7 ms·

Why? Are there reasons to believe that the shareholders/board members of these companies would not be negatively affected by climate change? Or are they ignoran

Why? Are there reasons to believe that the shareholders/board members of these companies would not be negatively affected by climate change? Or are they ignorant?

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
Presumably they think they are rich enough to buy themselves out of any problems.
- franky47 7y ago
  The sad reality is that they probably are able to buy their way of of this. I was visiting Tito's bunker in Bosnia last week, and to think it was ok to build a multi-billion dollar facility to hold only 350 politicians and VIPs in case of global nuclear wipeout seems crazy, but when the need arises, people with power will always try and find a quick way out, often at the expense of others.
  - selimthegrim 7y ago
    Was this the aerodrome in the mountain near the Croatian border?
    - franky47 7y ago
      No it's located in a mountain near Konjic, between Mostar and Sarajevo. It now serves as a modern art gallery and a museum to the cold war. The place is very well preserved, as the bunker's HVAC unit has been running since the 60's.
  - kiliantics 7y ago
    There is already a thriving economy of building climate change bunkers for billionaires.
  - DennisP 7y ago
    The fact that they don't already live in their bunker suggests it would be a downgrade to their lifestyle. So why wouldn't they want to avoid it?
hcurtiss 7y ago
There is abundant incentive to not act unilaterally in a manner that hurts the bottom line in a competitive environment (i.e., most business environments). There is very little incentive in that environment to act collectively.
- DennisP 7y ago
  That's why voluntary unilateral actions won't be sufficient, but it doesn't explain why we're not taking collective action, like enacting a price on carbon.
  - RubenSandwich 7y ago
    That has quite a bit due to the fact that lobbying works and has an amazing ROI. It only cost about $1 million to divide voters enough to fail to pass a carbon tax in Washington State: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/rival-partisans-in-climate-debate-chip-in-against-i-732/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/rival-par.... (I understand it wasn’t just lobbying, but I think it played a major role.) I hate to be cynical but the ROI of lobbying against climate change is super cheap. How can we switch this equation?
    - Dumblydorr 7y ago
      Get money out of politics, that is the one lens through which all issues are focused these days. The greater Good is out of focus while corporations focus the lens exactly where they want
nestedcaveats 7y ago
It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Any individual company could bankrupt itself with climate action and not make a dent in emissions. Worse, any progress they did make would be an excuse for other actors to lessen their own efforts. Little serious progress will be made until nation states start putting the screws to corporations and each other.
- Dumblydorr 7y ago
  Except that climate change response is the best wealth generation mechanism for the 21st century. No company will bankrupt themselves by being more efficient, using more renewable, buying some batteries, EVs. These are already good investments. The problem is corporate greed driving down investment and morality in exchange for buybacks and CEO compensation.
  - mbrumlow 7y ago
    > No company will bankrupt themselves by being more efficient, using more renewable, buying some batteries, EVs. All those things cost money... More money than they are spending today. Even if they just replaced things as they retired, say a work vehicle -- there is still a non zero cost of owning two different types of vehicle. > These are already good investments. All the things you listed would normally be listed as a liability and deprecate fairly fast. > exchange for buybacks and CEO compensation This is such a small dent in the entire system that it would not make any difference if they spent all the excess cash on the problem. There was a article once about some big CEO of a airline getting some bonus of 12 million. Everybody was freaking out, and demanded it be given to the workers. I did the math on that one, it would have been about 19 cents a hour more for every worker (who were already making $12 + a hour, a 1.6% pay increase or less in most cases) I am on your side, but just wanting it to happen and calling those who say the money math don't work as greedy is not going to solve the problem. I think people vastly under estimate how much it cost to run some of these large companies, and how thin the profit margin actually is. Paying even slightly more than your competitor can make our break you.
ryanmercer 7y ago
The vast majority of people, at best, think climate channge is something that'll be a problem for their grandchildren or great grandchildren. Many still believe it is a made up thing the news/politicians created. Many people don't care about long-term stuff either. Look at how many people have no qualms throwing trash out their car window. Look at how many people have no qualms about taking vacations flying all over the place racking up tons of CO2 personally. Even YC created http://carbon.ycombinator.com http://carbon.ycombinator.com as they acknowledge it's an issue (to some extent anyway) yet they still fly hundreds of people out to the Bay Area for in-person interviews each year to select founders for funding, which could instead be done via video chat and used kilograms of CO2 at worst instead of many tons (on average, a plane produces a little over 53 pounds of CO2 per mile. This can be somewhat higher or lower depending upon the type of aviation fuel). And then take people that truly realize how much of a problem is like I do. - I have to go to work, it is not practical for me to walk to work so I have to drive a car to work. - It is not practical for me to not use electricity, living in an apartment I have to use it to cook, to dry my clothes even if I chose to wash them by hand, to run the air conditioning a good chunk of the year to keep the humidity down to prevent mold, to run the heat in the winter because it gets down to -12F/-24C a few days of the year - I can't walk around naked and both natural fibers and synthetic fibers rely heavily on oil to manufacture - I can't go buy food from my neighbor or grow my own in a garden, so my food is trucked across the country or even shipped from halfway around the world So people like me go "nothing I do on a personal level is going to make a damn bit of difference, why bother" and you sit there watching Netflix knowing that every gigabyte you stream is probably another 100-300 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere. And you sit there depressed - knowing you are breathing in microplastics, knowing you are eating and drinking microplastics, knowing those microplastics and other air pollutants are likely increasing your risk of cancer considerably, knowing that 30 something cities with populations over 1 million people have run out of clean water (or water entirely) including India's 6th largest city by population, knowing that it's probably unwise to have children because sooner or later in their life the world is going to become a largely shitty and miserable place when food/water wars start, knowing that global insect biomass has considerably reduced in your short 34 years on earth, knowing because you are barely in the lower middle class you're probably going to be one of the ones to starve at some point because you'll lose your job and have a hard time finding another and a crop failure or three will cause food prices to go up 200%, 300%, 1000% or more in your lifetime and you'll get to experience what life is like for people in North Korea when you're eating whatever you can get your hands on. The shareholders, the C-level employees, don't care because they aren't feeling the impacts already. They have fancy houses, fancy cars, take fancy vacations, they wear nice clothes and have more money than they need. The bulk of them have never filed bankruptcy or worried regularly how they're going to put food on the table, the majority of them have never known real struggle. They aren't concerned about climate change because they think the money will always be flowing in and they'll always have stuff. Look at the articles over the past few years about the rich buying land in New Zealand like Peter Thiel did.
ptah 7y ago
companies only plan 3 months ahead so it is not really on their horizon
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- anticensor 7y ago
  They do plan well ahead but most investors consider each term to be an independent target.

Why? Are there reasons to believe that the shareholders/board members of these companies would not be negatively affected by climate change? Or are they ignorant?

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

Presumably they think they are rich enough to buy themselves out of any problems.

franky47 7y ago
The sad reality is that they probably are able to buy their way of of this. I was visiting Tito's bunker in Bosnia last week, and to think it was ok to build a multi-billion dollar facility to hold only 350 politicians and VIPs in case of global nuclear wipeout seems crazy, but when the need arises, people with power will always try and find a quick way out, often at the expense of others.
- selimthegrim 7y ago
  Was this the aerodrome in the mountain near the Croatian border?
  - franky47 7y ago
    No it's located in a mountain near Konjic, between Mostar and Sarajevo. It now serves as a modern art gallery and a museum to the cold war. The place is very well preserved, as the bunker's HVAC unit has been running since the 60's.
- kiliantics 7y ago
  There is already a thriving economy of building climate change bunkers for billionaires.
- DennisP 7y ago
  The fact that they don't already live in their bunker suggests it would be a downgrade to their lifestyle. So why wouldn't they want to avoid it?

hcurtiss 7y ago

There is abundant incentive to not act unilaterally in a manner that hurts the bottom line in a competitive environment (i.e., most business environments). There is very little incentive in that environment to act collectively.

DennisP 7y ago
That's why voluntary unilateral actions won't be sufficient, but it doesn't explain why we're not taking collective action, like enacting a price on carbon.
- RubenSandwich 7y ago
  That has quite a bit due to the fact that lobbying works and has an amazing ROI. It only cost about $1 million to divide voters enough to fail to pass a carbon tax in Washington State: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/rival-partisans-in-climate-debate-chip-in-against-i-732/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/rival-par.... (I understand it wasn’t just lobbying, but I think it played a major role.) I hate to be cynical but the ROI of lobbying against climate change is super cheap. How can we switch this equation?
  - Dumblydorr 7y ago
    Get money out of politics, that is the one lens through which all issues are focused these days. The greater Good is out of focus while corporations focus the lens exactly where they want

nestedcaveats 7y ago

It's a tragedy of the commons situation. Any individual company could bankrupt itself with climate action and not make a dent in emissions. Worse, any progress they did make would be an excuse for other actors to lessen their own efforts. Little serious progress will be made until nation states start putting the screws to corporations and each other.

Dumblydorr 7y ago
Except that climate change response is the best wealth generation mechanism for the 21st century. No company will bankrupt themselves by being more efficient, using more renewable, buying some batteries, EVs. These are already good investments. The problem is corporate greed driving down investment and morality in exchange for buybacks and CEO compensation.
- mbrumlow 7y ago
  > No company will bankrupt themselves by being more efficient, using more renewable, buying some batteries, EVs. All those things cost money... More money than they are spending today. Even if they just replaced things as they retired, say a work vehicle -- there is still a non zero cost of owning two different types of vehicle. > These are already good investments. All the things you listed would normally be listed as a liability and deprecate fairly fast. > exchange for buybacks and CEO compensation This is such a small dent in the entire system that it would not make any difference if they spent all the excess cash on the problem. There was a article once about some big CEO of a airline getting some bonus of 12 million. Everybody was freaking out, and demanded it be given to the workers. I did the math on that one, it would have been about 19 cents a hour more for every worker (who were already making $12 + a hour, a 1.6% pay increase or less in most cases) I am on your side, but just wanting it to happen and calling those who say the money math don't work as greedy is not going to solve the problem. I think people vastly under estimate how much it cost to run some of these large companies, and how thin the profit margin actually is. Paying even slightly more than your competitor can make our break you.

ryanmercer 7y ago

The vast majority of people, at best, think climate channge is something that'll be a problem for their grandchildren or great grandchildren. Many still believe it is a made up thing the news/politicians created. Many people don't care about long-term stuff either. Look at how many people have no qualms throwing trash out their car window. Look at how many people have no qualms about taking vacations flying all over the place racking up tons of CO2 personally. Even YC created http://carbon.ycombinator.com http://carbon.ycombinator.com as they acknowledge it's an issue (to some extent anyway) yet they still fly hundreds of people out to the Bay Area for in-person interviews each year to select founders for funding, which could instead be done via video chat and used kilograms of CO2 at worst instead of many tons (on average, a plane produces a little over 53 pounds of CO2 per mile. This can be somewhat higher or lower depending upon the type of aviation fuel). And then take people that truly realize how much of a problem is like I do. - I have to go to work, it is not practical for me to walk to work so I have to drive a car to work. - It is not practical for me to not use electricity, living in an apartment I have to use it to cook, to dry my clothes even if I chose to wash them by hand, to run the air conditioning a good chunk of the year to keep the humidity down to prevent mold, to run the heat in the winter because it gets down to -12F/-24C a few days of the year - I can't walk around naked and both natural fibers and synthetic fibers rely heavily on oil to manufacture - I can't go buy food from my neighbor or grow my own in a garden, so my food is trucked across the country or even shipped from halfway around the world So people like me go "nothing I do on a personal level is going to make a damn bit of difference, why bother" and you sit there watching Netflix knowing that every gigabyte you stream is probably another 100-300 grams of CO2 into the atmosphere. And you sit there depressed - knowing you are breathing in microplastics, knowing you are eating and drinking microplastics, knowing those microplastics and other air pollutants are likely increasing your risk of cancer considerably, knowing that 30 something cities with populations over 1 million people have run out of clean water (or water entirely) including India's 6th largest city by population, knowing that it's probably unwise to have children because sooner or later in their life the world is going to become a largely shitty and miserable place when food/water wars start, knowing that global insect biomass has considerably reduced in your short 34 years on earth, knowing because you are barely in the lower middle class you're probably going to be one of the ones to starve at some point because you'll lose your job and have a hard time finding another and a crop failure or three will cause food prices to go up 200%, 300%, 1000% or more in your lifetime and you'll get to experience what life is like for people in North Korea when you're eating whatever you can get your hands on. The shareholders, the C-level employees, don't care because they aren't feeling the impacts already. They have fancy houses, fancy cars, take fancy vacations, they wear nice clothes and have more money than they need. The bulk of them have never filed bankruptcy or worried regularly how they're going to put food on the table, the majority of them have never known real struggle. They aren't concerned about climate change because they think the money will always be flowing in and they'll always have stuff. Look at the articles over the past few years about the rich buying land in New Zealand like Peter Thiel did.

ptah 7y ago

companies only plan 3 months ahead so it is not really on their horizon

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
anticensor 7y ago
They do plan well ahead but most investors consider each term to be an independent target.