The oil companies are not polluting, society that depends on them for continued existence in its current form is.
"The drug cartels ruined me" said the junkie. It's easy and lazy to blame the big and greedy suppliers but demand will always create a vaccum that must and will be filled.
Assume fossil fuels are like drugs, why was the war on drugs not only unwinnable but made things worse? If that parallel is correct, consider the ramifications of this blunder being repeated on the climate.
These companies are well known for not just supplying the hydrocarbons, but also burying research that showed the impact of CO2 emissions, scuttling research into the same, funding misleading news and propaganda groups that dismiss such impacts and influencing authorities to scuttle efforts to switch to alternative power sources.
They aren't just passive players who share equal responsibility with us normies for heating up the planet. They are active players, without whose involvement, we may have taken solid actions much earlier when it really mattered. They shouldn't be compared to the illegal drug mafia. They should be compared to the big tobacco who did bad things while apparently staying within the law. Let's not understate or dilute their culpability in causing the major crisis that is plaguing the entire planet.
Why do they even do research into emissions? Who cares? Shouldn't an independent organization be doing the studies anyways? They take oil from the ground and sell it, whether their customers want vaseline or unleaded gas, do long as it is legally permitted and they pay all the taxes, what other obligation do they have?
> ...funding misleading news and propaganda groups that dismiss such impacts and influencing authorities to scuttle efforts to switch to alternative power sources.
But did they break the law? Is there corruption in the government or academia? Then start by rooting out that corruption.
You are missing the point! This is the same mistake the war on drugs made! You want to bring big oil to their knees but so what? Are you saying people will buy shitty electric cars or nuke powerplants will be built because if that?
If I was an oil and gas ceo, I would just quitely move my hq and business to friendlier countries and have non-culpable subsidiaries run US/western side of things but I am sure they have resources to eventually escape any significant damages beyond a few billion dollars.
The fact that the political system is manipulated by powerful people and compnies is rightfully a root cause here. I have yet to see anyone sue congresspeople or crusade for lobbying/academia reform. Do you seriously blame publicly traded money making machines doing all they can to make more money? They're not supposed to care about the climate, your politicians are! Your academics who are supposed to present information to policy makers are. In the end you spend all your time protesting and crusadinf against anyone but the people ultimately responsible for it who can make effective change. Oil companies work for shareholders interests, elected politicians work for you.
And keep in mind, big tobacco is alive and kicking. You can near bankrupt oil companies, they'll still be very profitable and the problem is still unsolved.
> Why do they even do research into emissions? Who cares?
Their research was more about protecting their revenue streams. They took actions based on it - to derail public discourse and actions into climate change. That's reason enough why anybody should care.
> Shouldn't an independent organization be doing the studies anyways?
That too did happen. But there were so many instances in which such research was scuttled and their results discredited.
> They take oil from the ground and sell it, whether their customers want vaseline or unleaded gas, do long as it is legally permitted and they pay all the taxes, what other obligation do they have?
> But did they break the law? Is there corruption in the government or academia? Then start by rooting out that corruption.
Oh! So, now the argument is that they did all that just because the society is corrupt and allowed them to do so? No consideration for all they money they pumped to corrupt public discourse and institutions? And don't hold them responsible for their actions until all corruption in the world is rooted out? That's a very disingenuous and frankly dishonest argument that anybody can raise to justify misdeeds.
The fact that they knew about the consequences and the actions they still took to bring the world to the brink of an ecological disaster are well known and documented. I'm disgusted by the fact that people are still calling for giving them a free pass when we're realistically looking at bleak economic future and a man-made mass extinction event. The society be damned if we forget and whitewash the actions of certain groups that brought such misery to the entire planet.
> Oh! So, now the argument is that they did all that just because the society is corrupt and allowed them to do so? No consideration for all they money they pumped to corrupt public discourse and institutions? And don't hold them responsible for their actions until all corruption in the world is rooted out? That's a very disingenuous and frankly dishonest argument that anybody can raise to justify misdeeds.
Not society but government. If the US had strict bribery laws for congress for things lobbying by corporations (something I insist should be a constitutional amendment) this would not have been a problem.
The fact is legal is legal, no crimes. For civil damages you have to prove that without their actions meaningful policy change would take place (despite politicians still worrying about oil and car jobs among other things in their states regardless) and prove that the policy change would have had global impact that could have prevented your damages, this means proving they also interfered in countries like China, india and EU countries that pollute/emit more than the US.
But again, so what I ask? You get paid but will their punishment change anything? It won't even prevent them from doing the same things. Big tobacco just slaps on a warning sign, it took a lot of education for consumers and policy by various parties to drive down tobacco use, neither punishing big tobacco nor raising taxes and punishing users made the slightest dent, same with drugs.
Fossil fuel is an addiction and you folks are wasting precious years fighting the wrong battle, even if you win you still lose the war.
> I'm disgusted by the fact that people are still calling for giving them a free pass when we're realistically looking at bleak economic future and a man-made mass extinction event. The society be damned if we forget and whitewash the actions of certain groups that brought such misery to the entire planet.
It takes to to tango! It sounds like you want to punish them because they can pay money, is it that simple? Where is your moral rage against academics and congresspersons in that same vein? Were they innocents who were taken advantage of in your opinion?
You still don't get that big companies are supposed to look out for their own interests! They owe you no moral obligation beyond the letter of the law. However, trusted academics and elected politicians do have an obligation to look after your interests and they didn't.
If you trust someone to guard your house and they let a thieve in to take your stuff, should you not me more angry at the person you trusted? In this case the thieves stole lawfully and indirectly and they have fat wallets to fight with in court.
There is this classist/corporate outrage culture that is very psychologically satisfying but in reality isn't rooted in critical thinking or affecting meaningful change.
As is the process of farming coca and marijuana plants and then harvesting and processing them. Going after supply or demand directly only made things worse there.
I think most people should really sit down and give some thought to why these oil companies are so big and profitable. Is it because the executives get off on extracting for the sake of extracting, damn the earth and the flora and the fauna? Maybe. (Probably not.)
It probably has something more to do with the fact that individuals like driving their cars and taking planes to vacation destinations and appreciate the utility and versatility of plastic.
I’m not trying to absolve oil companies or say that it is the individuals who are at fault, but the oil companies produce a tremendously useful product. And individual consumers buy great volumes of that product because, well, it’s tremendously useful and makes possible their western standard of living.
So forgive me for thinking that this stunt is cutesy and fundamentally unserious. The oil companies wouldn’t be nearly as big as they are if they cast majority of humanity wasn’t very, very interested in what they’re selling.
Countries worldwide are addicted to fossil fuels because you need to burn fuel if you want to achieve almost anything.
As Jean-Marc Jancovici puts it, the oil consumption of a country is its GDP. There’s a lot of energy in an oil drop. It’s not easy to move a country without burning fossil fuels. You commute to work by car or bus? You probably burn fossil fuels. Your food is grown using tractors which plant seeds which were delivered using trucks.
You might replace those with energy but what about heavy machinery? We should just stop burning fossil fuels at all.
The solution to the climate apocalypse depends on overcoming capitalism. Give food and shelter to all the unemployed due to the GDP collapse.
We should have never reached such a level of addiction to a substance which destroys our environment. We have known it since the 19th century yet here we are, witnessing the apocalypse that the Cassandræ have forecasted.
There are more sustainable economic systems like the one in North Korea, etc. but look which economic and political systems get destroyed when the revenue rate of the Fossil fuels corporations is at stake.
We are bound for a termination shock or whatever it’s called because that’s in the interest of the big capital of the Fossil Fuels and its military branch
I absolutely refuse to accept that long term human existence is only viable at North Korean levels of economic development. I wouldn’t care to live in that world, and I won’t speak for my children, but I doubt that they would find that particularly appealing.
We’re not going to stop burning hydrocarbons anytime soon - see above: they’re just too darn useful - but we’re making great progress in relegating them to their highest and best use. Oil fired power plants? Virtually extinct. Coal fired power plants? In terminal decline. Generating power from “waste” natural gas, instead of flaring it? Much progress there.
Let’s keep building out renewables, work on the power storage problem, and (ideally) learn how to build nukes safely and efficiently again.
Then with a moonshot or two like fusion or room temp superconductors, I think we have a better than even chance of coming out of this century with the climate crisis under control. We can all make more responsible choices, but I don’t currently see a need to sacrifice human welfare to get there.
The gulf between the western world and North Korea is _vast_.
As an example, the USA has roughly double the fossil fuel consumption per capita as Germany and triple that of France, yet the standard of living in the USA is not significantly higher (and the median may in fact be lower, depending on your standards).
Fossil fuel usage is higher in Russia than any western European country, yet the Russian standard of living is lower.
There's a lot of low hanging fruit we can go after in the short term, we could potentially halve our fossil fuel usage in ten years and if we actually put the effort in do it while maintaining a high standard of living.
