See also the leak[1] of big oil PR maestro Rick Berman's 2014 speech to oil execs, pleading for funds to combat rational debate and reliable information about fracking.
“Think of this as an endless war,” he told them. “And you have to budget for it.”
> He said the industry needs to dig up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, exploit the public’s short attention span for scientific debate, and play on people’s emotions.
> “Fear and anger have to be a part of this campaign,” Berman said. “We’re not going to get people to like the oil and gas industry over the next few months.”
> Berman also advised that executives continue to spend big. “I think $2 to $3 million would be a game changer,” he said. “We’ve had six-figure contributions to date from a few companies in this room to help us get to where we are.”
> But always cover your tracks, he suggested, adding that no-one is better equipped at doing so than his firm. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.” [2]
Plenty more in the transcript at [1], and the article at [2]!
Yeah, I guess I was wrong to call it a "freak out." They did however seemingly decide to forget about votes from anyone in an aspie-heavy profession, it seems.
She was given a speaking position in many events and fora, including the UN, where, correct me if my memory is weak, no other environmental activist has set foot. She has rich parents who sponsored and organized her "career". Something does not smell right here. Someone is taking advantage of her to let the steam about the environment out, by concentrating all the spotlight on that regard to a little girl who speaks big and innocently, but ultimately failing to point fingers to the people responsible - undirected shaming has been proven to have no effect anywhere ever. That someone might as well be her own parents who let her live the dream and maybe make some money out of the situation while she's at it - ASP together with her age maybe does play a role here as Greta herself is unable to understand what role she may be actually playing, taking the social "mission" given to her seriously and at face value. In time, the world's biggest climate change advocate will be a little girl that briefly made headlines, elegantly kept in check by the ones who brought her up to speak in the first place. And the rest will be given no attention - and no one will notice, if we want to learn how things are going we got Greta, after all!
So far she got legislation passed in several EU member states, influenced in the EU parliament, increased the Greens representation in parliaments all around the world, sparked an expansion of night train service in Europe, and caused cancellations of fossil fuel projects around the world. None. Too. Shabby. Nobody can really accuse her of just being an outlet for people wanting to vent.
Certainly one way to refer to the guy who's been on the wrong side of a lot of oily debates [1]. I'll admit to disliking him extra because of what happened to his son, whose music I love.
Yeah, he does cast his net wider than I implied :)
> Rick Berman, a Washington lobbyist and arch-enemy of other lobbyists and do-gooders who would have government control—and even ban-a myriad of products they claim are killing us, products like caffeine, salt, fast food and the oil they fry it in. He's against Mothers Against Drunk Driving, animal rights activists, food watchdog groups and unions of every kind.
Claiming Personal responsibility for 100% of the issues is a cop-out.
We have a complex society. There are many complex issues at hand, and I cannot personally afford to fully research every single one of them all the time. Don't kid yourself -- no one can.
Therefore I pay a service to hire experts, make recommendations, take any necessary actions, and hold others accountable. Additionally, I have some say in who gets to appoint these experts.
My personal responsibility extends to paying my taxes, and participating as much as I can in government, so I can be sure myself + my children can continue to enjoy a life + future where they are safe, and can pursue whatever useful skill they can, can be respected, and are protected against those who would waste no time downplaying or hiding truths for short term gain.
Someone needs to stand up for the right to self-determination. If I want to eat a Big Mac and smoke a cigar you shouldn't be able to mobilize the government to stop me.
Big false equivalence there. You are looking at millions of preventable deaths because of this lobbyist's action. Possibly also your own: watch out for the next flood, don't get caught outside with broken car AC in black-flag heat, watch out for tornadoes, dengue mosquitoes...
I don't agree with the stuff he put out on big oil but I strongly agree with the stuff on fast food and a lot of the other points. It's a mixed bag like almost everything in life.
In every case, he is pushing the argument on behalf of industry profiteers. You make it sound like he is just arguing what he thinks is right.
I'll lend an ear to good faith arguments about why we shouldn't be regulating sugar in foods. But it is disingenuous for the sugar industry to secretly fund and amplify those arguments.
Moreover, it explicitly violates several of the guidelines[1]:
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.
Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
I think it's more a broad brush description of age-old propaganda techniques[1], which have been widely employed by many organized religions over the years, just as they have been by others with an interest in controlling debate.
One particularly interesting (IMO) tidbit was Berman's strategy of encouraging doubt and ignorance. Rather than argue facts, try and muddy the waters he suggests:
> “Instead of getting the ‘he said she said’ debate, what you will get with the factual debate, often times, you’re going to get into people get overwhelmed by the science and ‘I don’t know who to believe,” Berman told the attendees at the conference. “But if you got enough on your side you get people into a position of paralysis on the issue.”
> “You get into people’s minds a tie. They don’t know who is right,” he said. “And you get all ties because a tie basically ensures the status quo.” [2]
Thus the utility of paid-for "expert" opinion taking issue with one strand or other of the broad scientific consensus on climate: not to win the public debate but to make reasoned debate ineffective and "ensure the status quo."
This methodology is part of the subject matter of Agnotology - "the study of culturally-conditioned ignorance." [3]
Reminds me about the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. One of the subplots in book four is about the company "Goliath" and their attempts to be recognized as a religious organization. T
The religion is capitalism. Millions of people believe in it with such fervor that any criticism of the idea feels like a criticism of them personally. Any criticism of deities (billionaires) or their church (business) is dismissed as sour grapes, because our deities are always benevolent.
I really wish, pretty please, if every time someone slagged off capitalism here they would suggest their alternative. I know what you're against, but that's not useful or interesting because you don't even say why.
What are you for? How would you fix this flaw, this one here in this thread that you say is because of capitalism. Why is it because of capitalism and what's your solution to it? Why would your system not have this flaw? Can you give an example of a non-capitalist system that avoided this problem? That would be an interesting and useful comment. Even if I disagreed with you I would gladly upvote it as a useful contribution.
Yes this is a flaw in capitalism, simply because it's a flaw in human nature. What system is going to change that? As Adam Smith said in the Wealth of Nations: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."
These people are vile scumbags, they are taking the freedoms and benefits liberal democracy and capitalism provide and abusing them. We should expose them, counter their narrative, lobby our representatives and use the freedoms liberal democracy and capitalism provide us to oppose them.
Worker-owned companies, only financed by debt and not actions.
You can have the top management own 20% of the company, middle management 20%, and the workers 60%, prorate the votes following that, and vote should be anonymous. On highly disputed issues (defining a new direction that needs more than the CEO/CTO opinion), you can have a lottery to form a team representing those percentages. Make the workers invested in the company, in the product, in security.
Having your top management paid to extract as much money as they can for the investor is a recipe for exploitation and poor products.
How would such a company come together in the very beginning? What would the formation process be exactly?
I’m having a hard time imagining it because usually there’s one person or a few with expert knowledge, awareness of an opportunity, and a vision of what they want to achieve. They make great effort and sacrifice in the early days to take that vision from 0 to 1. They eventually build it up into a larger organization with employees, but it didn’t start that way.
For those folks to only own 20% of their own venture - not even a controlling a share of their own baby - may not be enough incentive.
Every company starts somewhere, so how would this system work in reality?
On the other hand, if a large group of workers have a good idea for a new company and want to start one with shared ownership, they can already do that using an LLC or other corporate structure.
Thank you, that's a really good summary of a plausible workers co-operative structure. I say go for it. There's nothing in the regulatory or legal framework in most countries to stop you doing this. In fact there are successful co-operative commercial organisations, and have been for centuries.
I just don't see how this disincentivizes the managers and key stakeholders in companies from conspiring like this. Most top managers of companies own a lot less than 20%, I doubt the managers of any of the oil companies own anything like that much, so if anything this would give them even more incentive to try and boost the value of their company. How do you see this preventing such conspiracies?
They typically do, actually. How do you think those initial formation and other legal fees get paid in most companies? And they’re usually working for free for a while (sometimes years) before the company is in a state where it can raise money by selling equity. Put those together, and the founders have frequently put in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into a company that was worth precisely $0 when they started.
What? That's the standard model. Use your own funds to create an MVP, and use that MVP to raise outside capital. (no bank will give you a loan for an MVP)
Workers have been working below market wages for decades. If wages had kept pace with productivity improvements and inflation, wages would be far higher today. Instead, the benefits of technology and other productivity improvements have all gone to the handful of people you relentlessly defend.
What is a “below market wage”? The market wage is literally what people are paid.
And why should average wages keep up with average productivity? You’d expect productivity gains to go to those who are more productive, no workers who productivity hasn’t changed.
You don't have to provide a fix to a discovered problem. Discovering and pointing out a problem is valuable in and of itself. If you force every problem discovery process to provide a fix, you create disincentive to the discovery process itself.
It is nice to have a solution when you identify a problem but you also can't just ignore a problem because you don't have a clear solution. Recognize the problem helps others to suggest solutions to the problem. If you can provide iron clad proof no alternative solution exists, then do that. Passing around the burden of proof merely to prop up a position that clearly also doesn't help the problem helps no one. Let's all carry the burden of proof.
I for one think part of the issue is with indefinite capital accumulation. We adhere fundamentally to property ownership and that your property is yours forever. This results in pockets of wealth that create many of the problems we currently see in capitalism as practiced in the US. Competitive forces designed to keep things in place can be countered when enough wealth is amassed. Law and regulation can be bought and manipulated. Public opinion can also be fairly well manipulated.
Clear out mass inheritance options, set forth ways to cap off mass wealth accumulation and redistribute it to society beyond a point that increases as often as say, minimum wage increases. If wealth wants a higher ceiling, they need to make sure the bottom isn't left behind. Provide progressive tax rates beyond those limits that discourage hoarding wealth and using it counterproductively, if we believe we reward success through wealth.
Just some starter ideas, not a claimed solution for the situation at large. Retroactively applying principles may not even be possible without core restructuring in culture and law. Capitalism is great, it's the best system we've seen so far, but what is going on now isn't great and it's not healthy for society. It doesn't necessarily have to be wiped clear but it needs some restructuring or bandaids attached to resolve some very real fundamental issues we have, otherwise we're going to have a society focused on exploitation acquiring value over the actual value creation we praise capitalism for.
Oh I fully accept this is an actual problem, these people are vile and need to be fought vigorously and resolutely. I just don't see what that has to do with capitalism, or actually the economic system at all really.
Do powerful leaders and managers in non-capitalist systems not engage in lobbying and not promote the interests of their industry? Do they not engage in unsavoury practices when doing so? How does the system act to prevent that?
On the contrary all the attempts at non-capitalist systems I'm aware of are based on a system of central planning and the allocation of resources on a bureaucratic or political basis. Fundamentally capitalism is based on freedom of ownership (of property and capital), freedom of labour (to work for or hire others) and freedom of association (to form companies). Planned economies by necessity restrict or eliminate some or all of these freedoms, but those restrictions never stop at economic activities. After all almost everything has some economic dimension. In practice this has always seemed to end up with highly coercive, opaque bureaucratic systems in which factional lobbying and influence peddling isn't just a flaw, it becomes the system.
Can you provide an explanation of Exxon's behavior that is not driven by the incentive to deliver profits to their shareholders? I'd certainly be open to another way of understanding the situation, but this behavior is so common among corporations of their size, it seems like the simplest explanation to me.
Personally, I think the thing most people are angry about is the wild misalignment between the doctrine of shareholder primacy and the well-being of society overall. Exxon is governed by a board which is elected by its shareholders and has a fiduciary responsibility them. But its stakeholders are a much larger group of people. To be clear, I think that so-called "stakeholder capitalism" is a scam if there is no mechanism to enforce it.
Instead, I think you need an organizational form that incentivizes both efficient operation and the best interests of the people affected by its behavior. This seems to me an as-yet unsolved organizational optimization problem. Unfortunately, at the rate the climate is changing, we don't have the luxury of experimenting to find that form. Short-term, I think the best option for a company with such enormous impact is a government entity with at least tangential accountable to voters. To this end, I would prefer to see Exxon nationalized and forced to wind down their hydrocarbon extraction operations.
Wow, major kudos for a pretty imaginative and bold solution. I don't think it would work though. You'd end up with the biggest stakeholders in the fossil fuel industry, with the most to lose from it winding down, being the government and the tax payer. That's the mother of all conflicts of interest. Now the oil industry leadership aren't lobbying government, they are the government. Now all those oil industry workers you need to sack are government employees in civil service unions. What could possibly go wrong?
Use the freedoms that liberal democracy and capitalism give us to fight them back. Expose their corruption, counter-lobby our representatives, use the courts where laws are broken, vote. There is no magic bullet, corruption will always have to be fought. The question is which system gives us the best framework to fight it in. I say a system that respects individual freedoms.
I don't at all want to give the impression that I'm against liberal democracy or individual freedoms. I'm with you there. I'm just not convinced that they're as compatible with absolute private ownership of capital as they are billed to be. And I don't by any means think nationalization is some silver bullet or even the ideal strategy - just trying to think it through.
But setting that aside for the moment, it does seem that up to now, exposing corruption, counter-lobbying, and courts have been our primary tools for fighting back against the likes of Exxon. How is it going so far? It does not appear to have worked in time to avoid major catastrophe. Is there a limit to their effect? And when we talk about counter-lobbying and using courts, what outcome do we hope to achieve with a company like Exxon? Do we want them to pay for the externalities of climate change?
The reason we haven't solved climate change is just because it's an incredibly hard problem, and we just flat out don't have a political consensus and clear mandate from the people to take the sort of drastic and incredibly costly steps it would take. Changing direction like that is a political problem first and an economic problem second.
As for Exxon, they may be scumbags and need reigning in, but basically they are just a business providing a service. We all consume fossil fuels all the time, and we need someone to buy them from. The way to reduce fossil fuel dependency isn't to just kill the oil companies, we'd kill our economies with them. We need to wean ourselves off the poison. We need to stop being their customer, not blame the shop for selling us the goods we went to the shop to buy.
I'm not sure what you mean by absolute private ownership of capital. We don't have that in an absolute sense at all. We confiscate capital through taxation (which I'm fine with by the way), we regulate markets (which is a necessary function of government), the government controls the money supply and directly manipulates financial markets all the time as is needed. The government is a massive employer and huge spender in the economy. I'm a Brit actually, but all of that is true of every liberal democracy. Heck, I even support the NHS, I think it's far better than the US model. However capitalism is fundamentally about individual rights and freedoms, not absolute ones, but valuable ones. I'm a wishy-washy centrist, and proud of it.
Eh, I think it’s worth the old college try of “anything new please” without further corroboration. Everything we’ve tried at large scales has sucked for the majority of the population.
This line "“We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.”
Seems pretty relevant today since the Supreme Court struck down a law regarding donations to non-profits.
Many years ago, I got to see an Exxon "Legislative Affairs Coordinator" speak to a group of small landowners about how they could make their own lobbying efforts more effective.
In less than 10min this lady had the crowd ready to burn her at the stake.
She told them things like "your voice doesn't matter," urged them to donate all the money they could to Exxon's lobbying efforts (with unspecified goals), on the basis that at least it would get something done, even if it wasn't what they wanted. "Donate to our people, and our people will take care of you."
Then, she told them that actual grass-roots organizations like theirs were socially dangerous, because they wouldn't stick to their original mission but inevitably became cults, essentially. Something like "the best thing this organization can do, today, is vote to dissolve immediately"
All this was in exchange for a several thousand dollar speaking fee, which was the largest expense behind the venue for the event.
Hahaha, that reads like she was about 50% corporate shill, 50% a poli-sci academic specializing in lobbying with no filter on delivering the raw academic view of things.
>Then, she told them that actual grass-roots organizations like theirs were socially dangerous, because they wouldn't stick to their original mission but inevitably became cults, essentially.
After OWS I find it hard to disagree with this statement.
Build enough organization to effectively work towards a goal, say passing a particular bill; and once the goal is met, the bill is passed, it seems such a shameful waste to let the organization dissolve, when it could be re-purposed to another similar use.
Recycling is good in other contexts, right?
Also, sometimes, the organization was built and the cause fought as a route to empowerment for the people doing the organizing, in which case the goals are irrelevant. Sometimes the goals were the true reason, in the beginning, but the empowerment becomes too seductive and they fall aside.
The problem with organizational metastization is that it optimizes towards the organizational and regulatory structure, vs the organization's original intent.
E.g. Directors become whoever is most capable of winning and holding a directorship. Donations funnel to whatever solicits more donations.
Texas style regular tear-downs, or at least periodic reauthorizations, aren't the worst solution.
The problem with these "movements" and "organizations" is that they usually have very clearly defined goals and they come together to solve a specific problem.
I don't think any of the people coming together realize that, once they solve their problem, they're put themselves out of a job.
In a rational world, they would go find other causes to champion, but instead you see "mission creep", because no one wants to go through the hassle of building up an organization into a multi-million, or multi-billion dollar organization, only to have to dissolve it once you "win" your war, and then go build yet another organization to tackle yet another problem, although this is exactly what should be happening.
We're seeing this with civil rights right now. Any person who thinks the LGBTQ+-whatever community is actively discriminated against at a federal, and even at a state, level, is frankly being dramatic at best and mentally unbalanced at worst. But there are no "easy" major wars left to fight. This is an easy one that - in the minds of the "soldiers" at least - can be won with little money and nothing but a Twitter account. Beating climate change, conquering income inequality, etc.; those are long hard wars that will require lots of money, lots of time, lots of defeats, and lots of pain.
Most people aren't going to sign up for that when they can complain that there isn't a non-binary bathroom in Mom & Pop burger joint down the street, so they must be transphobes.
Yeah I suppose the laws currently being passed in dozens of states across the country are actually fully in support of LGBTQ+ communities and aren't in fact discrimination.
Where's the accountability? We're facing a global crisis. Once again, the rich are insulated from the consequences of their greed, while the poorest suffer the most. It's high time those who sold us out should have to answer for their actions. Something on the order of seven billion counts of reckless endangerment should do it.
It has been scaled back quite a bit in the last decade or so thanks to Enron's Jeff Skilling and "media magnate" Conrad Black (since pardoned) and seems to have fallen out of favor with prosecutors. The "Kids for Cash"[1] people were charged with it but didn't make it into the final plea agreement and Rod Blagojevich (also since pardoned) was charged with it but I think those charges were eventually dropped.
In the end it is public representatives that commit the treason. We need accountability here, even when there is a wish to get your hands on lobbyists.
It isn't just Exxon that conducts business like this.
Many people can be responsible for an outcome. The lobbyists, the elected officials, the many people who make money by helping them. And plenty more. We can and should hold all of those people accountable for their choices.
They designed the system very safe for themselves. Worse it gets for them is losing a job. They gotta earn as much as they can, for as long as they can.
I'm sure that's great consolation to the families of people dying in heat waves and once-every-10,000-years weather disasters. Also climate migrants will rest easy knowing that the Exxon CEO "lost support".
As opposed to the people starving, freezing, and overheating because they don't have reliable and affordable access to energy?
Part of being a solution, instead of just yelling on the corner, is starting with a realistic appraisal of the world and options. That's the difference between an engineer and... well, everyone else.
The oil majors are not wrong in that we need (relatively) cheap energy. And will for some time. Any climate policy that isn't honest about that isn't solving anything.
Sure...which is in part because of decades of FUD inserted to slow down the adoption of cleaner energy sources, a practice which has not abated.
Were the oil & gas companies saying "hey! Yes, this stuff is damaging! We need to get off it ASAP! We're here until we do, and we're putting all our R&D money into expanding out renewables and cleaner energy sources, and not just more oil & gas pipelines", we can have a dialog. Until then? Fuck 'em.
Were they to do that, their shareholders (including and perhaps especially their institutional ones) would have sued the pants off them, tossed them out of their jobs, and demanded that Exxon get back to the business of making as much money as possible, as soon as possible.
The sea change has been big investors throwing their clout behind ESG initiatives, which would have been laughable even in the 00s.
If we wanted what we espouse to want to happen (big oil got in the renewable business) when we wanted it to happen (1990s?), we should have been pushing for more ESG-flexible shareholder laws & case law for the last few decades.
Who's to say "we" didn't? The whole point of this post is that any attempt to change the petroleum industry's priorities led to them fighting tooth and nail to block it.
I mean, changing shareholder laws to allow companies to not prioritize profits > everything? That sounds exactly like the sort of thing the shareholders are going to want the company to fight against. It's the same problem (whether it targets only ESG or not).
The benefit of changing shareholder laws is providing CEOs with legal cover for making better decisions.
As far as I understand the legal landscape, if a solar panel manufacturer turned down a capture and kill takeover offer from an oil company, they'd have to make a case on how it would be financially more beneficial for them to remain independent.
They'd get a summary judgement against them for saying "We think oil will cook our planet, and we will continue doing the less profitable thing because we want our planet to survive."
Which... seems insane that that couldn't be a valid defense. But then, our legal system isn't overly tuned to heading off planet altering, existence-scale threats.
I know the benefit. I'm saying the obstacle is the same. Tell the shareholders "Hey, we're hiring expensive lobbyists to go to Congress and explain why we shouldn't be beholden solely to making you the most money when it does harm to the planet", and they're probably going to start clamoring for the board to replace you. Certainly, they will be if the more benign "Hey, we're focusing on long term sustainable growth that won't destroy the planet, at the expense of short term profits" would lead to you being replaced.
They actively inhibited development of alternative energy sources by lying to and manipulating the public and politicians for decades. Fuck. That. Shit.
Quit simping for multi billion dollar corporations who have been actively engaged in the destruction of our ecosystem. There are other way to meet our energy needs, and we could have been working on this issue much earlier if it weren't for their interference.
You are grossly misinterpreting their lobbying efforts. They are lobbying to keep energy expensive, because if energy becomes to cheap (as would be the case with wide adoption of renewables, better insulation etc) they would loose out on profits.
> As opposed to the people starving, freezing, and overheating because they don't have reliable and affordable access to energy?
> The oil majors are not wrong in that we need (relatively) cheap energy. And will for some time. Any climate policy that isn't honest about that isn't solving anything.
There are carbon neutral power sources that would have been cheap to deploy. Nuclear was one of those sources but faced years of anti-nuclear lobbying primarily from the oil industry. [1]
Funnily, some of the initial support for solar power came from the fossil fuel industry. Primarily as an anti-nuclear campaign and primarily because they knew solar wasn't feasible early on.
It's only now that solar is far more feasible that the talking points have shifted away from cost and towards reliability.
To be clear, solar is now one of the cheapest forms of power generation. [2] Further, coupling that power generation with nat gas peaker plants has a highly reduced carbon footprint. Eventually replacing those nat gas sources with grid batteries is something that we are now not limited by cost, but rather battery production capacity.
The somewhat new attack I'm seeing now revolves around how dirty mining is. In other words, they appear to be playing the game of "making 'perfect' the enemy of 'good'".
Also funnily, it looks like oil lobbyists are now taking the approach of advocating for nuclear. [3] Why? My speculation is because they know that regulations in the US are now such that it will take years and billions to turn on new nuclear, they are banking on the fact that those regulations won't change and the nuclear projects end up DOA. (prolonging the reliance on fossil fuels).
It comes across a bit disingenuous to imply that the choice is either 1) executives use their considerable resources to actively disrupt public discourse. or 2) we all lose access electricity.
It comes across even worse if you’re implying that people haven’t considered this and haven’t been trying to push for energy alternatives for decades. old world energy executives have been caught multiple times using their considerable resources to disrupt those attempts as well and intentionally adding noise, causing signal to noise issues. and just like this newest leak, this is done intentionally in order to intentionally cause signal search fatigue.
we need an accurate analysis of how we got here, and that accurate analysis isn’t “activists are such monkeys they didn't consider we need refrigerated food.”
If Forbo's parent point is that climate change and migration would be best solved by charging Exxon's leadership and throwing them in jail, because they're bad, that doesn't seem like a view that's considered the place fossil fuels currently play in the world economy.
IMHO, most activists are exactly just that sort of monkey. Just like most fossil fuel defenders are their own kind of head-in-the-sand wilfully denying monkey.
That there are some that look at relative energy balances, viable ramp schedules, critical resource limitations, and capital financing on both sides doesn't excuse those who want to throw feces for the amusement of the crowd.
> IMHO, most activists are exactly just that sort of monkey.
If you value accuracy in the analysis then you are doing yourself a disservice by only looking at the most ludicrous of street level activists and have somehow missed the incredibly wide variety such as the countless people who are highly highly educated and have strategically placed themselves in international roles in everything from attorneys, to the ceos of their own companies who are building interesting alternatives, and even ignoring the scientists who have been tirelessly and meticulously researching. And most of these who you seem to have missed are incredibly professional humans. Yet you’re trying to portray them as too stupid to realize something as basic as “We need to refrigerate our food.”
It would seem you’re willfully ignoring the decades of research and decades of many different other attempts to bring forward alternatives. They spent those decades of time and resources precisely because we need alternatives.
In my experience, these professionals make up the overwhelming vast majority of those fighting for our climate, I don’t know how you missed them, or if you didn’t miss their existence, I wonder why you’re implying they’re so rare.
Do we agree that there are more uneducated people than educated people?
And that if equal parts of a randomly selected sampling of people join the "pro-oil" and "anti-oil" sides, the majority (by headcount) of both will be uneducated?
The majority of time and effort towards solutions (on both sides) may be spent by well informed people. But the majority of heads will be of the "Fuck tree huggers" or "Fuck oil workers" ilk.
Which is my original gripe about this subthread: do a position (and honestly, my position) a service by having some nuance in speaking about it.
You seem to be disregarding the level of influence that they had in misleading people across the board, guiding opinions toward views that upheld their position as the active incumbent of "best available energy source". They were allowed (and are still) to externalize their true costs by downplaying the impact of fossil fuels on the ecosystem. Had they not been engaging in fraudulent statements and active disinformation campaigns, then the people in charge of making those decisions would have been able to shift efforts toward alternative energy sources much earlier. The reliance on fossil fuels has ultimately caused more death, disruption and destabilization. They should be held accountable for their responsibility in those deaths, as well as the reckless disregard for humanity on the whole, all for the sake of profit and appeasing shareholders.
Agreed. It's really disappointing to see the discussion devolve into activist yelling about evil companies instead of an intelligent debate about how to move forward realistically.
People have been debating about how to move forward since the eighties. The path is crystal clear. What's lacking is the political will to implement it.
That's not serious, those people are accountable for our world actually burning and the sentence is that it'll be harder this year to get all the options on their new yacht ? Maybe they'll even need to use the same embedded submarine than the year before.
I know it's caricature but please, what's happening is utterly important.
Don't these people know that if worst comes to worst and we get into a Fallout type of scenario, the people on the bottom who have survived will not have any qualms about doing the worst they can to these people?
That's because they know that fallout type scenario wont happen. Things will broke apart year after year. It's not coming hardly enough during their lifetimes and they already own enough to be protected from nearly everything (like, some islands).
Whenever this kind of leaks appears, some minority of people get outraged for a few days, and it ends like that.
For a change, I'd like to finally see some consequences for such behaviour. Some action to actually limit influence of lobbying from big corporations.
But honestly, I just don't see this happening, as long as some distant government is allowed to take important decisions on its own. Maybe the only balance against lobbying would be if more countries had some form of Swiss-like direct democracy. Not perfect, since people can also be influenced through various means, but it's much harder to "lobby" people to vote for something that is not in their interest that to "lobby" a group of politicians that don't care about people.
As a foreign onlooker to American politics, it seems to me is what is required is a new movement to free the US government from the influence of corporate donations.
Politicians will never care about the people while their wallets are being stuffed by PACs.
A huge number of the problems facing America (and other nations) could be better addressed if the political class was less disconnected from the average voter.
As a recently naturalized US citizen, I have the same observations about American politics. Both the parties enjoy the benefits of lobbyist and PAC donations when they are in power and thus no one wants to do anything about. Gun control - no action, climate change - no action, infrastructure - no action... list goes on. As if the only goal of the party in opposition is to obstruct progress at any cost.
Donate to the Wolf PAC or a similar organization. Politicians can be lobbied to do anything, even pass reasonable laws that most people are in favor of.
Nothing will change in government long term until one or more of the following conditions are met:
- talking heads on television stop telling people how to rationalize their diminished standard of living (resentment of the status quo will grow when people start to think independently)
- fuel shortages (massive disruption to lifestyle)
- electricity shortages causing blackouts or brownouts (massive disruption to lifestyle, damage to expensive household appliances)
- food shortages
Actually even this is not enough; there are so many countries that fulfill these criteria and are still terrible. I guess this what the second amendment was made for.
Why would those in power ever allow a change to a voting system which effectively maintains their existing power structure?
> I guess this what the second amendment was made for.
Eh, it's probably part of what it's intended for, but private ownership of small arms is, at best, a minor factor in whether revolutions succeed. Having the majority of your own, or a foreign, military on your side, is much more important. Or, if your military sits it out, widespread private ownership of small arms isn't really that big a factor anyway.
... now, if you're an unpopular faction trying to take over, and the military sits it out, that's another matter. Then having guns is very useful. Or if you're trying to destabilize things with guerrilla tactics and terrorism so the government becomes unpopular and successful revolution is feasible.
TL;DR: "We need guns to protect us from tyranny" is a well-loved, but poorly-justified, case for the second amendment.
> Actually even this is not enough; there are so many countries that fulfill these criteria and are still terrible.
Relative deprivation drives revolt. Guarantee every Somali exactly $2,500—no more, no less—a year and 99.99% of the population will deify you. Do the same in the US—let's say it's even PPP adjusted—and you'll be dead inside a month, and they may make a national holiday to celebrate the wonderful event that was your assassination. I suppose very very slow changes might not have this effect, but I don't think the effects of climate change will be that slow.
> Why would those in power ever allow a change to a voting system which effectively maintains their existing power structure?
The "American revolution" itself was arguably better called a "war for independence" precisely because it had little effect on who was on top in American society—so, given that heritage, I'm going with "no, definitely not".
That's an excellent point and I forgot about the role of military faction support plus civilian looting of military arms caches and theft of military vehicles in many revolutions.
I agree that the war for independence should not be called a revolutionary war for the reasons you stated. A revolutionary war has not happened yet in North America.
> it had little effect on who was on top in American society
> > it had little effect on who was on top in American society
> I'm not sure what this means
Rich, politically-influential leaders before the war were largely still rich, politically-influential leaders afterward. The colonies became independent, but, aside from those who resisted independence (and hell, even some of those), colonial leaders stayed on top. The Constitution itself [edit: and, even more so, the Articles before it] was structured in support of preserving that order, even. The injustice the war sought to remedy was remote rule by fiat, not, to a substantial degree, the social or political order of the colonies themselves.
This is not, however, to say that the development of a large, democratic nation-state was not significant—but a revolution of social & political power structures in the Americas, it was not.
It'd be like if the French Revolution had skipped the beheadings and property-seizures and rolled directly into having a governing body comprising almost entirely high-level aristocrats, based on a constitution protecting aristocratic interests, with the king continuing to enjoy all his land and maybe a couple of his sons serving at the highest level of government a few years later—we'd scratch our heads in puzzlement at anyone calling that a revolution, unless maybe a failed one. A re-organization or, if you like, evolution, of government, sure, but not much of a revolution.
It's the organised influencing that's pernicious. The lobbying is just the overt form.
For every pro-climate-catastrophe fake 'citizen's group' there are ten or hundred similar groups influencing public opinion on questions of party support and policy platform.
These groups directly act on voters, not on politicians.
Some operate overtly through the media, many do it less overtly through think tanks and policy foundations, but even more do it covertly through fake citizen's groups. Currently many operate through troll and fake account posts online.
The business of influencing is like an iceberg. Overt lobbying of politicians is the most visible part. Even if you could somehow get rid of that, the much bigger danger under the surface will still sink you.
> but it's much harder to "lobby" people to vote for something that is not in their interest
I don't think that's necessarily true. In the US look at how many relatively poor states consistently vote for right wing parties when they would likely get better healthcare, education, jobs training, and other social assistance programs under a more left leaning party.
Evidence says otherwise with respect to retraining and education. Healthcare quality differences are also questionable.
Retraining schemes have been less effective than random chance - with the least success going to long-term SSDI recipients in Appalachian states (~12% in WV). You would have more success with paying them off to live as they see fit.
As for education, that is a big mess that can't be easily quantified in the favor of the left. Homeschooling and private education have provided effective competition to government run education.
As for healthcare, the US model has attracted people from European model systems. If the US model wasn't so good, people wouldn't travel there (especially from the UK and Canada).
These so called "poor states" vote for right wing individuals for good reasons. The lights stay on, jobs largely stay or grow, and individuals can live a largely unobstructed life.
While cigarette makers killed hundreds of thousands of humans with their lies and confusion tactics, these fossil fuel barons are destroying our entire ecosystem and ways of life for billions of coastal or equatorial people, hell even the Pacific NW is turning into a desert. All to make a buck so rich fossil fuel magnates get another yacht or another mansion. It's disgustingly selfish.
Where are the punishments for this mass serial killing of our environment?
> “Nobody is going to propose a tax on all Americans and the cynical side of me says, yeah, we kind of know that but it gives us a talking point that we can say, ‘well what is ExxonMobil for, we’re for a carbon tax,’” McCoy said.
> McCoy also told the interviewers that Exxon had poured money into “shadow groups” in order to fight against climate science.
That appears to be the worst of it and I'm not sure it compares to what Exxon has already been caught doing in the past. A bit like finding out a convicted murderer was jaywalking on their way to the scene.
> A bit like finding out a convicted murderer was jaywalking on their way to the scene.
Given the seriousness of the climate situation and the importance of carbon tax as one of the solutions, I think that in your analogy, all the things Exxon has been caught doing in the past are the jaywalking part.
But they're not undermining a carbon tax. They're supporting it, based on their understanding that American voters are extremely sensitive to gas prices, far beyond an extent that could be considered reasonable, and that for that and other reasons a carbon tax is politically unviable in the US.
To be clear, I'm an extremely strong supporter of a carbon tax, to the point that I would vote for any politician who supports one regardless of their position on any other issues, and I would support the US creating ultimatums with other countries, including allies, to effectively force them to implement carbon taxes of their own. But I'm also open-eyed to the fact that the median American voter commutes something like 30 miles a day and has never taken an economics class.
The idea that a carbon tax is the best policy is itself an ideological position supported by certain entities with an agenda.
Economists love to push it a lot. The same economists also like to downplay the cost of climate change (the costs incurred due to the damage it causes).
And then there is the small matter of how much should a ton of CO2 be taxed at. Imagine all the lobbying efforts to reduce that number. It will never be anywhere near what it should be.
And EXXON's propagandists have a point. People don't want to be taxed more, and a blanket carbon tax would definitely hit the bottom majority hard.
I'll say that this is not new. The thing is the only real movement to at least deal with one aspect here (remove lobbyist influence of politicians) is being pushed by a very minor section of the democratic party but the powers that be in both parties in the US are pushing back against them, and so the cogs keep turning without halt.
Pardon my ignorance, but how is lobbying legal? Isn't it actually funding and nominated people for incentives, unlike a true democracy. Isn't it effectively quid-pro-quo?
It's not just Exxon of course, I've worked on a number of similar cases were huge money was run through lawyers, corporate intelligence firms etc to manipulate and target environmental and human rights groups. My sense is that this is only really the beginning of a huge amount more of this shady practice in the industry being exposed.
If one wanted to replicate their methods, what's their source text and who are the key luminaries in the field? More importantly, is there research into the most effective methods to disrupt/disable this kind of malignant activity? There's gotta be something more effective than "investing in public education and civic engagement."
I don't think anything is going to change, I'm sure these acts are just buying time until oil companies and their shareholders have time to invest in cleaner technologies.
Still, we will have the same problem when the next damaging act for the environment is carried out: governments will turn a blind until the top 0.1% reaped all the profits and they're safely disinvested, leaving everyone's pensions and index funds to take a hit.
We need to get rid of corrupted governments which are only good at increasing spend without solving problems and then sue environment damaging companies in private courts.
I guess it will stay just a dream.
Twitter response from Darren Woods, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil... “The individuals interviewed were never involved in developing the company’s policy positions on the issues discussed. We condemn the statements and are deeply apologetic for them, including comments regarding interactions with elected officials.”…
We, the public, have known (not suspected, known) for decades. We've done nothing. Are big oil companies a problem? Yes. Are they the problem? No, we are.
Any climate policy other than a carbon tax (with tariffs on goods from non-participating countries) is going to be a failure - it will be shot through with loopholes and rebates, such that little reduction is actually achieved.
I unfortunately don't have a good answer to that. I also believe that a carbon price, together with regulations, is our best bet. I'm however rather pessimistic when it comes to preventing catastrophic warming.
This isn't true. I understand the economics and that a fairly administered carbon tax would be good, but other systems like cap and trade with targeted legislation do actually work in practice. Take the province of Ontario, for example.
You did miss something. The Wynne government implemented a cap and trade system before the federal mandated carbon pricing system came into place and also implemented many other policies like an outright ban on coal power plants.
If you look at GHG emissions for the period and compare them to the rest of Canada, Ontario did better than average. Not perfect, of course, but to say that the only way to bring down GHG emissions is via a carbon tax is just not true.
Do you have some sources where I can read about the impact that that program had?
From some quick googling that was in place from January 1st, 2017 to July 3rd 2018, while the Canada wide (sort of) carbon tax was implemented in the GHGPPA, which looks like it came into effect June 21, 2018. You have a sample period of ~1 year, it seems like you're comparing cap and trade to "nothing"? The difference provinces in Canada are vastly different in terms of geography, industry, power sources, other laws, etc.
My prior is that it's not going to be good evidence of basically anything, it was too short with no real controls, but I could be wrong.
And certainly I don't disagree that there are other ways to bring down carbon emissions... but I am skeptical that they will be particularly effective.
You know, if you're going to downvote it, have the guts to explain what you think a Lobbyist is or should be. I remember a decade ago when Hackers was not a echo chamber.
I’m making a similar investment. We’re already seeing scarce capital flowing to the O&G sector limiting development of new fields/sources of oil. I think oil prices will stay high (similar to coal) going forward as long as US shale producers can’t access capital like they could before. Existing producers that can live off cash flow could reap the rewards of these high prices. I own quite a few US-based oil companies to play off what I think will be a very long term trend.
The reason why a lot of hedge funds are scooping these shares up is precisely because of the environmental lobby.
The environmental lobby thinks purely in first order: I am a good person, I will save the environment, I am fighting evil, oil companies are evil, they must be shut down immediately.
But the reason why Exxon produces oil is not related to wanting to pollute. Them embracing environmentalism, as the lobbyist wisely points out, is neither here nor there because environmentalism doesn't mean they aren't going to stop producing either. The reason why pollution happens and Exxon produces oil is because people need oil. If people stopped consuming oil, Exxon would just do something else.
Therefore, investing in oil and gas is pretty much a lock because it is fairly obvious now that environmentalists are jacking up the oil price, jacking up the gas price, consumers will starting paying triple the price to get to work, electricity bills are going to skyrocket, and oil and gas companies are going to do amazingly well. Again, the key point here is that oil demand is, if anything, rising whilst supply is going to stop growing or, most likely, shrink significantly in the next five years (something like $500/barrel looks reasonable to me, and double digit NG).
If environmentalists thought about this from the money perspective, they would realise that Exxon are nothing to do with it...but, as ever, it is easier for people to believe that a secret cabal of people who aren't like them is actually controlling the world, and that is why people disagree with them.
Also, it is far easier to believe this than take this to consumers, convince them of your arguments (rather than believe Exxon is bribing everyone), and tell them why they should pay more. Again, it is far easier to believe that Exxon are to blame, and that everyone would agree with you if it wasn't for Exxon, than recognise that you need to work to put in progress (Greenpeace are the classic example of a totally ineffectual, self-centered approach to activism...their campaigns are usually aimed at causing maximum disruption for other people, maximum press to boost the profile of people involved, and minimum attempt to actually appeal to other people's rationality...if Greenpeace didn't exist, the world would be the same).
They were able to do it because the government is/was huge. If it wasn't and if they did not have so much power, there wouldn't have been anyone to lobby.
Small government logged into chat. Wouldn't smaller government make their efforts more effective as the dollar per person corruption would be higher?
And then we go, "oh gee, we don't have enough people to audit white collar crimes because the Small Government crusaders gutted the IRA, for some reason".
It's not about small government, it's about an ineffective, castrated government, so companies like Exxon can steamroll it and have their own way to profit.
Exxon would love nothing more than this... small government.
It's not about having a smaller government, it's about having no government at all and third parties competing law enforcements and third parties competing private courts.
If they didn't have to even try to persuade the imperfect agent of the people to let them do what they want, they would stop doing what they want on their own?
Yea! If only the government was smaller, and lacked any teeth to do anything, Exxon wouldn't have to lobby anyone to exploit the commons for their own profit!... wait.
The problem with this line of thought (and generally libertarian ideology) is the requirement of a threat of violence to conduct commerce. The violence can't come from the parties involved because if there's an imbalance it ruins the neutrality of trade. But the threat of a violent outcome (jail, or fine with physical enforcement) must be present to prevent theft.
Once you accept that you have to give a 3rd party the monopoly on violence you are now effectively giving them the authority to do as they please. You can wax on about how government should have less power on internet forums, but organizations with power and weapons don't give up that power without using the weapons.
I am not proposing anarchy. You are confusing socialism with libertarianism. Socialism is violence. If you don't trust me you can test it out by refusing to pay your tax.
Without a government and with a system of competing law enforcements backed by armies who setup different laws, and a system of competing private court systems, we may get fairer treatment.
Perfect justice is impossible to achieve (someone will always be able to bribe someone else), but by spreading out the corruptible people and by putting them in competition on a market (where reputation matters), you will get a fairer system than the disgusting monopoly we have right now.
Lots of groups with their own armies is just asking for constant fighting. There is a reason that each state doesnt have its own standing army. The founders saw how such a system worked in Europe with countries using war frequently to take what they wanted.
“Think of this as an endless war,” he told them. “And you have to budget for it.”
> He said the industry needs to dig up embarrassing tidbits about environmentalists and liberal celebrities, exploit the public’s short attention span for scientific debate, and play on people’s emotions.
> “Fear and anger have to be a part of this campaign,” Berman said. “We’re not going to get people to like the oil and gas industry over the next few months.”
> Berman also advised that executives continue to spend big. “I think $2 to $3 million would be a game changer,” he said. “We’ve had six-figure contributions to date from a few companies in this room to help us get to where we are.”
> But always cover your tracks, he suggested, adding that no-one is better equipped at doing so than his firm. “We run all this stuff through nonprofit organizations that are insulated from having to disclose donors. There is total anonymity,” he said. “People don’t know who supports us. We’ve been doing this for 20-something years in this regard.” [2]
Plenty more in the transcript at [1], and the article at [2]!
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives...
2: https://www.desmog.com/2014/10/31/oil-and-gas-industry-s-end...