what everyone wanted". A severe alcoholic might want to quit
| drinking, but at the same time wants to continue, if there is
| someone in that person's life encouraging and enabling their
| drinking we typically find that individual culpable in the
| former's struggle to recover.
|
| [0] https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0289.htm
| splatcollision wrote:
| They call themselves "energy" companies, so where does it
| matter where that energy comes from?
|
| In that perfect world where once they knew early on that the
| consumption of their product would lead to an uninhabitable
| planet for future generations (because that's what we're facing
| now), couldn't they have pivoted (slowly) towards true
| renewables and battery technology? They could have been the
| leaders instead of the culprits, and positioned for greater
| long term growth and shareholder value, instead of the
| relatively short term profits of business as usual.
|
| As long as we're writing science fiction that is... But someone
| somewhere made a choice to bury the science and keep the status
| quo, either by action or inaction.
| nitrogen wrote:
| Some of them did. The first solar panel I ever saw in person
| had a BP logo on it. But big ships turn very slowly.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| They do invest in renewable energy, as it becomes the clear
| replacement for diesel and gasoline.
|
| First you had the decarbonization of the electric grid, and
| of course that those companies de-carbonized first. Now that
| cars are getting de-carbonized, you see Shell, BP and others
| invest in green energy as well.
|
| These are companies that respond to shareholders, not sure
| how they could "invest for the greater good" at a loss
| without betraying their investors. Only governments can
| invest at a loos, if the public opinion can stomach it.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottcarpenter/2021/03/29/shell.
| ..
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/bp-bets-future-on-green-
| energy-...
| akamaka wrote:
| I used to only blame consumers, until I learned how inefficient
| oil production is and how much CO2 is emitted at the oilfield.
| Yes, some oil companies are burning huge amounts of oil and
| methane before the product even reaches the end user. For
| decades, these companies have chosen against implementing
| process improvements, and the only way they will do anything is
| by penalizing them.
|
| https://news.stanford.edu/2018/08/30/measuring-crude-oils-ca...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| How is this different from literally any company, though?
|
| If it would be more profitable to be efficient, they would
| be.
|
| Where are these mythical giant companies that are foregoing
| profits and doing the right thing and not getting sued by
| shareholders?
| fisf wrote:
| Because they are creating negative externalities that are
| not priced.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| These disinformation campaigns are a major obstacle to
| introducing the kind of reforms required to decarbonize our
| economy. Overcoming these obstacles largely requires shining a
| light on their bad behavior so the oil companies (and other
| industry groups) lose credibility and thus undermine their
| disinformation campaigns.
|
| Perhaps to your point, there's no way out of this mess without
| carbon pricing, and even Democrats (who profess to believe that
| climate change is an existential threat) won't rally behind it
| even though it would free up massive amounts of money to fund
| their redistributive programs--choosing instead to _spend_
| large amounts of money on symbolic efforts such as a "citizens
| climate corps". I suspect this speaks in large part to the
| extent to which corporations have politicians in their pockets
| (certainly Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the coal industry
| and doesn't even pretend otherwise). Note that this isn't to
| say Republicans are better--by and large Republicans haven't
| even signed onto the idea that climate change poses an
| existential threat.
|
| EDIT: everyone should write their congresspeople and urge them
| to support carbon pricing initiatives. Here's a dead-simple
| link that takes your email and your address, identifies your
| representatives, and gives you a form pre-populated with a
| canned message that will be emailed when you click "submit":
| https://citizensclimatelobby.org/house/
| ren_engineer wrote:
| the tragedy is that we'd probably be carbon neutral if it
| wasn't for activists who lobbied against nuclear energy decades
| ago because it wasn't "environmentally friendly"
| pjc50 wrote:
| It was inextricably linked with nuclear weapons; Greenpeace
| got their start protesting against atom bomb tests in the
| Pacific, and later against the dumping of radioactive waste
| in the sea.
|
| The pollutants are uniquely permanent, and not enough effort
| was made to not just contaminate the world.
|
| Perhaps the nuclear industry needs to examine why their
| marketing failed where the oil industry succeeded.
| thehappypm wrote:
| It's largely because of the free market. There is not
| really a nuclear "industry", nuclear plants are more of a
| government thing worldwide. Governments aren't as good at
| the ruthless cost-cutting and decision-making that is
| needed to be competitive with the private sector. It's hard
| to imagine an Exxon-for-nuclear when you consider that
| nuclear fuel is impossible to acquire privately.
| teddyh wrote:
| From what I understand, nuclear power was "inextricably
| linked with nuclear weapons" because it was _designed to be
| that way_. From what I hear, it can, and could, relatively
| easily be designed otherwise, but the powers that be wanted
| nuclear weapons at the time.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Absolutely; the power generation was almost a side effect
| of producing plutonium. This also cross funded the
| projects. Many of the countries with reactors have the
| bomb (notable exceptions: Canada, Japan, Germany)
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil.
| They're just responding to demand.
|
| No, they're not.
|
| > We need to make oil less competitive, with better
| alternatives.
|
| Like tobacco companies, oil companies have actively lied and
| lobbied to maintain demand and obstruct coordinated effort of
| exactly the kind you describe as necessary. They are not
| passive actors simply responding to demand as they find it.
| coryrc wrote:
| Is Big Oil why we can't have affordable, safe, quiet housing
| in dense cities?
|
| Is Big Oil why people like taking planes to Hawaii?
|
| Is Big Oil why it's much cheaper to heat with natural gas?
| m4x wrote:
| > Is Big Oil why it's much cheaper to heat with natural
| gas?
|
| Heating with natural gas is incredibly expensive. It only
| looks cheap because most of the costs are externalised -
| thanks to lobbying by Big Oil.
| ggggtez wrote:
| Yes. I think you're trying to be sarcastic, but it's true.
|
| Cities are designed the way they are because of cars. Roads
| and highways cut up the city and make neighborhoods less
| walkable. That wasn't an accident, but the result of
| decades of lobbying by oil and car industries.
|
| People like flying to places because they are fed FOMO
| about travel. That has a profit motive. You may find this
| less convincing.
|
| And yes, it's cheaper to use natural gas because of... Drum
| roll... Lobbying. Consider what heating would cost if those
| companies were properly paying for the environmental damage
| they are causing. Look at California PG&E going bankrupt
| after the damage from the huge forest fires they kept
| causing. Climate damage is no less real, but who is footing
| the bill?
| drdeca wrote:
| I can't say definitively for the first one, but for the
| second one, obviously not.
|
| However, lies are bad.
|
| Presumably they had a motivation to tell such lies, yes?
| Presumably they believed that telling such lies were to
| their benefit? Presumably the mechanism by which they
| believed telling such lies would be to their benefit would
| be by influencing the actions of others?
|
| Surely you don't think the reason for the lies is just that
| they would feel socially awkward if they had been honest?
|
| Presumably they perceived a risk that if they hadn't lied,
| that some regulations would have been imposed.
|
| These regulations could have restricted emissions by
| reducing consumption.
|
| Yes, this would mean that consumers would lose something
| they wanted.
|
| This does not justify lies.
| coryrc wrote:
| > this would mean that consumers would lose something
| they wanted.
|
| When was the last time politicians voted for something
| >55% of their voters didn't want? LBJ and the Civil
| Rights Act? How did that turn out?
|
| Number 1 shared American value is mass consumerism.
| drdeca wrote:
| I didn't say they people would be against the regulation.
| I said they would lose something they wanted, which is
| something people do basically whenever they spend money
| (they lose money, which is something they want, in
| exchange for goods or services that they want more).
| majormajor wrote:
| The oil industry and the auto industry and the layout of
| 20th century American cities are all pretty thoroughly tied
| together, so I think you're significantly underestimating
| the effects of _deliberate action_ on the world.
|
| There's a certain mindset of technological determinism that
| says we can't control what happens with a new technological
| development, and how it impacts our society, but I
| completely disagree with it. And so do the people running a
| lot of the companies developing those technologies - they
| have and will continue to aggressively push for the
| policies which favor them _regardless of the externalities_
| , so we absolutely have to push for regulation of how
| technology is used and shapes our lives.
| coryrc wrote:
| If you want to say part of the reason we have suburban
| sprawl is auto companies, I'll agree with you, but people
| had real increases in standard of living when moving out
| of towns. The air was cleaner, the area safer for kids,
| and it was quieter (especially given our shoddy apartment
| buildings).
|
| The way the GI Bill was structured contributed as well.
|
| But Big Oil? Way down the list. If you aren't conceiving
| of the real reasons, you can't address people's true
| concerns. In a democracy their vote is just as valuable
| as yours.
| coryrc wrote:
| To answer my questions:
|
| 1 Not to my knowledge; housing policy reflects the desire
| for segregation.
|
| 2 No, Hawaii is nice.
|
| 3 No, it's physics. Until very recently even a heat pump
| would burn more hydrocarbons using the grid than direct
| heating and cost a lot more.
| orwin wrote:
| 1: True
|
| 2: Big oil did push to keep the plane fuel low (or rather
| inexistant) worldwide though. But true.
|
| 3: What? No. Unless recently is everything after the 70s.
| Heat pump was more efficient than gas heating since the
| 50s (at least), but was hard to control, that was the
| main issue. My friend grandad learned to work with heat
| pumps during the Franco-Algerian war (54 i think) and
| installed one in his home (on Oleron Island) in the 70s
| (first that were home-sized). I think they were built in
| Sweden. His career was made on this tech.
| coryrc wrote:
| Our electrical grid was mostly coal which is more carbon
| intensive than gas, requiring an efficiency not possible
| for heat pumps to emit less carbon than burning natural
| gas directly. Additionally they did not work below
| freezing well or at all.
|
| Of course, insulation is and was the most carbon-
| efficient investment.
| noelherrick wrote:
| Whataboutism is not very effective to an audience trained
| to understand it. Perhaps try again.
|
| The oil industry has spent much on misinformation and
| lobbying around their impact to climate. They are actively
| evil. From Standard Oil on, this industry has always been
| about enriching the few at the expense of everyone else.
| Big Oil is an active threat and everyone involved in its
| climate change denial needs to be removed from the energy
| industry.
| marcusverus wrote:
| > Like tobacco companies, oil companies have actively lied
| and lobbied to maintain demand and obstruct coordinated
| effort of exactly the kind you describe as necessary. They
| are not passive actors simply responding to demand as they
| find it.
|
| These really aren't very similar. Big Tobacco's lies were the
| only thing propping up the tobacco industry. As soon as the
| truth became clear, their industry was absolutely crushed.
| The truth about climate change has been clear for decades,
| but unlike the situation with tobacco, the demand for Oil &
| Gas keeps on growing[0]. This is because, unlike tobacco, Oil
| & Gas is absolutely indispensable--especially for developing
| countries.
|
| Lying about climate change was a terrible thing, and it cost
| us precious time. But we still need them to keep the lights
| on, and pretending that the act of producing Oil & Gas today
| --when it is literally a hard requirement to keep the lights
| on around the world-- is somehow pernicious, is just
| silliness. The world is stressful enough without all the
| outrage theatre.
|
| [0] https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels
| ggggtez wrote:
| Arguably the only thing propping up the oil industry is
| lies as well... If it wasn't for the big lie that Climate
| Change isn't real, then the USA would have never left the
| Paris Accord, and would have much stricter Climate goals
| already in place.
|
| So yes, lies and lobbying are propping up big oil.
| [deleted]
| fallingknife wrote:
| > As soon as the truth became clear, their industry was
| absolutely crushed
|
| Gonna have to disagree with you on that one...
| https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PM
| JohnWhigham wrote:
| Seriously, not sure what they're talking about. Many
| tobacco companies have exceptional dividends. If they're
| going to continue to supply their wares, I want a little
| piece of the pie in my portfolio.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "a hard requirement to keep the lights on around the world"
|
| That is a bad example of what we need the petroleum
| industry for. A combination of wind, solar, hydroelectric,
| and nuclear power could meet the world's electricity needs
| for many decades to come, especially as we have become so
| much more efficient with our electricity use compared to
| previous decades. The very link you provided states,
| "Globally, fossil fuels account for a much smaller share of
| electricity production than the energy system as a whole."
|
| The bigger challenges are transportation (especially
| airplanes and cargo ships) and the chemicals industry,
| where oil is much harder to replace. Electric cars and
| trains are doable with sufficient infrastructure
| investment, but for cargo ships the only real alternative
| right now is nuclear power, and I am not sure we have any
| viable alternatives for air transport as we know it.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > > People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil.
| They're just responding to demand.
|
| > No, they're not.
|
| That would be more convincing if you gave a reason _why_ you
| say "no, they're not". Even better would be evidence.
| bwha wrote:
| Sigh. I mean are people really this unaware of the decades
| long efforts by oil companies to cover up the truth of what
| was going on?
|
| I'll act in good faith and believe they are.
|
| One quick summary by the BBC:
| https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-53640382
|
| Choice quotes from above: "... I created a model that
| showed the Earth would be warming very significantly. And
| the warming would introduce climatic changes that would be
| unprecedented in human history. That blew my mind.
|
| They (the oil execs) were saying things that were
| contradicting their own world-class research groups..."
|
| An in depth look in podcast format.
|
| https://drillednews.com/podcast-2/
|
| Season Summaries: Season 1: The Origins of Climate Denial
| traced the corporate-funded creation and spread of climate
| denial, including interviews with former Exxon scientists,
| primary source documents, and an in-depth look at the
| history of fossil fuel-funded influence campaigns.
|
| Season 2: Hot Water follows a group of West Coast crab
| fisherman who are experiencing first-hand the devastating
| impacts of climate change. And this unlikely group of
| climate activists just became the first industry to sue big
| oil.
|
| Season 3: The Mad Men of Climate Denial digs into the
| history of fossil fuel propaganda and the few "Mad Men of
| climate denial" who shaped it.
|
| Season 4: There Will Be Fraud follows the fossil fuel
| industry's efforts to use the COVID-19 pandemic to push
| through its wishlist of deregulation and subsidies.
|
| Season 5: La Lucha En La Jungla looks at the decades-long
| battle between indigenous groups in the Ecuadorian Amazon
| and Chevron.
|
| Season 6: The Bridge to Nowhere: A season in three parts
| about the past, present, and future of the natural gas
| industry.
| slingnow wrote:
| I promise you that the reason I drive my car everyday has
| nothing to do with propaganda from the oil companies in
| any meaningful way.
|
| I'm 100% certain they covered up the truth, but I have no
| reason to believe that had everyone known the truth,
| anyone would have cared beyond hardcore
| environmentalists.
|
| Most everyone does what's convenient and necessary until
| otherwise required.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Driving your car does not fundamentally require burning
| carbon. That's the thing. Oil companies did not create
| demand for energy. But they did create demand for _oil_
| by sabotaging efforts to shift to other energy sources.
| rangerelf wrote:
| > > > People act like oil companies are the ones burning
| oil. They're just responding to demand.
|
| > > No, they're not.
|
| > That would be more convincing if you gave a reason why
| you say "no, they're not". Even better would be evidence.
|
| He did give his reasoning, you just chose not to quote it:
|
| > > Like tobacco companies, oil companies have actively
| lied and lobbied to maintain demand and obstruct
| coordinated effort of exactly the kind you describe as
| necessary. They are not passive actors simply responding to
| demand as they find it.
|
| And his reasoning was based on propaganda, if oil companies
| are just passive actors responding to demand, what's the
| need for such vicious amounts of lobbying and propaganda?
| My guess is that they're creating the need, and making sure
| that information and products that go against that
| propaganda don't become widespread.
| relax88 wrote:
| They are doing both.
|
| Cigarettes are a luxury item. Petroleum products are a
| requirement for modern life.
|
| You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists and
| lobbyists on the planet and I doubt it would make a dramatic
| dent in oil consumption.
|
| Couldn't possibly hurt though!
| thinkcontext wrote:
| > You could fire all of the corporate PR propagandists and
| lobbyists on the planet and I doubt it would make a
| dramatic dent in oil consumption.
|
| There's a good chance we could have had a carbon price or
| other real measures 10 or more years ago without the
| malignant denialism seed planted by their propagandists.
| epistasis wrote:
| > Petroleum products are a requirement for modern life.
|
| This is the most insidious and false lie that is spread.
| Right now we are going through a technological revolution
| in humanity, maybe on the level of the development of
| agriculture, in how we generate energy. Renewables and
| storage are often cheaper than fossil fuels at the moment,
| and they are getting cheaper just like Moore's law
| describes the densification of transistors on chips.
|
| HN is full of technologists. We, of all people, should
| recognize the capacity for technology change. And that
| technology change is actual work, that needs actual funding
| and labor, in order to happen.
|
| We do not need fossil fuels for modern life, if we develop
| the technology. Dedicated technologists and entrepreneurs
| over the past 50 years have made solar power the cheapest
| energy out there, despite massive political power and the
| all the money of fossil fuel companies fighting against
| them.
|
| If we had prioritized solar and storage, could we have
| accelerated the tech's development by 10 years? 20 years?
|
| We don't have every single aspect of technology for
| decarbonization solved yet. Aviation fuel, for example. But
| that doesn't mean we can't, it just means that we haven't
| tried hard enough.
| rb12345 wrote:
| The problem you're possibly missing here is that oil is
| used for a lot more than just fuel and energy production.
| It's used for everything else: road surfacing, plastic
| production, synthetic fibres, chemical and pharmacutical
| production, lubrication, fertiliser production (although
| you could switch to green hydrogen for that), and much
| more. None of that demand disappears if you stop burning
| oil and gas, although maybe you could use bio-oils as a
| starting point for some use cases.
| epistasis wrote:
| What's the problem there though? If it's not burned, for
| energy, then it's not causing emissions.
|
| The one emitting use case you talk about is fertilizer,
| and the switch from the Haber process to using
| electrolyzed hydrogen is already starting. It will
| require a decade or more of tech development to make it
| cheaper than existing processes, most likely, but it's
| almost certain to happen as we scale industrial
| electrolysis.
|
| An example hydrogen fertilizer project:
|
| https://www.bloombergquint.com/technology/spain-could-
| become...
| relax88 wrote:
| When I say petroleum products are a requirement for
| modern life, what I mean is that more than 80% of the
| energy driving modern society comes from fossil fuels. It
| probably doesn't have to be that way, but it is. You
| definitely can't say that for cigarettes.
|
| I think that you raise a valid point, but also that
| you're far too optimistic about renewables.
|
| The people of HN are indeed very tech focused, and I
| believe that such optimism about energy transformation
| with renewables may be more difficult to foster if this
| forum were called "Engineering and physics news" simply
| because technologists tend to suffer from the "Law of the
| hammer" problem.
|
| There are very real engineering challenges with
| renewables that may very well preclude the kind of
| dramatic progress you're referring to. Solar and Wind for
| example require huge amounts of land, and have a fairly
| high materials throughput as their lifespan is typically
| only 15-20 years. All of that effort is spent gathering a
| diffuse source of energy. There are very real physical
| limits to how much energy you can gather per square foot,
| per kg of silica, concrete, or steel.
|
| I think your sentiment is correct about nuclear though,
| which makes me wonder how much big oil has been funding
| groups like the Sierra Club et al. who have spent nearly
| half a decade campaigning against nuclear energy.
| epistasis wrote:
| I didn't say anything about nuclear here... but since you
| brought up the subject, I think it's a perfect
| illustration of how misaligned perception and reality are
| on the subject.
|
| The "physical limits" of renewables are not limits to our
| current energy use or even an order of magnitude more.
| Similarly, the amount of materials is still far far far
| less than what is required with fossil fuels. And the
| amount of material needed to build a 1GW nuclear reactor
| is within a factor of 5-10 of what it takes to build an
| equivalent amount of solar power, last time I checked.
| Both of these are far far far less material than what's
| needed to generate equivalent energy from fossil fuels,
| it doesn't even really compare.
|
| The complaints against renewables are pretty much
| insignificant, and definitet not applicable to reality,
| but these are the complaints that get perpetuated and
| listened to again and again in utility decision makers.
| Meanwhile, these same decision makers are not avoiding
| nuclear because of what environmental groups are saying,
| they are avoiding it only because of financial reasons.
| What it took to restart nuclear construction wasn't
| protection against environmenta lawsuits, it took the
| South Carolina and Georgia legislatures passing bills
| that would allow the utilities to bill for construction
| even if it weren't overbudget, and even if construction
| failed and the project never generated electricity. Cost
| is the primary barrier to new nuclear, not environmental
| opposition.
|
| Nuclear has spent 50 years over-promising and under-
| delivering, solar and wind have spent 50 years under-
| promising and over-delivering. They are a study in
| contrasts between a hype driven field (nuclear) and a
| results driven field (renewables).
| mindslight wrote:
| If you want to frame this in terms of the demand side, then
| downsizing all of the PR propagandists would be a great
| start, along with all the other zero sum jobs. Instead of
| efficiency gains causing people to work less and consume
| less resources for the same output, central banks insist on
| "full employment" stimulus that creates make-work jobs to
| compensate. And despite their utility being zero-sum, these
| workers are churning hard in the rat race - buying new
| cars, fancy clothes, big houses, and other wasteful
| spending as they're time strapped. If instead of churning
| these people were allowed to just retire, they would use
| much less resources.
|
| But it seems like we can't insist on financial reform to
| slow down the economy, because every crisis becomes an
| excuse for the central banks to pump the gas while scaring
| people with the deflation bogeyman. And so we're stuck
| focusing on direct intervention to prevent the ever growing
| throng of antiproductive labor from doing as much damage.
| lupire wrote:
| "full employment" is everyone who is _willing_ and is
| _able_ to work, not everyone. Also, "full" is defined as
| something like 96% of people who are willing and able.
| mindslight wrote:
| I don't see how spelling out their technical definition
| addresses what I said. Current central bank policy
| guarantees that most everyone will "want" to be working
| to keep paying for their dwelling. Sure, technically if
| they changed the stimulus to basic income that was high
| enough to make fewer people "want" to work, then "full
| employment" could be achieved with less human labor. But
| in practice that's not how the term is used at all,
| because of the underlying protestant work ethic asserting
| that work is good for work's sake.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I've never heard a complete argument as to how central
| bank policy makes people want new cars, fancy clothes, or
| big houses (or tropical and ski vacations)...
|
| I think people want those luxuries and (many) are willing
| to work for them entirely independent of central bank
| policy.
| dnautics wrote:
| Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and
| investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it
| on something fun?
|
| Consume consume consume! It's good for the economy (if
| you don't grow exponentially at any environmental cost
| then you can't keep up with inflation and our economy
| collapses)
| luckylion wrote:
| > Isn't it basic that if there's no point to saving and
| investing is a rigged casino, you might as well spend it
| on something fun?
|
| I don't think it works that way. I know a few people who
| are very financially conservative, and I am as well. None
| of them have responded to interest rates of 0% by
| consuming more. Everyone has shifted their accepted risk
| a little bit, but that's about it, they're still putting
| aside money.
|
| On the other hand, the people I know that are spending
| every available coin for vacation and consumption already
| did so 20 years ago.
| mindslight wrote:
| Have you, or someone you know, ever alternated between
| having a high-compensation low-free-time (eg high paid
| tech job), and low/no-compensation high-free-time (ie
| funemployment) ? They're two completely different
| operating modes. In the first mode, every minute of time
| is valuable so you pay more for convenience (eg
| restaurant food, same-day shipping), and when you're not
| working you're willing to spend a lot of money to "relax
| harder". You also tend to buy new gadgets for the
| dopamine release and hope of doing something with them,
| and then never quite get around to actually using them.
| In the second mode, you're willing to spend more time to
| get routine things done, engage in hobbies that take
| patience, cook your own meals, and generally try to keep
| your burn rate lower. The financial treadmill pushes
| people towards the first mode, as one's burn rate always
| includes housing rent that demands a significant base
| level of income.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I see the multiple modes, but I think it's human nature
| and not central bank policy as being the prime driver of
| that behavior or of the overall financial treadmill.
|
| On average: People want nice things more than crappy
| things. Nice things cost money. Getting money requires
| doing something to create value. Creating value for most
| people means working at a job. If you want nicer/more
| things than last year or than your neighbor, you need to
| increase your income.
|
| The beauty of this system is that individuals can choose
| to live frugally and opt-out of the race to a significant
| extent, taking advantage of the equity market's
| consistent long-run returns to setup a system where they
| can work hard for 10-15 years and bank enough to live a
| frugal life for their lifetime. In that regard central
| bank's current easy money policy is very much supportive
| of the choice of people consuming less than 100% of what
| they could rather than encouraging 100+% consumption.
| mindslight wrote:
| I'd call that choosing to consume less _despite_ the
| central bank 's policy. Pulling back to coast doesn't
| work when you're "in it". To get to that point, you've
| got to churn hard in a city (economic center), avoid
| hedonistic temptations as much as you can, and then at
| some point decide to pull the ripcord and leave to a low
| cost of living area. At which point you know that it will
| be really hard to get back on if your projections don't
| hold.
|
| That's also to say nothing of the (inherently majority
| of) people who can't sock away enough surplus to do that,
| and end up on the treadmill their entire life. Tech gives
| us an outsized perspective here once again, by giving us
| more than urban-subsistence wages such that we can save
| up in the first place.
|
| As to people's want of ever-more "nice things" driving
| their need to work so much, I just don't buy it. Rather,
| I see an extreme social pressure to keep working as much
| as possible (try negotiating less than 5 days a week, or
| every third week off), and then they fill in "nice
| things" as a rationalization. The same sentiment is
| repeated in many different areas (spend more time with
| your kids, etc), but yet few can individually move in
| that direction without totally eschewing the system
| ("pulling the ripcord").
|
| And while it's possible for some people to escape the
| treadmill, it's not a possibility for most people and
| therefore not sustainable for society. There's a reason
| people doing it get labels like retired, FIRE, startup
| lottery, trust fund kid, etc.
|
| As for central bank policy, it's reflected in
| malinvestments like much of Surveillance Valley. One of
| the most glaring examples was those startups buying
| electric scooters in bulk, under the hope that if they
| filled the sidewalk that money would eventually fall in.
| That's misproduction (and environmental pollution) driven
| directly by too much capital sloshing around, seeking any
| sort of return.
| relax88 wrote:
| This is an excellent way to describe it.
|
| I've definitely had times in my life with both modes.
|
| There is very much a lifestyle trap in which the current
| work culture prevents a truly balanced approach.
|
| I suspect one of the barriers to having a reduced work
| week is the cost of employee benefits. Companies want to
| get their money's worth for every employee on payroll. So
| the options for reduced work hours are somewhat limited.
| If you make 75k a year, it seems every extra dollar
| beyond that has less value per unit of time spent to earn
| it. I would rather work 20-30hrs a week for half of my
| salary but there aren't any employers who like that idea,
| nor is it easy to do the consultant/contractor thing as a
| solo contributor who only puts in 20-30hrs.
|
| Personally my response (intentionally or not) has been to
| leave roles when I'm feeling burnt out, take some time
| off, learn some new skills to boost my market value, and
| then rinse and repeat.
| mindslight wrote:
| The biggest intrinsic barrier is that increasing the
| number of employees increases the communications
| overhead. Would you rather have one computer with 8 cores
| and 64G of memory, or two computers each with 4 cores and
| 32G of memory?
|
| Employees could push back regardless, but lack the power
| because the BATNA is being left with zero income in the
| face of huge economic rent. If housing rent were much
| less of your income, then your necessary burn rate would
| be much lower and you'd have more bargaining power.
|
| And yeah for highly paid tech roles, a pragmatic solution
| is to alternate between pouring yourself into a job full
| time, and taking off periods of funemployment (or
| possibly a grassroots startup, etc). But we should
| recognize that's only possible due to our outsized
| compensation, and can't really define the economy writ
| large.
| refurb wrote:
| Nope.
|
| Consumers knew burning gasoline and diesel created pollution
| 60 years ago.
|
| They could have push for clean alternatives but didnt.
|
| Don't give them a pass.
| isoskeles wrote:
| A pass on what? Are we going to punish them?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Some did. The green parties go a long way back.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| So did the oil companies, and they still continued lobbying
| against environmental regulations and in favor of fossil
| fuels. So why are you giving them a pass?
| laumars wrote:
| Ah the old "don't hate the player hate the game" argument.
|
| It's quite possible to hate both. Yes we as a populous need to
| do our part too but the oil companies aren't providing us with
| their services out of generosity. They've been actively
| campaigning against change. Which is literally what this
| submission is trying highlight.
| gaze wrote:
| Just responding to demand by hiring lobbyists yup sure.
| csours wrote:
| I know HN just puts the title from the article, but I'd love it
| if we could add an OPINION when it's an opinion article.
| specialist wrote:
| 'Carbon Footprints' [2004] smells like Frank Luntz. So I quickly
| scanned OC. Nope. Ogilvy & Mather, a different repeat offender.
|
| Amusingly, sensing an opportunity in the fast growing climate
| crisis FUD services market, in 2008 they launched OgilvyEarth.
|
| https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=OgilvyEarth
|
| Never let a good crisis go to waste.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| We've known aboht climate change for 40 years.
|
| We've all individually and collectively chosen to ignore the
| problem.
|
| Now is the point where we lie and pretend no one told us and it
| was all somehow a conspiracy by big oil, big meat, big airline-
| travel etc to force us to emit when we didnt want to.
|
| Count me out.
| sharemywin wrote:
| If I benefited just as much as the CEOs where's my 5th empty
| mansion on the beach?
| bsanr2 wrote:
| "Identity theft", likewise, is an attempt to put the onus - and
| blame - on consumers for the failure of corporations to protect
| personal information and combat fraud.
|
| We should be generally wary of corporate "Do your part!"
| campaigns.
| rdiddly wrote:
| Of course larger-scale changes are larger. One problem is that
| when you argue for a large-scale change, people generally expect
| you to be not-a-hypocrite on the small personal level. Small-
| scale actions give authority to large-scale ideas/arguments.
| someguy321 wrote:
| The Guardian coined the headline "Big oil coined 'carbon
| footprints' to blame us for their greed" to blame big oil for our
| collective greed.
| anaerobicover wrote:
| Easy snark on the headline contribute nothing positive to this
| site. Explain what fault you find in the Guardian premise and I
| will listen. For e.g., the sister comment
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28315019 perhaps share
| your view?
| paulgb wrote:
| I upvoted the snark because I think in this case it's
| warranted. I see this article as part of a broader messaging
| shift to pin the blame for global warming on the N companies
| that pollute the most, which I don't think is productive.
|
| As an example of how absurd it gets, someone in my local
| nextdoor group posted something along the lines of "why
| should I reduce how much I drive when X% of emissions come
| from N companies". Those companies are polluting _so that_
| you can drive!
| anaerobicover wrote:
| This your comment has some well reasons, and I thank you
| despite that I disagree. It contribute to the exchange of
| ideas. The top comment does not so, this is my objection.
| someguy321 wrote:
| I figure that my above comment is pithy more than it's
| snarky, especially considering that many repliers
| understood its intent accurately.
|
| People disagree on where the blame lies regarding
| consumption vs production, and it's difficult to know
| what is posturing and what is not.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Those companies are polluting because they are allowed to.
| Only a society level response can rein them in.
|
| And then the individuals will change what they do, based on
| what is still available.
| paulgb wrote:
| Sure, a carbon tax would do essentially that, and I am
| supportive of it.
|
| But absent a carbon tax, the idea that I can morally just
| consume willy-nilly and blame "corporations" is crazy.
| It's a form of moral laundering. Exxon isn't spewing CO2
| for the heck of it, they're doing so as part of a
| production process that eventually some consumer demands.
| That consumer should not be let off the hook so easily.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Exactly. If consumers stopped driving, how much retail auto
| gasoline would big oil produce? If people stopped buying
| airline tickets, how many airline flights would fly?
|
| I can't buy Big Macs and then blame McDonalds for farming
| the cattle.
| relax88 wrote:
| Thank you.
|
| I recently had a conversation with someone about Canadian
| Federal climate policies and I found it very interesting that
| they seemed to think consumers should bear no sacrifice to
| solve the climate issue.
|
| The two most popular parties have plans aiming to reduce
| emissions. The Liberal party has implemented a progressive and
| revenue neutral carbon tax, and the Conservatives have a
| regulatory approach that sees consumers receiving a monthly
| refund into a special savings account when they buy things like
| fuel so that they need not bear as much of the increased costs
| of petroleum products due to the regulatory approach.
|
| The latter policy really emphasizes to me that that there are a
| large number of people who do not want to change their
| behaviour in any way, and would much rather have a corporate
| scapegoat to point at.
|
| It's as if they think that the oil industry just mines and
| drills for fun or something.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I think this may be Is vs. Ought.
|
| Realistically and politically, people will not bear any
| significant sacrifice to solve CO2 emissions. They just
| won't. They won't do it.
|
| You can say that they _ought to_ as much as you please. You
| can say that they _need to_. But they still won 't. You
| aren't going to scold them into being different. You aren't
| going to lecture them into being different. And you aren't
| going to use politics to _force_ them to be different,
| because they vote, and all the politicians know they vote.
|
| For us to get anywhere on CO2, the non-CO2 path has to be
| _better_ and /or _less expensive_. That 's it. In the real
| world, with the humans that we have, anything else isn't
| going to get any traction.
| lupire wrote:
| Like Democrat and Republican politicians, corporation and
| consumers blame each other not because they are enemies, but
| to avoid criticism of the game they pay together. Recycling
| (and ignoring Reduce and Reuse) is the perfect example of
| deploying a fake solution to avoid having to fix the real
| problems.
| me_me_me wrote:
| Well unlike you sir, I am using paper straws so I am saving
| the world!
|
| Only if people stopped using plastic straws we would reduce
| the plastic in the ocean by 0.2%
| dleslie wrote:
| > The latter policy really emphasizes to me that that there
| are a large number of people who do not want to change their
| behaviour in any way, and would much rather have a corporate
| scapegoat to point at.
|
| I find this to be a fairly common perspective, when talking
| to Canadians online; and there's some data to support that it
| is[0][1].
|
| The truth is that individuals are _hugely_ influential on
| carbon emissions, and changes to individual consumption,
| commuting, and so forth are necessary if we're to tackle
| climate change meaningfully. The Covid lockdowns made the
| impact of individuals irrefutably clear.[2][3][4]
|
| 0: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/election-poll-climate-
| chang...
|
| 1: https://globalnews.ca/news/8139537/canada-climate-change-
| eco...
|
| 2: https://pcc.uw.edu/blog/research/how-did-covid-19-affect-
| our...
|
| 3: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-020-0797-x
|
| 4: https://earth.stanford.edu/news/covid-lockdown-causes-
| record...
| relax88 wrote:
| I find it interesting that both your reply and mine are
| being downvoted without explanation as if it's a
| controversial idea that consumers are culpable.
|
| And yet there are no replies making a logical argument
| about why this perspective is wrong?
| [deleted]
| dleslie wrote:
| It's an unpopular proposition to state that there exists
| a collective responsibility to make individual
| adaptations to combat climate change.
|
| I also argued that the lockdown was good for combating
| climate change, and there are many people who are
| desperate to leave their bedroom communities, hop in
| their car, and commute to the downtown office.
| filoeleven wrote:
| > there exists a collective responsibility to make
| individual adaptations to combat climate change.
|
| Individual adaptations do not matter unless they are
| undertaken collectively. My personal lifestyle changes
| don't impact the state of CO2 emissions in any
| significant way. Leading by example AND talking about it
| has more impact, but still negligible unless/until enough
| people do it.
|
| Changing incentives, by making production account for the
| climate change externality, will shift more people into
| changing their lifestyle based on price alone. It's the
| same reasoning behind targeting drug dealers and cartels
| more heavily than end-users.
| [deleted]
| relax88 wrote:
| I think we all agree that incentives are the single most
| important factor.
|
| That isn't an argument against consumers being culpable
| though. We are all culpable.
|
| Lifestyle choices do matter a lot. Do you buy the tiny
| condo in a walkable area and put your money into public
| transit? Or do you live on an acreage and drive a lifted
| Dodge Ram? How do your behaviours shape the culture of
| those around you? How will your children choose to live?
|
| In a society where most people are overweight, heart
| disease and cancer are the biggest killers, our cities
| are designed around cars, and human social connection and
| community are fading, being replaced by superficial
| social media interaction, it matters very much how we
| personally choose to live. Our way of life tends to rub
| off on those who are close to us, and our children. A way
| of life that prioritizes human health, community,
| political cooperation, and respect for the environment
| over mindless consumerism is incredibly important to our
| long term prosperity.
| dleslie wrote:
| > My personal lifestyle changes don't impact the state of
| CO2 emissions in any significant way.
|
| Collective action requires personal changes. You, and
| everyone else, must alter your personal lifestyle. You
| are only a little bit responsible for the harm, but in
| aggregate, the collective you are enormously responsible.
| Each individual must change.
|
| > It's the same reasoning behind targeting drug dealers
| and cartels more heavily than end-users.
|
| I don't like the drug dealer analogy because it implies
| that targeting drug dealers has been reasonably effective
| in combating drug use. It hasn't.
|
| To combat substance abuse the users must be targeted; to
| combat climate change, the consumers must be targeted.
| filoeleven wrote:
| I think we are talking past each other a bit. I guess it
| boils down to the question "where does the incentive to
| make widespread personal changes come from?"
|
| Perhaps the CFC problem is a better analogy. CFCs cause
| problems with the ozone layer, so CFCs were mandated to
| be removed from products that people bought like ACs and
| hairspray. In that instance, the supply chain was fixed,
| so the option to buy CFC hairspray was removed.
|
| I think the same fix applies here. Renewable energy,
| ending single-use plastic packaging, etc. are all things
| that should be done in order to decrease negative
| effects. That's not to say people don't have to or
| shouldn't also make our own personal changes, only that
| the impact of changing the supply chain is much greater.
|
| [edit: rogue apostrophe]
| dleslie wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when CFC and non-CFC
| hairsprays were both available, and recall the public
| discussion over whether you should buy one or the other.
|
| Regardless, even though the edict eventually came from on
| high to stop using CFCs, it was the individual use of
| them that was ultimately responsible for harm. Punishing
| oil companies won't make a lick of difference if it
| doesn't result in changes to our collective, individual
| behaviour. Like how we stopped using CFC-laiden
| hairsprays, we're going to have to stop commuting by car,
| ICE or EV, and stop buying products from overseas, and
| stop flying.
|
| There is no technological panacea that will allow us to
| continue to live our lives as we do now.
| Tronno wrote:
| I don't understand why you would cite Covid lockdowns (a
| centrally-coordinated government policy) as evidence of
| individual impact. Is this not an argument against your own
| point?
| lupire wrote:
| It's (partially) centrally coordinated, but it's
| individual behaviors that change, not "corporations
| making factories and ships magically better while
| consumers don't feel a change", which is the average
| (sl)activist's proposed solution.
| ManBlanket wrote:
| "Personal virtue is an eternally seductive goal in progressive
| movements"
|
| You don't say... Almost sounds like planting a sign in your yard
| enumerating the various reasons you're a good person is the brand
| of activism advocated by regressive causes. Doesn't matter if you
| do anything to advocate those causes, so long as you pretend to
| care. Broadcasting it to your other privileged friends and
| neighbors. That way you can continue business as usual while
| thriving on the status-quo, but rest assured you're on a pedestal
| above everyone who didn't plant a sign next to their stoop
| proclaiming activism. Printed free of regulation in SE Asia,
| wrapped in plastic, shipped across the ocean, and delivered to
| your front door. Now if only there were a way to wear it on your
| face...
| djanogo wrote:
| Isn't Big oil coining "carbon footprint" similar to Big tech
| coining "FSD"/"Autonomous Driving"?, doing what they need to do
| to support their investments?
| i1856511 wrote:
| This article is right. Individual liability for climate change is
| a con. The absolute best thing you can do as an individual for
| the climate is to never have existed in the first place. This
| sets your climate footprint to 0. However, even in this case,
| this does not change the trajectory of climate change at all. The
| hypothetical best is not good enough. So, individual liability is
| much ado about nothing.
| dougmwne wrote:
| There is a heck of a lot of this that goes on within the energy
| and environment community where I have been involved for a
| decade. Tragedy of the Commons basically means that individual
| responsibility is a complete dead-end to solve any kind of shared
| resource issue. We've known this formally within economics for
| 200 years. Government, law and enforcement is the only solution,
| whether we're talking a city park or the entire planet's
| atmosphere. You should know that any time you are getting shamed
| or guilted into doing something like recycling, reducing energy
| consumption, cutting up plastic soda rings, instead of there
| being a law, some monied interest put a lot of effort into
| shifting the perception of responsibility away from themselves
| and onto someone else.
|
| I am a staunch environmentalist and I full out reject any effort
| to make any of this somehow my personal fault and that I should
| guiltily stop having children, stop traveling, stop eating, stop
| driving or anything else. We are either all in this together,
| collectively solving the problem through our collectively
| determined governments or we're not.
|
| More and more I think we are not going to solve this in a way
| that doesn't involve a massive diminishing of planetary carrying
| capacity. Currently we are bailing out the Titanic with a
| thimble.
| heurisko wrote:
| > I should guiltily stop having children
|
| The unintended consequence is that only the conscientious
| people take themselves out of the gene pool, which is
| counterproductive.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Well, their kids could still end up being assholes.
| bedhead wrote:
| I love how people who drive cars, fly on planes, use plastic, get
| goods delivered by truck, etc etc, act like oil companies just
| pump oil out of the ground for fun then light it on fire. The
| mental gymnastics are impressive.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Big changes need government intervention. The government needs
| to _take away the option_ to run cars, trucks, etc on gasoline,
| and restrict flights that don 't use renewable energy (such as
| via Hydrogen). Otherwise the individual can only do a very
| little, and often can't afford to do that.
| sharemywin wrote:
| or at least require the cost of putting carbon back into the
| ground to be factor price.
|
| The problem is when you slow gdp it's the most marginalized
| that are hit the hardest.
|
| So, the CEO only makes 10M instead of 50M(or whatever number)
| but what about the poor farmer that was making just enough to
| run his tractor to get by and feed his family.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Carbon externality pricing is another attempt at market
| intervention that faceplants in practise. It doesn't get
| properly implemented, because it's politically unpopular,
| it gets fudged with highly speculative green-washing
| "offsets" that amount to planting a few trees and then
| counting your forests before they're grown (the trees
| subsequently die of neglect), and the costs get passed on
| to the little guy.
|
| The correct approach is to outright ban gasoline.
|
| There are cases where no alternative exists right now, such
| as flight. Those uses should be restricted away from casual
| use.
|
| Yes, this means no flying on holiday, until they get
| hydrogen airplanes up and running.
| allemagne wrote:
| Carbon pricing can't work because it's politically
| unpopular so the solution is to _ban gasoline_. Come on
| now.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| You'd be surprised, but an all-in solution can be easier
| to sell than a mealy mouthed half-solution.
| allemagne wrote:
| I strongly agree with you and the parent comment.
|
| Yes, people who refuse to recognize the problem beyond the
| greed of oil companies are a problem. Yes, oil companies are
| in fact a bigger problem. However, the biggest problem is if
| you want a government to stay in power long enough to
| actually do anything meaningful about eliminating carbon
| emissions, then announcing some kind of imminent intention to
| take away gasoline-powered cars and trucks is one of the
| worst things you can do.
| boplicity wrote:
| The smart thing isn't to take away cars, but to invest
| heavily in high-quality alternatives, while making
| emissions increasingly expensive. Unfortunately, this isn't
| happening at nearly the level it should be.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| Nobody who travels 'wants' to burn oil. Capital decided oil is
| the most profitable way to deliver that. There was never a
| point where individual personal consumption habits could have
| changed this course.
| 542458 wrote:
| It's profitable because it's physically efficient - fossil
| fuels are readily available and highly energy dense and
| relatively safe. Nothing else offers that. This isn't some
| sneaky capitalist plot - the soviets burned lots of fuel as
| well.
|
| I'm not defending the continued dependence on fossil fuels,
| but let's be realistic about how (externalities aside) fossil
| fuels are very, very good at what they do. The problem is
| those externalities have turned out to be pretty bad, and our
| economic systems have been slow to respond.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > fossil fuels are readily available and highly energy
| dense and relatively safe. Nothing else offers that.
|
| Your car or plane can't tell the difference between fossil
| hydrocarbons and biofuel hydrocarbons. (Though you might
| adjust a car to use ethanol instead of longer compounds.)
| andi999 wrote:
| Does it still take 1l of (subsidized) fossil fuel to
| produce 1l of biofuel?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > One of the most often cited results from Sheehan et al.
| is that the fossil energy ratio of biodiesel is equal to
| 3.2. In other words, biodiesel yields 3.2 units of energy
| for every unit of fossil energy consumed over its life-
| cycle.
|
| > Recently, a 5.54 fossil energy ratio (FER) was reported
| [1] which means one unit of fossil energy input is
| required to produce 5.54 units of biodiesel energy
| output. This FER shows a stunning energy return of
| biodiesel that surpasses other fuels [2].
|
| Seems fine. And that's probably without even trying to
| use all electric equipment.
| majormajor wrote:
| > The problem is those externalities have turned out to be
| pretty bad, and our economic systems have been slow to
| respond.
|
| The problems are much more specific and blatant than that:
|
| * The externalities were known to be bad by the oil
| companies and this knowledge was suppressed.
|
| * Our economic system is _incapable_ of responding because
| there is no direct fiscal cost of the externalities that
| would make alternatives cheaper at the point-of-purchase
| decision point.
|
| * Fossil fuels being good at what they do is _exactly why
| external regulation is needed_ to get us out of that
| unhealthy addiction.
| 542458 wrote:
| I entirely agree. Strong carbon taxes or other similar
| systems are the way forward. By correcting for the true
| cost of pollution we can allow renewables to really
| shine.
|
| I was only trying to push back against the idea that
| we're only using fossil fuels because of capitalism.
| We're using fossil fuels because with our initial naive
| inspection they appear to be an excellent, bordering on
| miraculous, resource. I'm not denying that they've turned
| out to be very harmful and/or that people have done bad
| things to preserve the naive interpretation.
| [deleted]
| barbazoo wrote:
| Well, some of us might drive electric cars, don't fly if they
| don't absolutely have to, avoid single use plastics, shop
| locally and in bulk, etc, etc Or at least some of us do some of
| those things. We don't all have to live perfectly carbon
| neutral lives _before_ we can demand action on a political
| level or criticize organizations that are actively trying to
| keep the status quo for as long as possible to maximize their
| profits.
| boplicity wrote:
| The climate crisis is too big to solve as an individual. Even if
| a million of us immediately stopped driving cars, and lived in a
| carbon-neutral commune _nothing_ would change, in terms of the
| overall climate picture.
|
| The only way to solve this is to build _new_ infrastructure that
| removes the need for carbon emissions, _while_ also stopping oil
| extraction at an increasingly rapid pace. Anything else is a
| distraction, and that includes asking people to "help" by
| driving less.
|
| If you want people to make good choices, those good choices need
| to be made possible, effective, and meaningful. This is what our
| politicians have been avoiding.
|
| Here in Toronto, our local federal MP once posted on Twitter that
| he fights climate change by shopping at a local produce market.
| Not only was this absolutely not stopping climate change in any
| meaningful way at all, it reflects the absolute inability of the
| vast majority of politicians to communicate that they understand
| the severity of the situation, much less do anything meaningful
| about it.
| qeternity wrote:
| Genuine question to all the anti "Big Oil" commenters here:
| what's your alternative?
|
| Let's imagine an alternate history where oil companies hadn't
| fought against climate change science. What does that alternate
| universe look like?
|
| We have known for years that climate change is real, and yet the
| vast majority of people simply won't actually change their
| consumption when push comes to shove. This is the largest, most
| serious, tragedy of the commons that we will likely ever face.
| This problem is so much more complicated than just blaming a few
| evil CEOs.
| plorg wrote:
| * Oil, at minimum, gets much more expensive, more quickly. *
| Renewable energy develops more quickly because see the first
| bullet point * Nuclear doesn't die
| qeternity wrote:
| 100% agree.
|
| But this does not go over well with the masses.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Perhaps we would already apply environmental legislation to CO2
| as a pollutant such that carbon intensive industries and
| products would be more expensive and low carbon
| products/industry more competitive giving consumers more
| choice.
| j_walter wrote:
| Who do you mean by "we"...because some countries don't give a
| shit about the impact they are having on the world and still
| pollute the air and water worse than EU and US countries 50
| years ago (China, India, etc).
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Under the current circumstances, sure they do. But just
| like skipping landlines for cellphones, if the incentives
| were such that developing countries could leapfrog over
| dirty industry without a development penalty (which could
| be possible had we taken a different path the last 50+
| years) - they very well might.
| drdeca wrote:
| China has a lower CO2 per capita emissions than the US.
|
| Of course, the environment doesn't care about who has the
| most per capita emissions, just "cares" about the total
| emissions, but in terms of measuring efficiency of "how
| much CO2 needed to support the lifestyle of each person" it
| seems they currently have a better rate. Like, if you
| replaced a random subset of China with the population of
| the US, with another copy of the US, the total emissions
| would [edit:on average] be increased.
|
| Therefore, I think in order to get them to decrease their
| rate (which is important to do due to their large
| population/ their large total emissions), it may be useful
| to lower our own rate in order to have a convincing
| position.
| j_walter wrote:
| The US has been trending down per capita for the last 50
| years...but the problem is we have more people so the
| total output is higher. China's trend, as another poster
| said, is always going higher.
|
| https://datacommons.org/place/country/USA?topic=Environme
| nt https://datacommons.org/place/country/CHN?topic=Enviro
| nment
| qeternity wrote:
| I'm not even sure what this comment is about. The
| important bit right now is trajectory. China is
| definitely not trending lower. They have added huge
| amounts of coal generation in the past year, and their
| carbon market is broken by design (to keep emissions
| cheap).
| vixen99 wrote:
| So if we reduce still further (the UK and the US have
| made significant cuts) you think China will think again
| about the 43 new coal-fired power stations now in the
| design stage? I'm not so sure. While paying lip service
| to the Green agenda, my guess is that perhaps the Chinese
| don't really believe that the world is headed for
| armageddon. They are of course happy to see ideas like
| 'net zero' take off in the West.
|
| https://time.com/6090732/china-coal-power-plants-
| emissions/
| pjc50 wrote:
| Roughly diverges from Carter putting solar panels on the White
| House and Reagan _not_ taking them off. Other countries follow
| France in building out nuclear power as a substitute, while
| investigating how to reduce oil consumption to avoid depending
| on OPEC. Salter gets more wave power funding. Siemens get
| started on wind turbines earlier. Basically we end up 10-20
| years ahead of current. And the discussion about what to do is
| easier because there are fewer financially motivated liars
| involved.
|
| (We can assume that state owned oil companies still captured
| their respective governments, we're just stipulating that a
| separation of corp and state can be achieved in the west)
|
| (However, until 1990 the world remains more concerned with the
| threat of immediate obliteration by nuclear war than the slow
| problem of climate change.)
| yyyk wrote:
| >Roughly diverges from Carter putting solar panels on the
| White House and Reagan not taking them off.
|
| It's a well-known story, but it's based on spin* . Carter did
| not place the solar panels due to belief in climate change.
| What Carter and his staff did believe in was Peak Oil, and
| that it would occur in the 1980s. Also, Carter wanted to wean
| the US off Middle Eastern oil following the 1973 oil embargo
| and the 1979 oil crisis.
|
| Solar panels were a part of Carter's adaptation effort, but a
| bigger part was oil shale and coal liquefaction, liquefaction
| being so incredibly polluting (CCS wasn't even considered at
| the time) we'd probably be looking at 5C had it been
| commonplace.
|
| The actual priorities of the Carter effort are easily
| discoverable for anyone looking at the period:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1979/07/17/archives/environmentalist.
| ..
|
| * To be clear, the spin does not come from OP, but from the
| Democratic spin handler that years later told the solar
| panels story but without the context which changes the story
| entirely. It's easy for people to fall into the spin if they
| don't know the period.
| qeternity wrote:
| I'm not sure how any of this would radically change where we
| are today (not saying it wouldn't be better, just urging some
| basic PCA here).
|
| Solar was only possibly due to massively unprofitable
| investment by the Chinese state and cheap labor. Wind costs
| haven't decreased nearly as much as solar and still suffer
| from the same problems they did decades ago. Battery
| technology has been driven by the consumer electronics
| revolution, which couldn't have been otherwise sped up.
|
| Long story short: I'm not sure that even in a perfect world,
| that we would be all that different. Fossil fuels were still
| the cheapest source of energy for many, many decades in a
| rapid growing global economy. 20 years ahead is certainly a
| stretch. 10 years would be high case, 5 years base case...in
| a perfect world.
| yyyk wrote:
| Improving energy supply methods would have been tough
| without future knowledge. Reducing energy consumption was
| however much more doable.
|
| For example, the West switched quickly from Incandescent
| bulbs to CFLs to LEDs in the 2010s. But CFLs was arguably
| doable in the late 1970s, definitely in the 1990s. We could
| have had a far earlier CFL transition, saving decades of
| incandescent bulbs.
| qeternity wrote:
| > Reducing energy consumption was however much more
| doable.
|
| This I agree with 100% but is generally not something
| people have been keen to do. They want to drive more, air
| condition more, eat more animal protein, fly to more
| places, etc. The last 80 years of prosperity have been
| driven by increased consumption. And nobody seems keen to
| be the generation of "less is more".
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Other countries follow France in building out nuclear power
| as a substitute
|
| The problem is there is a ton of overlap between people who
| are really concerned about global warming, and people who
| have an irrational fear of nuclear power.
| deeviant wrote:
| > What does that alternate universe look like?
|
| Have all the billions of subsidies flow into renewables,
| battery and electric car tech, instead of oil? Today it's
| slowly catching up, but we'd be decades ahead if we started
| decades ago.
|
| Nobody is saying it all the fault of "evil CEOs", but it fair
| to point out evil CEOs and in general evil deeds by
| corporations.
| qeternity wrote:
| When people talk about "subsidies" to oil, what they really
| mean is lower retail taxes for gasoline at the pump.
|
| This isn't for the benefit of oil companies, it's to placate
| voters, who want to pay less at the pump.
|
| It's not as if the US government is running around dropping
| truck loads of cash into insanely profitable businesses.
|
| And no, if gasoline had higher taxes, that would not be
| absorbed by the oil companies. It would be passed on to the
| consumer just like every increase in oil prices is. Gasoline
| has a very flat demand curve.
| martin-adams wrote:
| I think it is like the car industry. The push to electric
| vehicles has forced companies to adapt, reskill and do the R&D
| because they know their business will be going away in 10+
| years.
|
| I would like to think that heavy R&D into renewable energies
| would have been the priority of "Big Oil", not the alternative.
| slingnow wrote:
| I find it infuriating that your perfectly reasonable
| question/comment is so heavily downvoted, and yet it's followed
| up my many thoughtful and interesting responses. Boggles the
| mind.
| simfree wrote:
| 50+ years of manufacturers spending on R&D for internal
| combustion engines could have been spent on improving electric
| powertrain technology.
|
| Think about how many engineer's have spent their entire lives
| optimizing ICE powertrains, with all this tech actively harming
| us with smog shortening our lifespans, acid rain and climate
| change.
| qeternity wrote:
| > 50+ years of manufacturers spending on R&D for internal
| combustion engines could have been spent on improving
| electric powertrain technology.
|
| You're missing the point. This didn't happen because it
| wasn't economical. You're just wishing for fanciful things.
| You might as well just wish that CO2 weren't a GHG.
|
| Consumer demand forced R&D into ICE instead of electric.
| b3morales wrote:
| Consumer demand is not, realistically, an isolated
| phenomenon, though. There's a tangled web of feedback in
| many directions among what people want to buy, what
| industry offers people to buy, what technologists are can
| work on, what R&D risks industry wants to take, and
| probably other factors. Advertising drives culture to some
| extent and reflects culture to some extent, not just one or
| the other.
|
| The key point to figure out, I think, is so we know which
| lever(s) is most effective to fix the problem, rather than
| just assigning blame.
| qeternity wrote:
| Sure, but demand drivers are usually pretty isolated. For
| commodities, like energy, this driver is price. People
| want cheap energy. And until recently, nothing could
| compete with dead dinos.
| filoeleven wrote:
| Those CEOs set us back by 50 years in getting people used to
| the idea that we need to make changes in order to have
| stability in the future. They manufactured the idea that there
| was no problem, and therefore the greater resistance to change.
|
| The alternate history looks more like CFCs and the ozone hole,
| only slower and writ larger. The time it takes to convince most
| people a) that there is a problem, and b) it will require big
| changes to address is a very important factor. If the
| scrambling towards renewables we see now happened in 1980 or
| even 1990 instead, we'd have more runway before missing some
| tipping points. It would be more of a behavioral adjustment
| instead of a crisis.
|
| I don't just blame the CEOs, I also blame our politicians. They
| only respond to big donors and public pressure. Without the
| billions backing the big lie, and with more time to alert
| people to the problem, public pressure would have won out much
| earlier--not that it has, yet.
| daveFNbuck wrote:
| Without dedicated lobbies paying politicians to ignore the
| problem, Republicans could have promoted conservative solutions
| like nuclear energy and carbon pricing.
|
| Green energy could have been cost-effective decades earlier,
| leading to wider adoption and massive investment in research.
| We could have been building nuclear plants for the last several
| decades instead of pretending coal was still viable.
| qeternity wrote:
| > Republicans could have promoted conservative solutions like
| nuclear energy and carbon pricing.
|
| Arguably the two most important missed opportunities, imho.
|
| We would still be left with transportation because battery
| tech advanced on the back of the consumer electronics
| revolution, but with cheap nuclear power and a functioning
| emissions market, we could accelerate the transition much
| faster.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > This problem is so much more complicated than just blaming a
| few evil CEOs.
|
| That's a good point. I'd say it is universal greed, but the
| vast amount of power is concentrated in the hands of a few who
| do anything to preserve it.
|
| Perhaps we need to look at others to blame...
|
| The industrial revolution opened the floodgates for greed among
| all types of CEOs/Presidents that ran faster than the law or
| science could keep up. Although I doubt the blighted factory
| towns in England that lived under perpetual smog darkness were
| like "Sure, this is OK for the environment."
|
| The baby boom? Everyone wanted to live in suburbs, which
| required cars, roads, tires, gasoline, oil?
|
| American's sense of entitlement? "I deserve more and I'm going
| to take it?" Let's be honest, most americans are greedy seflish
| bunch who think "Well, this one little thing isn't going to
| hurt anyone this time..." x 1,000,000 instances.
|
| It's probably just the fruition of Manifest Destiny: man's
| toxic urge to conquer and oppress: only the strong survive,
| winner take all, yadda yadda yadda. When is the last time you
| heard a leader (with actual power!!!) say, "Hey, wouldn't it be
| great if we were all just nice to each other?" ... And that guy
| was nailed to a tree...
| qeternity wrote:
| > The industrial revolution opened the floodgates for greed
| among all types of CEOs/Presidents
|
| It's not that easy. There would be no failed/struggling
| businesses otherwise. CEOs would just will their enterprises
| into success.
|
| > The baby boom? Everyone wanted to live in suburbs, which
| required cars, roads, tires, gasoline, oil?
|
| Now we're talking. Those greedy CEOs are just people. Greedy
| people like everyone else. A handful of greedy CEOs didn't
| force billions of people to collectively emit 1.5 trillion
| tons of CO2.
|
| Solving the problem requires giving these people an
| alternative. This isn't some attempt at absolving whatever
| issues people have categorically with CEOs, rather just a
| realistic take on what needs to happen to unfuck the planet.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| > A handful of greedy CEOs didn't force billions of people
| to collectively emit 1.5 trillion tons of CO2.
|
| Oh by golly they certainly did! They tore up public
| transportation, forcing people to buy cars:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_cons
| p...
|
| The suburbs could have had public transportation, but there
| was an active propaganda against that. Only poor people use
| buses, manipulating people into buying big, gas-guzzling
| cars by creating a demand for it.
|
| And then there is 50 years of a few CEOs suppressing
| evidence that this was wrecking the environment.
|
| So yes, a few evil CEOs really did work to manipulate
| people into ignoring their actions' consequences. I would
| say, given the strength of marketing and propaganda, they
| were indeed _forced_.
| scythe wrote:
| >Let's imagine an alternate history where oil companies hadn't
| fought against climate change science. What does that alternate
| universe look like?
|
| It has a carbon tax. As to what else happens, _the whole point_
| of using a carbon tax rather than some kind of targeted reforms
| (bike lanes, vegetarianism, solar panels) is because allowing
| different solutions to compete in the market has been shown
| throughout history to be more effective in the majority of
| cases than top-down economic planning. The reason a carbon tax
| is the best solution is because _we don 't know_ exactly what
| it does. It leaves our options open.
|
| Now, granted, there are a bunch of possible problems with the
| implementation of a carbon tax. But we rarely get to the point
| of in-depth discussions about how to implement a carbon tax.
| Instead, we're held up at the starting gate by pseudoscience,
| fearmongering, and the fantasy of individual action.
| ben_w wrote:
| Although I am currently optimistic about the future and think
| we're on a good course WRT anthropogenic climate change and
| (peak) oil production, I do remember 15 years ago when I was
| worried.
|
| The two big differences between what I wanted done and what
| actually happened are: (1) mandatory solar systems on all new
| buildings (unless there is a _very_ good special exceptional
| circumstance), and (2) bike lanes automatically added to every
| city road whenever and wherever roadworks occur, and those made
| grade-separated when the existing roads are 3 or more car-
| widths in each direction.
| sly010 wrote:
| My takeaway from this article is "Big Oil" should have invested
| their billions in research on renewables, batteries, etc,
| instead of lawyers and fighting change.
|
| If you have a short-term-great, but long-term-dying business
| (which is all business), it's really hard to make the decision
| to invest in alternatives that - if successful - will
| invalidate your current business. You are basically investing
| against yourself. On the other hand if you don't do it, someone
| else will. This is the innovators dilemma.
| qeternity wrote:
| They've generated a few trillion dollars in profit over the
| past few decades, and now they have tens of billions at their
| disposal to invest in R&D now that there's a market beginning
| to demand it.
|
| From an innovators dilemma perspective, if they can pivot,
| they will have nailed the balance perfectly (granted, we may
| have fucked the planet in the process, but that's just an
| outcome of a demand function).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| A lot of comments here seem to be focusing on the fact that
| individuals use oil products beyond what is necessary for basic
| life and in fact _do_ have some personal responsibility. This
| seems to me to be missing the forest for the trees.
|
| Sometimes society ends up in a situation where we need things
| that are not sustainable, like oil or coal. Producing those
| unsustainable products to meet the demands of society does not
| make the producers solely responsible for any side effects. What
| _is_ immoral is trying to artificially delay the transition to
| more sustainable alternatives or to socialize the costs of doing
| business.
|
| Oil companies have repeatedly run well funded PR campaigns with
| the explicit goal of discrediting arguments that more sustainable
| energy technology was necessary despite knowing them to be false.
| Similarly, they have lobbied hard to ensure that when the impacts
| of oil to the environment are larger than expected, society picks
| up the tab. This lets them be more reckless with our communal
| environmental resources.
| FrankenTan wrote:
| I agree. Also, sometimes if there exists no demand,
| corporations will spend a lot to _create it_ such as fashion as
| mentioned\shown in https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-12/fast-
| fashion-turning-...
|
| This is probably not be true for all markets or industries, of
| course, but I think that (and availability regarding prices) is
| relevant to not shifting it back onto individual consumer
| responsibility.
| lhorie wrote:
| I mean, if we're going to talk about forest and trees, consider
| that the whole "big oil lobbies governments" thing flies right
| in the face of the "democracy is the voice of the people"
| argument. If people collectively don't care to fight back at a
| legislative level against socialized costs, wouldn't that
| logically mean they're the ones ultimately responsible for
| their own predicament? Or more philosophically speaking, whose
| fault is it that people living under democratic rules don't
| challenge the efficacy of their governments? Or, perhaps more
| importantly, why?
|
| I think the problem with finger pointing is that it distracts
| from meaningful introspection. I think there are far deeper
| connections between oil and consumption than the "I do my part"
| crowd seems to realize, from the economics of the logistics
| industry, all the way down to the fundamental assumption that
| modern growth-oriented economics and consumption are even
| "normal" (compared to, say, how native tribes lived eons ago).
| In other words, merely being aware of the need for
| unsustainable resources in various cases doesn't fully detach
| us from the reality that the system we rely on to live is
| broken.
|
| Sometimes I contemplate the "weird" trees in this forest:
| people investing into off-grid living, or people stocking up
| bunkers, or isolated tribes in the middle of nowhere; and I
| wonder if thinking about regular society in terms of scalable
| homogeneous solutions isn't in a way similar to breeding
| cavendish bananas - highly optimized in one specific metric,
| but susceptible to being wiped out globally by a single
| unforeseen threat (or in our case, by one of the many potential
| global catastrophes that scientists have been warning about)
|
| If darwinism applies to civilizations, things ain't looking
| great for the vast majority of us precisely because we're stuck
| in a rut talking about ifs-and-buts instead of physically
| adapting to the logical end state of the trends we see in
| scientific data.
| pas wrote:
| There's nothing preventing us from living in a similarly 1-2%
| growing economy but with net zero GHG emissions. Yes, free
| resources lying around was amazing, but since then our
| economic surplus is abso-fucking-lutely enormous.
|
| We merely opt to allocate that on other things instead of
| decarbonizing. Eg. we spend it on silly things like paving
| half the world, giving everyone their own car, building small
| (actually gigantic) cookie cutter houses in suburbs, building
| new fabs every few years to get more transistors on chips,
| cramming even more photo gadgets into phones, producing more
| and more Netflix Prime content, etc.
|
| Building a ton of wind turbines and PV farms, spending years
| (and billions of USD) reviewing nuclear power plant permits,
| instead of building more efficient power plants.
| pempem wrote:
| as far as I know, "we" are not paving the world. The
| average person is not spending millions and millions on a
| marketing plan to bring these ideas into the american and
| then global imagination.
| riversflow wrote:
| I mostly agree with what you said here. I'm constantly
| reminding people I know that its called the _petrochemical_
| industry because its about far more than just fossil fuels,
| you can 't unwind the need for advanced chemicals in modern
| society, the population is just too big for us to
| realistically unwind our need for e.g. the Haber-Bosch
| process without major advances, and both the pharmaceuticals
| industry and high tech are completely dependent on extremely
| complicated oil-based supply chains. Many people will at this
| juncture reply that we just need less people, but thats not
| really an ethical solution by any modern standard.
|
| >susceptible to being wiped out globally by a single
| unforeseen threat
|
| I'm actually pretty optimistic about this, I think that we
| have enough people and growing standards of education, that
| assuming the technological solutions are out there, we will
| probably find them. The only threat that we aren't taking
| seriously that would really screw us up is some sort of
| cosmic event (I am very frustrated that with all the talks of
| creating a more flexible grid for renewables we aren't taking
| on the added burden of hardening against a solar storm, which
| seems inevitable. I'm pretty sure we would be pretty screwed
| if another Carrington Event happened today.[1])
|
| >"democracy is the voice of the people" argument.
|
| Serious question, is this really a point of view that people
| have in serious circles? I don't know a single person who
| believes that the US doesn't suffer from a burgeoning
| plutocracy. I've been calling this the second guilded age for
| years now, and it only seems to be getting worse. There is no
| Teddy Roosevelt figure rising that I see. I can only hope
| that the next generation of politicians will take reigning in
| this monster more seriously, but I'm skeptical.
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event I feel like
| something of this magnitude would be enough of a setback on
| science, in many ways, that all hope might be lost of
| escaping the terminal state we have put the earth into.
| Hermitian909 wrote:
| > consider that the whole "big oil lobbies governments" thing
| flies right in the face of the "democracy is the voice of the
| people" argument
|
| I don't think it does. An important part of the lobbying is
| that we know oil companies are attempting to intentionally
| deceive politicians and the public about the negative effects
| of their industry and the positive effects of competitors.
| That deception is the point at play, the voice of the people
| can be misinformed.
|
| > If people collectively don't care to fight back at a
| legislative level against socialized costs, wouldn't that
| logically mean they're the ones ultimately responsible for
| their own predicament?
|
| This reads a lot to me like blaming the victim of a scam for
| being scammed. I've met quite a few climate skeptics in my
| day regurgitating oil lobbying talking points that were known
| to be false when published. I don't blame them for not fully
| comprehending the science behind climate change, I blame
| those oil companies are knowingly misinforming them.
| lhorie wrote:
| Of course big oil has its share of immorality, but it's not
| like we never knew that poisonous smoke comes out of the
| back of our cars, right?
|
| Again, going back to forests and trees, one could also say
| the sugar industry is deceptive, or that big tech is, or
| that big telecom is, etc. So clearly there's a pattern, and
| companies are all run by people, who are motivated by
| accumulation of wealth. In other words, the negative
| factors of the system are intrinsically a part of the
| system, because greed is, for better or for worse, built
| into it (it's quite literally _the_ driving force for
| capitalist economic activity).
|
| What I'm saying is that it doesn't really matter whether
| "companies lying" or "blaming the victim" is the "correct"
| position, the crude reality is simply that dishonest things
| happen as a direct negative side effect of a core principle
| that we as a society agreed to adopt. Pragmatically
| speaking, the question then becomes one of: a) what can I
| personally do to "surgically remove" the negative side
| effects of this core principle, b) if I can't, to what
| extent do I "care" in the dilemma between participating in
| a rotten system vs selfishly enjoying my life or, c) when
| all hope is lost, how do I take cover when shit inevitably
| hits the fan
|
| It's my impression that most people have lost hope on a),
| are in denial about b)[0] and have no clue about c).
|
| [0]
| https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/upton_sinclair_138285
| hnaccount141 wrote:
| > Or more philosophically speaking, whose fault is it that
| people living under democratic rules don't challenge the
| efficacy of their governments? Or, perhaps more importantly,
| why?
|
| Because, in the US at least, average people have very little
| actual influence over government policy relative to the
| influence enjoyed by business interests and the capital
| class.
|
| https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-
| poli...
| PaulHoule wrote:
| This could be asteroid that kills us
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action
|
| Concentrated interests (oil companies) tend to win in battles
| against diffuse interests (individuals and their descendants
| who are threatened by climate change.)
|
| An interesting corollary is that a "majority" oppressing a
| "minority" is not a going concern, but the opposite is. That
| is, black vs white in the United States vs. South Africa are
| entirely different things. (Think, 90% of the population can
| steal everything from 10% of the population and raise it's
| standard of living by about 10%. 10% of the population can
| steal 10% of the standard of living from the other 90% and
| double its own standard of living.)
| imtringued wrote:
| I think there are two reasons.
|
| Capitalism rests on the promise that inequality maximizes
| economic growth and economic growth in itself will sweep all
| other social problems including inequality away. Once there
| is a prolonged period without (high enough) growth, the
| promise becomes worthless. People see the inequality for what
| it is.
|
| However, since there is no growth, they are barely scraping
| by. They have no spare resources to throw into caring about
| the environment. So they will all do the thing that hurts
| them the least today. Meaning they will prefer cheap and
| destructive products and services over sustainable but
| expensive ones. Mandating sustainability essentially forces
| expensive products down the throat of people but since
| inequality is high they can't afford them.
|
| What truly perplexes me though is that even in Germany people
| will keep voting for parties that basically double "dip",
| they promise to ensure the availability of cheap
| unsustainable products but also enact policies that make
| inequality worse. Cheap meat and oil have basically become a
| form of welfare to bribe the population.
| pas wrote:
| > Mandating X essentially forces expensive products down
| the throat of people but since inequality is high they
| can't afford them.
|
| This is true for anything. For example on classic argument
| is about consumer safety. If the state puts up barriers to
| trade (eg. I can't sell my cheap lead painted toys and
| maybe fake generic medicine and maybe rancid meat), then
| things will be much more expensive.
|
| Of course the slippery slope is many times just the
| continuum fallacy in disguise.
|
| In these cases the real problem is manifold, on one part
| it's a serious lack of social solidarity and social safety
| net, and the other component is whatever the actual other
| part is (eg. unsafe toys that babies can swallow, health
| concerns about food, drugs, etc.).
|
| Real solutions have to address both. Eg. carbon taxes with
| direct social dividend. (Or other variations, where the
| raised money goes to directly address those same issues
| that arise due to climate change.)
| glogla wrote:
| Well said.
|
| I will never understand why people protect oil companies. You
| know how in comic books there's always a villain going trying
| to DESTROY THE WORLD and it seems unrealistic and over the top?
|
| Oil companies are this villain in the real world. They are
| doing their best to kill off humanity, for short term profit.
| namanyayg wrote:
| Big oil downvoted this.
|
| Jokes aside, I really don't see the reason for downvotes. Oil
| made our world what it is; but any company who still focuses
| on its profits while knowing alternatives exist that are
| better for the planet, and parallelly spending billions in
| PR, is downright evil.
|
| I'd even say it's much more evil than Facebook's or Google's
| privacy issues that HN bashes every week.
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| Well, I'd say it's a bit funny to call something evil when
| a lot of people would die if it disappeared tomorrow. It's
| very easy to criticise the costs of modern life when the
| 'evil' is displaced onto someone else. But the truth is,
| it's a much more morally grey area than we like to admit.
| And it's hard to opt out of this 'system', but not
| impossible - I'm sure the Amish would take converts, but
| not many people want to go that route.
|
| It's an appealing story to say that the O&G economy is the
| villain and all the people participating in it are
| innocent, but the truth is, we know how to live in bronze
| age societies. This 'evil system' doesn't stick around
| because it holds us prisoner, it sticks around because most
| of us prefer the lifestyle. And a story that absolves us of
| responsibility for participating seems like just another
| defence mechanism the system has built up.
| glogla wrote:
| > It's an appealing story to say that the O&G economy is
| the villain and all the people participating in it are
| innocent, but the truth is, we know how to live in bronze
| age societies. This 'evil system' doesn't stick around
| because it holds us prisoner, it sticks around because
| most of us prefer the lifestyle. And a story that
| absolves us of responsibility for participating seems
| like just another defence mechanism the system has built
| up.
|
| Normal people have much less choice than you imagine.
|
| Even in the rich western world, only the very affluent
| can buy electric car instead of gas one. Only the very
| affluent can afford apartments in city centers so they
| can walk instead of driving. Nobody can change where
| their electricity comes from, whether is it coal or
| renewables. Nobody can pick between grocery store that
| gets its supply in diesel trucks and second grocery store
| that gets its supply on electric trucks and trains
| powered by renewable electricity. There's no "planet non-
| destroying iphone" next to "planet destroying iphone" in
| the shop for you to decide between.
| jfengel wrote:
| Honestly, I think most of it is culture war.
|
| The people who oppose oil companies are often the same people
| who take progressive views on a lot of other topics -- gay
| rights, gun control, pollution, etc. And that generates an
| almost knee-jerk opposition: anything they are for, we must
| be against.
|
| It's tribalism. If liberals are opposed to oil companies,
| than oil companies must be good. Then they'll be provided
| with arguments to support it, derived by think tanks and
| distributed via dedicated media, web sites, social media,
| etc. Those are generally pretty poor arguments, but it
| doesn't matter: they have a thing to say, and no particular
| interest in questioning it.
|
| So the whole thing ends up being shortcut by the longstanding
| culture war between left and right. Neither side has to do
| any thinking; the thinking is all done for them. It just so
| happens that the anti-oil-company side is having its thinking
| done by scientists, while the pro-oil-company side has its
| thinking done by professional propagandists, political
| strategists, and the occasional hand on the wheel from full-
| time troll farms.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| "the longstanding culture war between left and right"
|
| ...by which you must mean the "culture war" that only the
| right wing seems to know or care about. It is not really
| "between" the left and right as much as it is a right-wing
| concept that people on the left almost universally roll
| their eyes at (or fall into the trap of actually responding
| to right-wing agitation).
|
| "Neither side has to do any thinking"
|
| Except that, as you point out, one side is responding to
| scientific results indicating a serious and growing
| problem, while the other is not. One side is thinking, or
| at worst dependent on a group of people who at least try to
| push their personal biases out of the way when they are
| thinking. The other side reflexively calls all of it some
| combination of "socialist," "hoax," or "government
| takeover," without even acknowledging the existence of a
| problem.
|
| Yes, I know the downvotes are coming for this, but the fact
| is that the Republican party has stopped even trying. You
| can be pro-oil-company and also be pro-reducing-carbon-
| emissions. Where are the Republican proposals to develop
| industrial-scale carbon capture to offset all those
| tailpipe and smokestack emissions? Carbon capture could
| have been an entirely new industry for oil companies to
| expand into, growing their businesses while reducing net
| carbon emissions. Instead Republicans lined up behind
| someone who declared climate change to be a Chinese hoax
| and stopped even suggesting alternatives to the Democrats'
| proposed solutions.
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm infected with that same consolation-seeking attitude
| that so many left-centrists show: "Always admit your own
| side's weaknesses."
|
| So I can't avoid acknowledging that I do see a certain
| amount of culture-warrioring on the left, and a lot of
| people arriving at the right answer for the wrong
| reasons. I do that even though the things you point out
| are undeniable and obvious. The Republican party has
| stopped trying. They know perfectly well that even their
| nominal "centrists" are always going to side with their
| lunatic fringe, even as I can't control the impulse to
| limit my own (and earning their ire in the process).
|
| I'm completely aware that almost every post I make with
| even the slightest hint of progressivism is going to be
| downvoted. (I'm stunned that my above post is currently
| sitting at +3, though I've little doubt it will be down
| below zero by morning.)
|
| And yet... I grew up talking at a time when we were
| entitled to differences of opinion but not differences of
| fact. And I just can't seem to shake the way that pushed
| me to seek accommodations, to trust that the truth was
| the best way to argue and seek a compromise we could all
| live with. It's been a very long time since I've believed
| that -- over a decade. But the habits are hard to break.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| The unmoral corporate and legal pressures and incentive
| structures they're in dictate that they do their best to earn
| short term profits. They are unconcerned whether their
| actions kill off humanity eventually, that's simply not a
| factor they're capable of caring about.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Then we must destroy the very idea of a corporation. If it
| is truly impossible for a corporation to avoid
| _fundamentally damaging human civilization_ in search of
| the almighty dollar, then we need to prevent those
| incentives from existing in the first place.
| betterunix2 wrote:
| There is a better solution: the government reins in
| corporations that are creating a problem for the world.
| Once upon a time that was a non-controversial idea.
| papandada wrote:
| There is a market for the products they supply at the price
| they offer, there is a demand for return on investment they
| provide in a global financial system (and just try to
| disconnect from that).
|
| I hate that companies are ruining the environment, I hate
| that companies are killing people with unsafe products, I
| hate that companies are mistreating workers, I hate that
| countries have bullied their way over indigenous peoples to
| "own" the country I live it, I hate that companies profit off
| of promoting things that destroy humanity as we used to know
| it.
|
| But I don't see there being a clear line between who is
| "good" and who is "bad". My own answer, which I expect will
| please very few, is that we do our best in the small sphere
| of influence we have to be loving toward all, and beg God to
| save us.
| slingnow wrote:
| I see more and more of these types of comments that just go
| so far out there as to be absurd, and I'm glad they're
| downvoted.
|
| You have a long way to go to prove that this vague, evil
| entity called an "oil company" has a will of it's own, and
| that will is to destroy the world. My guess is that the will
| of this entity is to make money, and an unfortunate side-
| effect is that it damages the earths ecosystem.
|
| But then I'm not prone to ridiculous hyperbole.
| imtringued wrote:
| This type of "evil genius" is quite successful at
| brainwashing people though.
| troyvit wrote:
| That's totally true, but it's also true that if we reined in
| consumption, altered our habits and focused on reusing more
| then we are doing two things. First, we're taking ownership for
| our responsibility in this whole mess (acknowledging that there
| are trees in this forest), and second we're hurting oil
| companies where it counts. If we don't consume they can't
| supply.
|
| If we wait for our governments to hold them to account we're
| not going to get anywhere.
| nicoburns wrote:
| If we pushed up the cost of that consumption I'd be willing
| to bet we'd see it magically reduce.
| jkubicek wrote:
| I don't think focusing on individual responsibility will
| work. In order to make a meaningful difference we need to
| make sure that
|
| a) everyone knows what the issues are and what changes need
| to be made b) everyone is willing to make the sacrifices
| necessary
|
| If we've learned anything from (the entire history of the
| human race) it's that people who know and care will shoulder
| the burden of making changes while those who don't will
| benefit from it all.
|
| If we want to make a dent in our fossil fuel consumption, we
| need meaningful action at the national and global scale by
| major political powers. Taxes, regulation, criminal
| consequences are the only way to move the needle.
|
| edit: dougmwne said it better than I did:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28317665
| SuoDuanDao wrote:
| That may be true, but refusing to make meaningful
| sacrifices before everyone else does is awful PR. Even if
| the only meaningful thing anyone can do is change public
| opinion, leading by example is still the most effective way
| of doing so.
|
| I really think the DeFi movement is the only group making
| any headway there, because reducing consumption is billed
| as a means to further one's own self-interest there.
| nipponese wrote:
| I don't think it's pessimistic to say that as the "green"
| economy expands we are starting to see those same well-funded
| parties buying PR to selling snake oil or spreading fud. Energy
| is pretty hard to the average person to understand and
| energy+politics is almost impossible without some
| interest/background in foreign policy.
|
| https://www.kochind.com/stewardship/environmental-performanc...
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