You missed “Climate change is real and caused by humans but it’s the responsibility of individuals to fix it.”
“It’s not the company’s fault that you didn’t recycle. Grow up!”
Why should our profits go down to save the world?
Or just “Climate change is real, but it is to late to do anything about it”.
Thank you BP
Well, I mean, companies don’t buy their own products.
They do buy each other’s a whole lot though, and they’ve been relying on subsidized, cheap oil to send it overseas to each other, and to the end consumer as well
Blaming it on the individual is just a strategy to delay regulation. Yes, it is lots of individuals, who buy the climate-killing products. But regulating the company does nothing else than prevent those individuals from buying the climate-killing products.
In particular, this is also in the interest of all individuals to solve via regulation, because it creates a new baseline, where companies will scale production and push down prices. If it’s up to the individual to buy eco-friendly, then eco-friendly comes at a premium price. If it’s the default, it’s going to be commodity price.
Regulation without public backing is not possible. You need people to show that it’s possible to live without burning fossil fuels or eating meat. If the government would just ban them there would be riots.
You don’t have to ban them. The strategy I usually see recommended by researchers, is a tax for companies releasing CO2-equivalents into the atmosphere (“carbon tax”) + giving that tax money to consumers.
This increases the price of products proportional to how bad they are for the climate, but on average does not decrease how much money consumers have in their wallets.
It means that people consuming lots of climate-unfriendly products need to pay more or switch to more climate-friendly alternatives. This will lead to some resistance, but on the flipside, people consuming lots of climate-friendly products will be rewarded. This tax is also usually introduced gradually, so companies and consumers can adjust to it.
A company doing something bad every time they make a sale doesn’t make it the purchaser’s fault. The company is performing the bad action and is accountable for that action.
I think you mean should be accountable for that action. Clearly they are not held accountable in any meaningful sense.
Except they do to produce other products. Customers can’t be expected to know every step of every supply chain, but the companies already do, they just don’t care.
FTFY:
Doing God’s work
Right now oil companies are at an inserted stage before oops which is “it’s too hard and too late to do anything about it now, we’re all doomed anyway”
There is the doomerism timeline. “Well, it’s too late now, no reason to change anything now!”.
Doomerism is just an evolution of binary thinking.
…
That’s a strawman of doomerism. There’s as many different opinions as there are “doomers”, but most are probably in the realm of “do what we can to reduce the damage, but the science and math is saying we’re way past any great solutions.” I guess some would call that realism to separate it from the doomer label, but whatever it’s called, that’s where we are.
I can’t believe the straight up science denial in these comments lmfao.
Actual, real scientists that have been studying this for decades all agree. Within 50 years, the Earth will witness a mass die-off of all current life forms directly due to runaway climate change.
And you have lemmings calling this shit “doomer”, so they can feel good in their little liberal bubble about their metal water bottle and paper straws like that’s making any fucking difference.
“Drastic change in the current human way of life” is not just switching to recyclables. It’s fucking over and the liberals, in predictable fashion, are doing nothing to stop it besides feel-good band aids that don’t actually do anything.
I have an idea that might work for solving climate change. It has no scientific basis but hear me out, I think it’s worth at least trying. We should try sacrificing some oil execs in a volcano. Maybe tie them to a barrel of oil so that the earth understands we are trying to return what we took and make up for it a bit, so please chill out. Probably won’t actually do anything but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it for a few decades, right?
I like it. I mean, people won’t go into the lava, as it’s liquid stone, everyone thinks they’ll just dive in but no, it’d be like falling onto solid rock; but you’ve solved that with the oil barrel - well done.
This comment was reported for advocating violence. I’m chalking it up to venting. I share similar frustrations, but let’s make sure we aren’t pushing the envelope too far.
I’ve made similar comments, but I’m trying to take my mod duties (and reports associated with them) half seriously.
Kind regards
TS
Is a blood sacrifice violence?
Myeh. Kinda
Moderating online forums is hard and thankless. You giving thought to such things and not “just following rules” is laudable. Thank you :)
I’m new to moderating, but I’d like to do right by the users.
Yea no harm no foul if it doesn’t work out. But we should at least try.
The one from Total lately is more subtle: climate change is real and humans cause it, but there’s still an increasing demand for fossil fuel, so we answer it (would rather buy more from the Russians?), by opening new wells we keep it affordable for the people (do you want yellow jackets again?).
It would be nice to at least have a plan to one day be immune to oil price chaos and geopolitical fights surrounding distant oil wells. And day now…
I think the only way is to reduce oil dependency. As long as it exists, people will exploit the dependency for economical and political advantage.
Project 2025 has a plan for that.
Unfortunately the plan is “build lots and lots of nuclear power plants and produce more coal, oil, and national gas domestically”. But at least it’s a plan.
Should motivate places like Europe, Japan, China and India who don’t produce oil, hopefully only nuclear and sodium batteries/pumped hydro for baseload power. For oil producers, it is harder to wean them off.
I mean UK & Norway having oil while also both being top 10 in Europe for use of renewables 👀
For places like Europe which are politically stable within themselves, places that can provide way more than they need renewably (uk with wind, norway with hydro, spain with solar) should just pretty much provide for the whole continent and maybe make some nice profit in the process (as they are right now, UK is producing 70% from renewables and exporting 14% of their generation to other countries right now - https://grid.iamkate.com)
If you put the pumped storage in other countries it even balances out the nimbyism and control of the whole system
Let’s all remember that jury nullification exists, even if being on jury duty kind of sucks.
Oh no no no, we are already in the holy f$ck stage. Massive storm is the devastate coastal communities, massive droughts that lead to widespread death, wildfires that are bigger than any on record, those things are all connected with climate change.
For some reason people really want it to be polar. They really want to say that if we don’t take action this month then the world will end. The reality is that things have gotten bad in some ways and will continue to get bad in some ways no matter what we do, but every action that we start taking now helps. Politicians and corporations hate that because it means the problem is one they have to keep on dealing with.
You forgot the “yes it is real and it’s the consumers fault” phase
For the vast majority of humanity - this is probably the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.
“The poor peons will die before they ever do anything about it, we already control the media & make it all their fault - straws, recycling — & our bunkers will keep us cool while they all boil alive. It doesn’t matter. They’re not profitable. Mankind was mean to profit.”
We just have to find those bunkers and raid them! 😉
Nah, just pour concrete down the ventilation shafts and exits.
Then they can enjoy their tombs in peace.
I’d add an overlapping step sponsored by BP in 2004: “Climate Change is real, and here’s a calculator to show you, that we have nothing to do with it.”
For the uninitiated: The Carbon Footprint Calculator was introduced by BP in 2004 as what can only be described as a successful attempt to shift attention and blame to the general public.
Like…why would anyone believe a company whose interest is enmeshed with their claims?? A company isn’t a person with morals. It’s a Machiavellian machine with the sole purpose of maximizing profits. They will never ever intentionally make a claim that hurts their profits. It would make absolutely no sense for a company to reduce demand of its product. That would be soooooo counterintuitive. If you sold lemonade, would you publish a study that showed that lemonade harms people? If yes, then your company would stop selling lemonade and disband while every other lemonade seller would flood the market with the benefits of consuming lemonade.
no dispute there. The thing is, it wasn’t advertised like that. It was advertised as: Here’s this scientifically sound tool to measure your impact and judge what you can do. Which in and of itself wouldn’t be a bad thing if it wasn’t burying the lead.
Exxon knew since at least the 70s
Same for Shell, if I remember correctly.
We knew about the Keeling curve in the 50’s
If entrenched capital hasn’t moved off of oil by now they’re just asking to get their lunch eaten by the green push. Can we move off the doomsday juice already? Nothing but laggards and bored investors hanging on at this point
Climate change deniers changed their tune. They re-branded themselves as “climate skeptic”, and from outright denialism they shifted to “climate change is happening, but it happened before and this one will not be as bad.”
A lot of O&G industry has pivoted to “Only we can fix climate change!” then started mopping up federal grants and subsidies to build quixotic hydrogen fuel cell, carbon capture, and “clean” carbon projects that consistently fail to pay dividends.
Their Republican enablers then point to these failures and announce “climate change is a hoax! We should go back to Drill Here, Drill Now!”
We go back into a debate, while O&G profits surge and temperatures continue to rise. Then everyone in the economy panics when a foreign power takes the lead on battery and nuclear technology.
