Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
1–10 of 285 posts
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#2Big 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.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#3Big 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", 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".
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#4People 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.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#5People 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.
> 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.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#6People 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.
Just responding to demand by hiring lobbyists yup sure.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#7The Guardian coined the headline "Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed" to blame big oil for our collective greed.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#8The Guardian coined the headline "Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed" to blame big oil for our collective greed.
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.
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#9People 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.
> 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!
Re: Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed
#10The Guardian coined the headline "Big oil coined ‘carbon footprints’ to blame us for their greed" to blame big oil for our collective greed.
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 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...