Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed • Hacker News Board

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

#161

Post by fallingknife » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #57

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…

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 t…

> 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.

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

#162

Post by drdeca » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #119

drdeca wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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).

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

#163

Post by noelherrick » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

coryrc wrote: post #39

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.

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?

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.

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

#164

Post by majormajor » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

542458 wrote: post #29

toiletfuneral wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

> 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.

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

#165

Post by dougmwne » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

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

#166

Post by boplicity » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

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.

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

#167

Post by fisf » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:14 PM UTC

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #83

akamaka wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Because they are creating negative externalities that are not priced.

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

#168

Post by me_me_me » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

lupire wrote: post #48

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…

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.

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%

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

#169

Post by andi999 » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #63

542458 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.)

Does it still take 1l of (subsidized) fossil fuel to produce 1l of biofuel?

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

#170

Post by qeternity » Thu, Aug 26, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

thinkcontext wrote: post #117

qeternity wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

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.