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Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

theguardian.com

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Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#11

Post by Proven »

j-pb wrote: post #3
Bostonian wrote: post #2

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.

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"…

> 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!

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#12

Post by relax88 »

dleslie wrote: post #10
relax88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 see…

> 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 cha…

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?

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#13

Post by mindslight »

relax88 wrote: post #9
dragonwriter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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!

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.

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#14

Post by [deleted] »

relax88 wrote: post #12
dleslie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cha…

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]

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#15

Post by dleslie »

relax88 wrote: post #12
dleslie wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 cha…

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?

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.

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#16

Post by sokoloff »

mindslight wrote: post #13
relax88 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

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…

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.

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#18

Post by Tronno »

dleslie wrote: post #10
relax88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 see…

> 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 cha…

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?

Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed

#19

Post by codingdave »

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.

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