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.
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.