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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

#131

Post by dleslie »

filoeleven wrote: post #108
dleslie wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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 produ…

> 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.

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

#132

Post by vanderZwan »

datawaslost wrote: post #116
datawaslost wrote: post #111

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

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.

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?

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

#133

Post by qeternity »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #79
qeternity wrote: post #34

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 s…

> 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 u…

> 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.

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

#134

Post by arbuge »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #84
arbuge wrote: post #46

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.

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 decarboni…

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.

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

#136

Post by qeternity »

simfree wrote: post #72
qeternity wrote: post #34

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 s…

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.

> 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.

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

#137

Post by Stupulous »

BitwiseFool wrote: post #61
SavantIdiot wrote: post #51

ngl, their marketing teams are brilliant. yes, they are destroying the planet, but they certainly succeeded in driving the language/narrative.

Language is way more powerful than people realize. Changing the language seems to literally change how we think.

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.

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

#138

Post by bwha »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #76
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.

> > 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.

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.

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

#139

Post by ggggtez »

marcusverus wrote: post #104
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.

> 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 crushe…

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.

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

#140

Post by qeternity »

sly010 wrote: post #96
qeternity wrote: post #34

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 s…

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.…

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).

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