141–150 of 238 posts
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I’m sure it is. But it starts to get murkier when I consider that the wood came from a tree 200m up the road, but the oil is from the Middle East, processed somewhere and delivered to me 10,000km away.
The United States is now the largest producer of oil in the world, if that helps.
On a topic not directly related to the article, there's a book written by a former CEO of Shell called "Why We Hate the Oil Companies" that's rather interesting. In summary, his points are that oil is not necessarily good or bad, but that the lack of effective energy policies and the inherent challenges of the field incentivize bad practices by oil companies, while simultaneously these companies fail to communicate t…
I don't think you can write a comment that says the book is a nuanced take and in the same breath say you're not apologising for them.
Of course the CEO of shell's nuanced take is "they let us do it", when they spent an absolute fortune ensuring that they would be allowed to continue.
I've read the book, and it's not a nuanced take, at all. It sells a picture of "well you said you wanted it, so we just gave you what you want", and sweeps under the rug all of the other parts. For example, the research that these companies did almost 50 years ago that they made absolutely no effort to avoid the consequences of, instead burying them.
There was nothing stopping the CEO of shell divesting in the early 2000's other than greed and growth, and the only reason he wrote a book about it is because it sells.
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Sure! None of this means fossil fuel propaganda is somehow defensible. It doesn’t mean marketing fossil fuels to children is defensible either.
Fossil fuels are essential for maintaining our civilisation. Ignoring degrowth / green propaganda is essential for further progress of our civilisation.
A few things that come to mind:
Degrowth propaganda != green propaganda
Propagandizing fossil fuels != combating degrowth propaganda
Advertising to children via video games that show “cool cars have flames out the tailpipes” != legitimate socioeconomic argument
Maintaining our civilization as-is != ensuring prosperity for current and future generations
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"if you let your baby sleep with you, you are a bad mother" that leads to a number of accidental suffocations. I think that’s pretty reasonable to educate the public about that.
That's mostly an urban legend and the vast majority of such cases happen when the parent is not sober and essentially knocked out unconscious. I mean, infants are typically warmer than adults and they wriggle around a lot - it's hard enough to sleep next to them, much less within suffocation distance.
People have the right to know from where their quality of life comes from. So if you think quality of life = cool , then it's true that fossil fuels = cool. Don't let any private jet flying tech CEO or yacht enthusiast actor tell you otherwise. They want to brainwash you to have the exclusive on fossil fuels consumption much like they want to brainwash you to pay the maximum amount of taxes while they structure their…
I think you're spending a bit too much time in the conspiracy rabbit hole. Kim Kardashian's carbon footprint is about equivalent of 50 americans. She also has almost 350 million followers on Instagram. If she manages to get 1% of her following to reduce their footprint by 1% for a year, she undoes more than she emits in a year.
That doesn't mean they're not hypocrites, but have some context. What's actually needed is a change in consumption across the board, and a change in attitude towards impact. The only way that happens is through regulation and education.
Does anyone really think this will work? This isn’t cigarette advertising, which raises the profile of a directly harmful activity. Like what’s the best case for Shell here? If you’re going to get upset about anything in games, get upset about loot boxes. Promoting gambling to children should be illegal. That’s psychologically damaging.
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Guns are as much part of the American culture as SUVs are: mostly fabricated by advertisement and corporate lobbying (which too is “part of the American culture”, I guess).
No. Guns literally are part of the founding od America. We got the second Amendment precisely because England tried to do things like take guns and quarter soldiers. Guns are and always have been part of American culture. I would also research the history of gun control the U.S, it may surprise you.
Guns are the founding part of basically every country, because in the end “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”.
You got the second amendment for the same reason the French got paragraph 35 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and of the Citizen of 1793: «Quand le gouvernement viole les droits du peuple, l’insurrection est, pour le peuple et pour chaque portion du peuple, le plus sacré des droits et le plus indispensable des devoirs.», because when their newly founded state relied on people's insurrection to exist, they made sure that they wrote their fundamental texts in a way that guarantees it. Then the political structure of the US made the constitution very stable compared to the French ones.
The second amendment's history was then co-opted by the NRA in their marketing campaign, but this has little to do with what the second amendment is really about, that “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State”. And the current gun culture is in fact mostly “conservative culture in the Reagan era and after”.
Quite literally last week I was randomly watching The Today Show (mainstream Australian breakfast television) and I couldn't believe what I just saw within the space of 5 minutes. It was the build up to the AFL grand final and there was a presenter on a football field with kids kicking footballs in the background. Anyway, he introduces the segment and it turns out it's a paid promotion for Shell. The show then cuts t…
That's a pretty bold statement to make. I don't know what kind of isolated world you live in if you think that a Shell ad is the most disgusting thing you ever saw in your life, but I can give you a hundred examples off the top of my head.
One example that might be related to this subject are working conditions in a lithium mine and the purification process. If people knew the price we pay to drive EVs I'm convinced they would stick with oil. Just because it all happens in China and it doesn't affect us directly, doesn't mean it's any less disgusting.
I am also getting seriously tired of this constant need for censorship which is a contradiction in an open-market economy. You should compete, not sabotage. Instead of looking for ways to ban Shell ads on TV, why doesn't the EV industry offer vouchers too?
Shell Stations US
or
Shell Station Sus
Yep, pretty sus alright. I'm sure a lot of the target audience is laughing about this.
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Sometimes I think, that green policies are not stopped by Big Oil but undermined. You see, in many countries green policies are tied with rejection of nuclear power plants, which is much more effective and sustainable than all solar & wind sources. When I've lived in Russia, I've donated to Green Peace and WWF, because they helps a lot to save Nature Reserves, oppose predatory laws which allows to exploit Protected A…
> because their agenda is not about nature reserves and factory waste treatment, but, first, anti-nuclear-plant and then anti-travel, antu-car-ownership, etc. All of these things are indeed stupid imo, typical EU green party style navel gazing. The one I kind of agree with is anti-car-ownership, but it’s an extremely poor treatment of the symptom, where the decease is poor (and in many cases irreversible) city planni…
But it's unpopular and expensive. Here in the UK, we have the minister for transport [0] jumping on the bandwagon of "walkable cities are a ploy for the government to control which shops you go to". In France, there were literal riots when fuel taxes were set to be raised.
[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mark-harper-government...