I was responding to the blanket claim in the parent that oil kills people. In my view it's not as simple as being claimed but I am sure technically there is a case here.
The positives are also externalized. The internet wouldn't happen without fossil fuels yet it's not the oil companies who make the money on that. Many of our inventions wouldn't be possible without the ability of fossil fuels to make life easier and free up time for us, things that the oil companies does not benefit directly from. So I take issue with this idea that externalities are only negative, they are to a much larger extent beneficial in ways we don't even think about.
I think the legal and to an extent the root of moral outrage at issue, Thom, is the inherent fraud of the deceptive claims facilitated by diverting profit to corporations/agencies intended to poison-the-well of public discourse, combined with active suppression of any type of release of in-house research that provided evidence that the fossil fuel industry could have been contributing to climate change.
It rubs some people (me at least) the wrong way when we try to say our policymaking is based on reasoned science, but not everyone is bringing all their chips to the table in good faith, and some are outright fabricating lies to keep the gravy train going, and keep the public guessing.
I've actually enjoyed your posts mind, and find quite a bit to agree with in them. However, I don't necessarily think you're making a successful counterargument in the sense no one is condemning the oil/petrochem industry for doing what it's doing; it seems to be aimed more at bad behavior in terms of burying inconvenient science, and funding disinformation campaigns.
That, at least, strikes me as worthy of its day in court, so at a minimum the public interest can be served by discovery. After all, they don't need to be found guilty for good to come of it.
The positives are also externalized. The internet wouldn't happen without fossil fuels yet it's not the oil companies who make the money on that. Many of our inventions wouldn't be possible without the ability of fossil fuels to make life easier and free up time for us, things that the oil companies does not benefit directly from. So I take issue with this idea that externalities are only negative, they are to a much larger extent beneficial in ways we don't even think about.