The “radical plan” was bullshit carbon offsets, and it only applies to Shell’s own emissions, not the emissions from burning the oil/gas Shell produces.
This plan doesn’t even deserve being shelved. It deserves being shitcanned.
Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
21–30 of 322 posts
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#22It 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…
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.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#23TL;DR: this article is mainly about Shell rowing back on its offset development targets, not for the oil it produces, but for its operational emissions.
Having worked in the sector, albeit not with Shell, my guess is that the board were advised that offsets increasingly carry massive legal jeopardy, including director’s liability.
This is an interesting summary of the problem:
https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-...
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#24Earlier 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 doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.
I think GP meant that in a hundred years WE will all be dead, not that our descendants won't be there.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#25It 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…
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…
> You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning?
20 years minus the latency inherent to the system. If I recall correctly the latency from "stopping to emit CO2" to "starting to see effects" is estimated to be 13 years.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#26It 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…
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…
The earth is getting warmer. To try to guilt people about it achieves nothing. The only action humanity can take at this point is to predict the effects of global warming and build infrastructure to slow it down, mitigate it or plan for the mass migrations.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
If your view is that these companies are multi-decade sustainable businesses, then you want to invest in shoring up the firms' reputation and drilling new wells. If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.
> If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders. I can not locate the long piece article now but I read a piece from someone that effectively got invited into a Shell (UK) think tank and heard exactly that from some vp/executive at a dinner table. That they…
> public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades
I don't think it's public opinion so much as it is necessity to maintain current standards of living for the next few decades. Renewable energy is still a relatively small fraction of overall energy use, and net global oil consumption has been steadily increasing the past few years (likely to surpass pre-covid levels this year). Our society is still very much addicted to hydrocarbons.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#28It 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…
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…
> Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion.
Suppose for a moment that I completely agree with you on all points of substance. Even then, I would have to tell you that corporations are designed (not metaphorically, but literally designed) to deflect and shield liability. There never is anyone to be held accountable, because everyone who acts is an employee, and the ownership is divided among millions of people, through many layers of misdirection. None of whom make any decisions.
Unless you were careful, and if you have a 401K, you yourself may in fact be part owner. Or owner of an owner of an owner of an owner. Should you be held accountable?
You can't arrest a corporation. You can't put it in a holding cell overnight. You can't sentence it to prison for 10 years. You definitely can't give it the death penalty and execute it. And it's no accident this is the case. The major (and perhaps only real) difference between a corporation and simpler business customs is that the corporation is this magical wall between the owner and the business that can't usually be breached. If the business goes bankrupt, no one can seize the businessman's home as collateral. That's what a corporation is for. You live in a society that, however upset it might be over climate change, isn't upset at all over this "design". They like it. They revel in it. And it's not going away.
> If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.
But that's already true from a pragmatic standpoint. Even the CEO now, he was hired in a few years ago, He's just some schlub taking the jobs he knows how to do, without any real power to change what you want. If he tried, they'd fire him and get another. The people who set the ball rolling made sure of that. And even they aren't guilty in any real way, either, unless you want to pretend that someone in the early 1900s should have known better.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#29Correct me if I'm wrong but even the original plan only covered carbon footprint of Shell's operations? Which I presume are pretty much a minor fraction of the carbon footprint of their products and kinda makes the whole exercise a PR campaign. Even when it would cover pipeline leaks and the like it's still nowhere near their total impact.
I wonder what the percentage is. Refining alone is ludicrously energy-intensive, plus end-to-end transport costs.
Re: Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions
#30I 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.