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This is a big part of the problem, but there is some hope! Shareholders of the big oil and gas companies have started to recognize the long-term threat of clim

by emckay 7y ago

This is a big part of the problem, but there is some hope! Shareholders of the big oil and gas companies have started to recognize the long-term threat of climate change. There were 87[0] shareholder proposals last year that asked firms to adopt emission reduction targets, disclose lobbying expenses, or take other action that would result in lower emissions. Most of these failed, largely because the big institutional investors voted against them. Shameless plug: I'm trying to solve this problem by creating a governance-first index fund [1]. [0] https://voting.greengovernance.org https://voting.greengovernance.org [1] https://greengovernance.org https://greengovernance.org

Bantros 7y ago
The long-term threat is that they are finite
- bryanlarsen 7y ago
  There is far more oil, coal and natural gas in the ground than there is capacity in the atmosphere to absorb the resulting CO2.
  - Bantros 7y ago
    Is that a fact?
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Yes. We have more than twenty years of fossil fuel reserves. We need to be carbon neutral in less than twenty years if we want to stay below 2° of warming.
    - Robotbeat 7y ago
      Yes. Oil and gas and coal proven reserves of burned would produce about 4.5 trillion tons of CO2. About half of that would remain in the atmosphere. There’s currently about 2 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere today at 400ppm. So in proven reserves alone, we have enough to more than double the current CO2 levels, or triple/quadruple them from pre-industrial levels (when they were ~280ppm). ...but the real kicker is that proven reserves are just a small fraction of total likely recoverable reserves long-term. Proven reserves basically assumes no tech improvement and no exploration, two things we’re continually doing. So proven reserves have actual GROWN over time and likely will. There are truly vast amounts of fossil fuels available that could be tapped if we had to tap them. For instance, there’s over a trillion barrels of kerogen/oilshale oil (which is expensive to extract, like Canada’s oil sands) in JUST the Green River formation in Colorado/Wyoming, more than all the world’s proven oil reserves combined. But it sits untapped because oil prices are so low. And practically all of northern Alaska has coal underneath it if you drill to the right depth, 5 trillion tons (~18 trillion tons of CO2), more than four times all the world’s coal proven reserves combined. Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ America alone has enough fossil fuels in the ground to single-handedly double or triple or sextuple the CO2 level. Add in similar fossil fuel amounts in much of Africa, South America, Russia, Canada, Antarctica, Australia, and the world’s oceans, and the planet would be unrecognizable. There’s enough fossil fuels (if we tried hard enough) to get the CO2 levels in the 10,000 ppm range where there are serious long term health effects from just breathing the stuff. And psychological effects start becoming apparent at just 500-1000ppm, which we will see by the end of the century or so. So yeah, we’ll run out of atmosphere to dump the CO2 into before we run out of fossil fuels.
      - Bantros 7y ago
        Thanks for the information
  - AlanSE 7y ago
    The atmosphere can absorb it, but many ecosystems (the important ones for people) cannot survive the resulting changes in climate.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      Of course. I tried adding a similar caveat to my message, but my feeble attempts muddied my simple message. Even your caveat is slightly over-simplified because there's a significant time component: most ecosystems would probably be OK if the oil was burned over a few million years rather than a few decades.
alistairSH 7y ago
You mean the same oil/gas companies that have known about these issues for decades and covered it up?[0] I trust them to do the right thing about as far as I can throw them. If they are making any changes now, it's simply because it's economically sensible, not because they want to save the planet. 0 - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...
- DownGoat 7y ago
  They knew about it long before that even. That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and questions about our use of fuels that produce it were raised in the late 1800 hundreds. Climate change is a problem that has been ignored for over 120 years. they had some better excuses for ignoring it in the past, but this is not a new problem. It should have been solved in the past, and not solving it now will lead to disaster.
  - cubano 7y ago
    Don't plants require carbon dioxide to grow? I am not sure it was immediately obvious to people 120 years ago (the Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew past Venus in 1962, was the first to take detailed pictures showing its heat-trapping clouds) that CO2 was such a "dangerous" thing. I have recently been made aware of relatively inexpensive massive high density tree planting projects as a way to potentially solve the CO2 "problem"[0] I personally find ideas such as these are far better for world's ultra-poor then raising the price of energy thru carbon taxes, as pretty much the only way people can move into a significantly better living situation is thru the use of energy. [0] https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/07/massive-tree-planting-effort-could-save-planet-climate-change-research-finds-but-its-too-early-to-take-it-as-gospel.html https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/07/massive-tree-...
    - Retric 7y ago
      Not all energy sources generate significant CO2 or even cost more than those that do. It’s vastly more efficient to make the least economically expensive changes early than to wait and be forced to use more drastic approaches. Long term carbon sequestration via forests is extremely expensive as you can’t then use the land for anything else. Not extracting carbon is by far the cheapest option for long term sequestration. PS: Sequestration of biomass underground is a viable long term option, but it’s again expensive.
Dumblydorr 7y ago
They won't allow their core profit centers to br disrupted.
- some_random 7y ago
  Of course, which is why it's in their best interests to do something now to avoid massive disruption later from potentially disastrous (for them) regulation.
  - asdff 7y ago
    They will pen their own regulation like they've always done.
Paul-ish 7y ago
Just a heads up, the sign up for your newsletter has a really irritating reCAPTCHA. I have gone through at multiple grids to no avail. I have given up at this point. The newsletter is not worth it.
- emckay 7y ago
  Really sorry about that :( I'm using TinyLetter by MailChimp, and I don't have any control over that page. I'll look into other providers in the future.
mushufasa 7y ago
I created a web app for shareowners to take action. It's free to use, we're not selling investments. www.yourstake.org We're actively trying to improve the site. There should be a movement of shareholders. Please reach out with feedback! I'd like to talk to you.

by emckay 7y ago

Bantros 7y ago

The long-term threat is that they are finite

bryanlarsen 7y ago
There is far more oil, coal and natural gas in the ground than there is capacity in the atmosphere to absorb the resulting CO2.
- Bantros 7y ago
  Is that a fact?
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Yes. We have more than twenty years of fossil fuel reserves. We need to be carbon neutral in less than twenty years if we want to stay below 2° of warming.
  - Robotbeat 7y ago
    Yes. Oil and gas and coal proven reserves of burned would produce about 4.5 trillion tons of CO2. About half of that would remain in the atmosphere. There’s currently about 2 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere today at 400ppm. So in proven reserves alone, we have enough to more than double the current CO2 levels, or triple/quadruple them from pre-industrial levels (when they were ~280ppm). ...but the real kicker is that proven reserves are just a small fraction of total likely recoverable reserves long-term. Proven reserves basically assumes no tech improvement and no exploration, two things we’re continually doing. So proven reserves have actual GROWN over time and likely will. There are truly vast amounts of fossil fuels available that could be tapped if we had to tap them. For instance, there’s over a trillion barrels of kerogen/oilshale oil (which is expensive to extract, like Canada’s oil sands) in JUST the Green River formation in Colorado/Wyoming, more than all the world’s proven oil reserves combined. But it sits untapped because oil prices are so low. And practically all of northern Alaska has coal underneath it if you drill to the right depth, 5 trillion tons (~18 trillion tons of CO2), more than four times all the world’s coal proven reserves combined. Source: https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ https://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-077/ America alone has enough fossil fuels in the ground to single-handedly double or triple or sextuple the CO2 level. Add in similar fossil fuel amounts in much of Africa, South America, Russia, Canada, Antarctica, Australia, and the world’s oceans, and the planet would be unrecognizable. There’s enough fossil fuels (if we tried hard enough) to get the CO2 levels in the 10,000 ppm range where there are serious long term health effects from just breathing the stuff. And psychological effects start becoming apparent at just 500-1000ppm, which we will see by the end of the century or so. So yeah, we’ll run out of atmosphere to dump the CO2 into before we run out of fossil fuels.
    - Bantros 7y ago
      Thanks for the information
- AlanSE 7y ago
  The atmosphere can absorb it, but many ecosystems (the important ones for people) cannot survive the resulting changes in climate.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Of course. I tried adding a similar caveat to my message, but my feeble attempts muddied my simple message. Even your caveat is slightly over-simplified because there's a significant time component: most ecosystems would probably be OK if the oil was burned over a few million years rather than a few decades.

alistairSH 7y ago

You mean the same oil/gas companies that have known about these issues for decades and covered it up?[0] I trust them to do the right thing about as far as I can throw them. If they are making any changes now, it's simply because it's economically sensible, not because they want to save the planet. 0 - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

DownGoat 7y ago
They knew about it long before that even. That carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and questions about our use of fuels that produce it were raised in the late 1800 hundreds. Climate change is a problem that has been ignored for over 120 years. they had some better excuses for ignoring it in the past, but this is not a new problem. It should have been solved in the past, and not solving it now will lead to disaster.
- cubano 7y ago
  Don't plants require carbon dioxide to grow? I am not sure it was immediately obvious to people 120 years ago (the Mariner 2 spacecraft, which flew past Venus in 1962, was the first to take detailed pictures showing its heat-trapping clouds) that CO2 was such a "dangerous" thing. I have recently been made aware of relatively inexpensive massive high density tree planting projects as a way to potentially solve the CO2 "problem"[0] I personally find ideas such as these are far better for world's ultra-poor then raising the price of energy thru carbon taxes, as pretty much the only way people can move into a significantly better living situation is thru the use of energy. [0] https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/07/massive-tree-planting-effort-could-save-planet-climate-change-research-finds-but-its-too-early-to-take-it-as-gospel.html https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2019/07/massive-tree-...
  - Retric 7y ago
    Not all energy sources generate significant CO2 or even cost more than those that do. It’s vastly more efficient to make the least economically expensive changes early than to wait and be forced to use more drastic approaches. Long term carbon sequestration via forests is extremely expensive as you can’t then use the land for anything else. Not extracting carbon is by far the cheapest option for long term sequestration. PS: Sequestration of biomass underground is a viable long term option, but it’s again expensive.

Dumblydorr 7y ago

They won't allow their core profit centers to br disrupted.

some_random 7y ago
Of course, which is why it's in their best interests to do something now to avoid massive disruption later from potentially disastrous (for them) regulation.
- asdff 7y ago
  They will pen their own regulation like they've always done.

Paul-ish 7y ago

Just a heads up, the sign up for your newsletter has a really irritating reCAPTCHA. I have gone through at multiple grids to no avail. I have given up at this point. The newsletter is not worth it.

emckay 7y ago
Really sorry about that :( I'm using TinyLetter by MailChimp, and I don't have any control over that page. I'll look into other providers in the future.

mushufasa 7y ago

I created a web app for shareowners to take action. It's free to use, we're not selling investments. www.yourstake.org We're actively trying to improve the site. There should be a movement of shareholders. Please reach out with feedback! I'd like to talk to you.