Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

euronews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 292 posts

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#231

Post by epistasis »

cr1895 wrote: post #126
epistasis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good! What else is a court supposed to do? If She'll exits the Netherlands than all the better for the Netherlands.

If Shell fully exits then their massive wind/hydrogen project probably won’t happen: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-shell-gasunie-hydrogen-id...

If Shell refuses to meet market needs, there's plenty of capital out there for others to do it.

There's nothing that Shell offers that is unique, and we have all sorts of other options. (I say "we" even though I'm not in the Netherlands, but we in the US are just as independent as NL is.)

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#232

Post by ClumsyPilot »

whatever1 wrote: post #171
adamsvystun wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From HN guidelines [0]: > Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. You could have said: "Punishing supply would not do much without decreasing demand, it will just redistribute the profits. Moreover, the profits might go to less morally sound places." [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.htm…

I stated facts. 1) Supply tends to meet demand at the cost of the marginal supplier. 2) If the West is not willing to, the rest of the folks will be happy to do so. Btw more than 50% of the global liquids demand is for diesel, jet fuel and bunker fuel for ships. At the time of writing we do not have any viable alternatives for these, and we do not expect to have them ready and scaled up in the next 8 years.

The first nuclear powered container ship was built in 1959, and we could have had zero emissions ships all this time.

We can replace all jet fuel with biofuel, all diesel with electric or hydrogen.

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#233

Post by nomoreplease »

chefkoch wrote: post #3
gruez wrote: post #2

What's the legal basis of this lawsuit? Are they violating some sort of law? Are they not violating any law, but just doing "bad"? The article isn't clear. >"Shell is the biggest polluter in the Netherlands. The company emits nine times as much CO2 as the entire Netherlands combined. Surely this is because shell is a multinational company and the netherlands is a small country?

From an older article >A court in The Hague will hear claims that Royal Dutch Shell has broken Dutch law by knowingly hampering the global phase-out of fossil fuels, in a case that could force the company to reduce its CO2 emissions. Lawyers for a consortium led by Friends of the Earth Netherlands will argue on the first of four days of public hearings on Tuesday that Shell has been aware for decades of the damage it…

Ironically, Shell is often mentioned in business studies and books as having a famous 'Futures group' that tries to predict what the future might be so they can base their strategy on it. Looks like they screwed up either the prediction or what to do about climate change.

Looks like they are now called the scenarios group:

https://www.shell.com/energy-and-innovation/the-energy-futur...

Also ironically, one of the members of that group joined Shell in 1980 and is "a board member of the International Emissions Trading Association and was its Chairman from 2011-13. He is a board member of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, USA, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute in Melbourne, Australia."

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#234

Post by ClumsyPilot »

adventured wrote: post #133
creaghpatr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forced by whom, the Netherlands?

I agree with the sentiment. That's always the environmental challenge. Who's going to enforce/stop/change any of it? The most likely answer, rooted in reason, logic and an understanding of human nature, is: absolutely nobody is going to stop any of it in a way that is going to matter. We've far since crossed the point of no return. You can take all emissions to zero in the developed world and it won't matter at all n…

You believe the house will burn down, but virtue signallers are the problem?

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#235

Post by epistasis »

kolbe wrote: post #149
Isinlor wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully we can force similar rulings in other countries and on the EU level. This ruling may be a precedent since it is partially based on the European law. The same could be attempted across the whole world where judicial branch holds actual power. https://www.urgenda.nl/en/themas/climate-case/global-climate... https://peoplesclimatecase.caneurope.org/ http://climatecasechart.com/non-us-climate-change-litigation..…

There's a line in The Wire where an honest hard working security guard asks Marlo to not disrespect him by stealing in front of him. Marlo says, "you want it to be one way, but it's the other way," then Marlo kills him. You can downvote me all you want. You can "hope" to do whatever in your crusade. You can tell me all about what "could" happen if the world weren't the way is. But it's not that way. It's the other wa…

In this analogy, one might think that Shell is Marlo and society is the security guard, but the reality is that the roles are reversed. If Shell does not change their game, they will die.

Global capital is coming to terms with this, though there are still a few executives in power at banks that don't realize it.

Fossil fuel companies skate by because they have access to cheap loans right now. But as that dries up, so will their extraction of fossil fuels. This is happening far more quickly than most people realize, since most people aren't following that side of financial markets. Everything is shifting day by day.

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#236

Post by kaba0 »

zackees wrote: post #63

China creates more CO2 than the rest of the world combined. Destroying a company like this while giving China a free pass is essentially killing competition on China’s behalf. Also, there is no live experiment showing CO2 is the source of global warming. All the models are in silica and the IPCC has been hit with a major email breach showing major manipulation of the data to hide the decline of temperature data.

Have you looked at CO2 emitted per capita? Isn’t that a fairer metric? (I’m not saying that their emission is okay, but at least measure it per capita, and remember that the West likes to outsource the environmentally problematic parts of manufacturing to China, other parts of Asia)

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#237

Post by kaba0 »

ppf wrote: post #135
ISL wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the neighborhood is burning and your house, along with your neighbors', is on fire, it is reasonable to address your own fire, perhaps at the same time as extending support to others. There are plenty of reasons to believe that CO_2 is the major driver of global warming. It has been the leading proposed cause for decades and is generally consistent with known evidence.

Every time we mandate that some product can't be produced in the West, China gladly fills the gap, burning huge amounts of brown coal in the process. Why do you think they have a global monopoly on solar cell and lithium battery production? They are incredibly energy-intensive processes. It would be like, in your analogy, somehow by putting out your own fire, someone else's house started burning.

Or more like, you can put out your own fire by lighting several other houses on fire deliberately, and blaming them for the fires.

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#238

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kolbe wrote: post #84
epistasis wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good! What else is a court supposed to do? If She'll exits the Netherlands than all the better for the Netherlands.

No, Shell is going to just take its thousands of high paying jobs from their headquarters to a more favorable regulatory regime. Very little else will change.

These are just little tremours before the eruption of public discontent once the reality of climate change sets in.

Once we have 100 million refugees because half of bangladesh is underwater, it will get urgly and all the fuckerage will come back to haunt them.

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#239

Post by kaba0 »

karaterobot wrote: post #82
aqme28 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or you think you're making a salient point. Poe's law, I guess. What is wrong with junk food providers considering the impact on the health of their customers? Why should social media companies not worry about the mental health of the user?

The argument is that junk food providers and social media companies should not be held responsible for misuse of their products. The question is whether there is a "safe dosage" of junk food or social media, and whether if people go beyond that dosage they do it at their own risk. If the serving size is one cookie, and I eat 25 cookies, should the baker be held accountable?

First of all, it should be regulated one level above, like not having Big Sugar/Corn syrup put into every single edible thing, to a point where the population is literally addicted and feels food without it bland. That is a crime against a whole nation.

Second of all, yeah, cheaper product at the expense of the consumer’s health is not an okay step. But yet again it is supposed to be the government’s job to blacklist some ingredients, mandate proper labeling of them, as well as the amount of energy/minerals contained.

Re: Shell ordered to cut CO2 emissions by 45% in landmark climate case

#240

Post by irdc »

cbmuser wrote: post #204
matheusmoreira wrote: post #22

Now this is something that could have an actual impact on carbon emissions. The sooner these fossil fuel companies get fined or taxed the better.

Shell could just shutdown for a week and I bet that court will revoke their decision in no time. Seriously, such verdicts are completely pointless and achieve absolutely nothing. The court can’t blame Shell for decisions that are made by politicians, especially in the energy sector. If an industrial country wants to reduce emissions, it must build nuclear power plants unless it has the potential for large hydro or ge…

Shell could certainly shut down to force their will upon the Dutch people...for about 10 minutes or so; after that, the entire board will be behind bars and the company nationalised.

Don’t be silly. Energy is a national interest.

Secondly, one of the reasons for this verdict (see 2.5.9 and 4.4.20 in the judgement) is that Shell has known about the dangers of excessive CO₂ emissions since the 1980s. If this wasn’t about CO₂ but H₂S (a foul smelling and poisonous gas) they’d have to have stopped already.

Post reply on HN