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The Guardian coined the headline "Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed" to blame big oil for our collective greed.
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.
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"…
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.
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, jus…
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.
We should be generally wary of corporate "Do your part!" campaigns.
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, jus…
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.
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.
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.
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, jus…
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.