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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

#171

Post by cutemonster »

coliveira wrote: post #160
tw04 wrote: 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…

And:

- Convince weak minded but important influencers that there's no problem,

by forming "real" friendships (no bribes),

so they in turn sincerely honestly spread the manipulation themselves.

(Ive seen that & read that Putin uses this against the US and EU, and it apparently works great, but that's off topic)

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#172

Post by oceanplexian »

tw04 wrote: post #22
wredue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible w…

I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant. I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.

The world isn’t just the USA and Europe, and their proclamations aren’t the law of the world nor are they the world police. Nor do the majority of the Earth’s emissions come from developed countries.

Go ask some people in developing countries if they think they should sacrifice economic growth for climate change. The answer is going to be overwhelmingly no. The developing world also has the majority of the world’s population, so the global consensus actually belongs to them, not us.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#173

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Aachen wrote: post #83
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my fami…

Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably? Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that…

> Why couldn't that be generated sustainably?

It very likely could, and I'd happily pay for it. Like, my Mac Studio with an M2 Max in it probably took, all said, and absurd about of resources to create... But it only cost me $3k or something. Well, if it works as long as it should, it'll easily help me earn over half a million dollars. I'd rather pay far more for the computer and cover the expenses of the externalities of its production, but I don't have the choice.

Otherwise, a lot of the energy used in the production could be sustainably produced, but it's not incentivized enough in the countries (or any countries, I suppose) in order for that to occur.

Perhaps I could make improvements by switching to different computers. I know the framework offers opportunities to reuse the same chassis such you can use mostly-the-same hardware for a very long time, and that could be the right path forward. I love the philosophy.

As for the driving issue, that's very hard to overcome. I personally ride an electric bike just about all the time, but at the moment I'm on vacation in Whistler, BC, having driven through 2 full tanks of gas so far on my way from Victoria, to Squamish, now Whistler, and all the little stops in between. My Toyota Highlander produces more pollution than any other single thing in my life. My wife drives it for work and we both regret the purchase quite a bit. Yet, something electric would take a very long time to "break even" on the footprint before improving on our situation, even with how clean our electricity is here in BC. I need to do more research to understand how I could purchase my way out of this problem.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#174

Post by polygamous_bat »

tw04 wrote: 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…

Of course, the board of shell can just delay the legal responsibility until all of them are ghosts – then they've won and their next generation can just inherit their yachts to stay on top of (literally) the rising sea.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#175

Post by morgengold »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #30

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.

There is only one thing that will work: we need a price for CO2 emissions and we need a collective of economically powerful nations that push that through at the same time. Other nations who refuse to take part need to pay for market access.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#176

Post by jl2718 »

Study the carbon cycle a bit and then come back and tell me I’m wrong about this:

Offsets do not work. The best application of that funding would be to stop destruction of the ocean habitat. Short explanation: Almost all surface and atmospheric carbon ends up in the ocean by rivers or rainfall. Geological-timescale sequestration is performed by zooplankton et al in the form of CaCO3, but something has to eat them or they will block the light for their own food supply, and the rest of the ecosystem follows from there. And yes, surface habitats also matter, but their destruction is more localized.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#177

Post by steve_adams_86 »

Scea91 wrote: post #87
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad. I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my fami…

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

As I recall it's about 2%, but I'd need to dive much deeper to get numbers I can trust.

Computing infrastructure is one thing, but then there's also the enormous waste footprint of electronics in general. So many billions of people are now cycling through devices, and our recycling story is disturbingly poor. My job is quite close to this problem, whether it directly supports it or not. My livelihood more or less depends on humanity using connected devices, so this problem works in my favour (so to speak).

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#178

Post by wonderwonder »

coliveira wrote: post #160
tw04 wrote: 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…

I think its deeper than that. Its not an oil company issue (I am not implying in anyway that they are the good guys here) What would happen to society if tomorrow all oil companies just said the risk of global warming is too great, we are all shutting down. Society would collapse.

Its not so much they are doing this for profits; which of course they are, but society as a whole very much needs them to continue to do so in order to assure our continued existence in our current form.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#179

Post by kjkjadksj »

agloe_dreams wrote: post #99
TheAtomic wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, Shell is f'd. Increasingly I wonder if Apple is in the same boat. An AI-based phone from SpaceX with Starlink connectivity, or from Nvidia, would disrupt their entire business model. And they don't really seem to get AI.

> And they don't really seem to get AI. To say this is to not know how Apple operates. They have been shipping local AI in phones for a decade now. Every phone has one of the best neural processors out there. Apple is better prepared than anyone. And that's before considering their remarkable restraint to not release something until they are happy with it. They are 100% working on LLMs and I'm sure they will do it th…

Best neural processor in the world but how is it even being used? Not by Siri thats for sure.

Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

#180

Post by kjkjadksj »

hkt wrote: post #106

Remember folks, you can strike back: ditch your car, ditch your gas cooker, get solar panels, get batteries, use less energy, get a heat pump. Change your life to be healthier and deprive these animals of profit.

Too bad theres 8 billion other potential consumers
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