71–80 of 285 posts
People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil. They’re just responding to demand. We need to make oil less competitive, with better alternatives. No point or even value in demonizing these companies — the whole world is complicit.
Genuine question to all the anti "Big Oil" commenters here: what's your alternative? Let's imagine an alternate history where oil companies hadn't fought against climate change science. What does that alternate universe look like? We have known for years that climate change is real, and yet the vast majority of people simply won't actually change their consumption when push comes to shove. This is the largest, most s…
Think about how many engineer's have spent their entire lives optimizing ICE powertrains, with all this tech actively harming us with smog shortening our lifespans, acid rain and climate change.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil. They’re just responding to demand. No, they’re not. > We need to make oil less competitive, with better alternatives. Like tobacco companies, oil companies have actively lied and lobbied to maintain demand and obstruct coordinated effort of exactly the kind you describe as necessary. They are not passive actors simply responding to demand as they find it.
Is Big Oil why we can't have affordable, safe, quiet housing in dense cities? Is Big Oil why people like taking planes to Hawaii? Is Big Oil why it's much cheaper to heat with natural gas?
However, lies are bad.
Presumably they had a motivation to tell such lies, yes? Presumably they believed that telling such lies were to their benefit? Presumably the mechanism by which they believed telling such lies would be to their benefit would be by influencing the actions of others?
Surely you don’t think the reason for the lies is just that they would feel socially awkward if they had been honest?
Presumably they perceived a risk that if they hadn’t lied, that some regulations would have been imposed.
These regulations could have restricted emissions by reducing consumption.
Yes, this would mean that consumers would lose something they wanted.
This does not justify lies.
We've all individually and collectively chosen to ignore the problem.
Now is the point where we lie and pretend no one told us and it was all somehow a conspiracy by big oil, big meat, big airline-travel etc to force us to emit when we didnt want to.
Count me out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure how that CEOs response differs from . It is a rare case that you see a CEO decide that some other metric is more important than making money.
It doesn't. It's a CEO's fiduciary duty to act in shareholders best interests. EDIT: HN, you're really getting juvenile. Save downvotes for low quality comments, not 100% factual comments that you simply don't like.
People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil. They’re just responding to demand. We need to make oil less competitive, with better alternatives. No point or even value in demonizing these companies — the whole world is complicit.
> People act like oil companies are the ones burning oil. They’re just responding to demand. No, they’re not. > We need to make oil less competitive, with better alternatives. Like tobacco companies, oil companies have actively lied and lobbied to maintain demand and obstruct coordinated effort of exactly the kind you describe as necessary. They are not passive actors simply responding to demand as they find it.
> No, they’re not.
That would be more convincing if you gave a reason why you say "no, they're not". Even better would be evidence.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big industry of all sorts routinely tries to manipulate public opinion and the machinery of government to keep itself in business. That goes for big corn as much as big oil, but big oil is the one fucking over the planet.
Did big oil buy you a big house in the suburbs?
Genuine question to all the anti "Big Oil" commenters here: what's your alternative? Let's imagine an alternate history where oil companies hadn't fought against climate change science. What does that alternate universe look like? We have known for years that climate change is real, and yet the vast majority of people simply won't actually change their consumption when push comes to shove. This is the largest, most s…
Green energy could have been cost-effective decades earlier, leading to wider adoption and massive investment in research. We could have been building nuclear plants for the last several decades instead of pretending coal was still viable.
Genuine question to all the anti "Big Oil" commenters here: what's your alternative? Let's imagine an alternate history where oil companies hadn't fought against climate change science. What does that alternate universe look like? We have known for years that climate change is real, and yet the vast majority of people simply won't actually change their consumption when push comes to shove. This is the largest, most s…
That's a good point. I'd say it is universal greed, but the vast amount of power is concentrated in the hands of a few who do anything to preserve it.
Perhaps we need to look at others to blame...
The industrial revolution opened the floodgates for greed among all types of CEOs/Presidents that ran faster than the law or science could keep up. Although I doubt the blighted factory towns in England that lived under perpetual smog darkness were like "Sure, this is OK for the environment."
The baby boom? Everyone wanted to live in suburbs, which required cars, roads, tires, gasoline, oil?
American's sense of entitlement? "I deserve more and I'm going to take it?" Let's be honest, most americans are greedy seflish bunch who think "Well, this one little thing isn't going to hurt anyone this time..." x 1,000,000 instances.
It's probably just the fruition of Manifest Destiny: man's toxic urge to conquer and oppress: only the strong survive, winner take all, yadda yadda yadda. When is the last time you heard a leader (with actual power!!!) say, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we were all just nice to each other?" ... And that guy was nailed to a tree...
I love how people who drive cars, fly on planes, use plastic, get goods delivered by truck, etc etc, act like oil companies just pump oil out of the ground for fun then light it on fire. The mental gymnastics are impressive.
Nobody who travels ‘wants’ to burn oil. Capital decided oil is the most profitable way to deliver that. There was never a point where individual personal consumption habits could have changed this course.