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Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

bloomberg.com

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Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't see what other option we have other than drill baby drill. Yes we're killing our planet but renewable aren't able to provide the energy we need at scale. Switching to 100% renewables and not drilling means increased oil prices and ultimately less consumption across the board. Less food, less driving, less heat, less AC. We'd all have to give up a lot and no one is signing up for that. There's this mag…

why can't we do nuclear with plugin hybrids in urban areas. the federal government , which, as an issuer of money, can afford anything, unlike states/municipalities, should massively fund nuclear to save the environment meet energy demands. seems like such a no-brainer.

> why can't we do nuclear

Because of environmentalists like Green Peace, Sierra Club etc.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#152
post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the s…

You can’t seriously believe that we’re in that grave of danger

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#153

I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

I would rather die than be slightly uncomfortable. The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years

[deleted]

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#154
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we'll never stop extracting oil in the foreseeable future, we'll just be doing a lot less of it. There will always be corner cases where diesel or other oil derivatives (or NG) are the /only/ reasonable option for fuel. Think generators for an antarctic station that can only use solar in certain months and wind isn't enough (or reliable enough)). Even if efficient electric commercial aviation at scale ever ha…

Yeah, just seeing the axle grease requirements and inventory on an aircraft carrier is a wakeup call. Our military is 110% reliant on oil to even function at all. The economic scale of consumer oil consumption and the petro-dollar are a key military concern to enable warfighting ability. When that sinks in, Iraq and Afghanistan make a lot more sense.

The US has plenty of oil and didnt need to go to those places to get more of it. We destroyed Iraqs oil pipelines and infrastructure in that war and a lot of it still is in need of investment in reconstruction today. Likewise Afghan oil production is a recent thing like in the last 10 years, and today the taliban government sells those mineral and oil extraction rights to chinese companies. If the goal was to get at those resources for American companies, we clearly failed. It seems China’s belt and road imperialism works better than our bomb the civilians and overthrow the government for a puppet method.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future is pointing to the end of these companies. Shell is maximizing its returns before the end. It is the most long term outlook you can get. What's more important?a future where my children are billionaires or a future with slightly less global warming? Shell is not the only source of global warming on this earth. You need to think in terms of human scale choices. Not just simplistic right or wrong choices. If…

It's not the "tragedy of the commons," it's capitalism. They're opposite things. The "commons" were fenced in and taken from the public by private entities. In the same spirit, a healthy environment and stable climate system are being taken from all of us by private corporations. I would argue, in fact, that if the public had control over these resources, we would govern ourselves in a far different manner that would…

Ah yes. The famous capitalists who caused famine in Easter Island and told Chinese people to decimate the forests of China to fuel the smelting of small quantities of pig-iron.

Ostrom didn't debunk the tragedy of the commons. She merely suggests a framework that would avoid it, which has never been tested at the scale of 7 billion people trying to solve global warming.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#157
post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the s…

You can’t seriously believe that we’re in that grave of danger

I seriously believe it. Climate change will almost certainly lead to food insecurity and political upheavals, leading mass migration and war, not to mention potential knock-on effects where, for example, photosynthesis reductions due to extreme heat at the equator, rapid rates of methane release as permafrost melts, mass death in a heating and acidifying sea... . really there are just so many things that could go wrong, much more wrong. So yes, we should be very serious, and very scared.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#158
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be an excuse that's been in use for decades. Meanwhile, we're just dragging our feet about stopping oil use and kicking the can down the road for the next generation to deal with. Ultimately, it's a very poor excuse to state that because we can't stop immediately, that we might as well continue digging as much oil as possible out of the ground for burning.

There’s no credible path for reducing carbon emissions enough to reverse warming under current models that doesn’t involve gigadeaths.

I suppose that's what happens when we leave it as late as possible to even start to do anything.

Unfortunately, we're going to have far more gigadeaths when crops fail due to the climate becoming unpredictable and wars over clean water become ubiquitous. It always surprises me that people claim that deaths will result from cleaning up our act when that's a small fraction of the deaths that will be caused by climate catastrophes.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#159
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.

This is the tragedy of the commons. Every industry contributes a negligible amount. It is logical and rational to maximize your own benefites by contributing negligible damage to the environment. The tragedy arises in aggregate. When every industry contributes negligible amounts at the same time the aggregate contribution is no longer negligible. Rational individual action leads to total destruction. Yeah we are all…

> Every industry contributes a negligible amount.

What? No.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#160
post #7

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits. Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the s…

Their entire plan is:

- Deny the existence of the problem.

- Pay for others to join the denialist movement.

- Pay others to say that individuals should fix the problem, not the company.

- If they cannot deny anymore, promise they will certainly do something in the future.

- When the future arrives, say they couldn't do anything for financial reasons.

- Finally, say that the harm is already done, and nothing else can be done about it (we already see this happening).

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