8 ms·

I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you

by SCHiM 5y ago

I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so! Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here?

berkes 5y ago
What is more, Shell already planned to divert investments from fossil fuel to renewables. The court ordered them to do this earlier and in larger numbers. That would be like IKEA telling you "we don't have those shelves. See, were already working on selling less wooden furniture over the coming ten years, but the court ordered us to this now. So we now already have these awesome cardboard shelves for you. And next year we'll have plastic and metal ones too".
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. I think it would be wiser to work with Shell to see if their timeline can be compressed, their investments expanded etc. rather then throwing out unreasonable demands.
  - berkes 5y ago
    > I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business. Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end. Shell has known this for over 60 years now; they acknowledge that themselves! Requiring the change that apparently a corporate moloch is not able to make themselves is neither unreasonable nor overnight. As I point out elsewhere in this thread: competition manages fine to pivot to renewable fuels (diesel, ethanol, kerozine etc) and beyond that, in far less time, as can be seen in action with e.g. Neste Oyi
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      >Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end If that is true Shell should die naturally. Images of stranded fish, flopping and gasping for breath springs to mind. This court order indicates otherwise. I'm under no illusions that orders like this won't hurt me in a real way. And i am not a fan at all of EV's in their current format. Despite (what i perceive) propaganda (NOT a negative connotation, mind you) to the contrary, i don't think they are mature enough to replace ICE. Slightly off topic but i'm a huge fan of those electric scooters and bikes. I think they are the way forward, not some huge EV. They should definitely be made legal, anyway everyone uses them. I just have a depressing feeling that they shall be slaughtered, hamstrung and/ or castrated on the altar of pedestrian safety.
    - kokanator 5y ago
      >If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business. There are 1.4 Billion cars in the world. They are obviously focused on the demand. [0] https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world-70629 https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-th...
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    They were poisoning planet for decades, so now we have to pay them to find other business.
dylan604 5y ago
>Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Playing devil's advocate, but what about all of the oil that is not burnt but turned into plastics and other products?
- eloff 5y ago
  It's a very tiny percentage of oil that gets used in this way.
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    about 3/4 is used as fuel (gas/diesel/jet) with the rest building your roads and the plastic life we all enjoy.
    - eloff 5y ago
      This source puts it at 86% as fuel: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... Not sure why the discrepancy.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Roughly 15% of petroleum goes into chemical feedstocks. Not all of that is plastics. I suspect natural-gas-fired ammonia synthesis (Haber-Bosch process) is a major fraction. But it's not a tiny percentage.
- brtkdotse 5y ago
  Best case: It will end up burnt as trash. Realistic case: it will end up in the oceans as microplastics
  - yholio 5y ago
    Nonetheless, have the plaintiffs proved that Shell is responsible for plastic that is burned or thrown in the ocean, as opposed to those that burn, dispose or produce plastics? Have they proven that there is NO legitimate and lawful use of oil? This is most likely a vacuous decision of one trigger happy judge with an ax to grind. The idea that global climate change is "tort" is absurd, the phenomenon is a defining feature of the Anthropocene.
gruez 5y ago
> I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so! I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal because of some vague law (ie. because of a tort or "the right to life and the right to family life"). In your comment the [item] was something most people would find objectionable (slaves), but you can very well substitute this for other stuff you enjoy, eg. beef, coffee, chocolate, etc.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  >I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal They lied for decades about the dangers of climate change.
  - jujkjkm 5y ago
    Scientists and governments lied about climate change as well. Go back and look up the many, many wrong predictions over the decades. You have no argument.
    - shlant 5y ago
      A brand new account to spout climate change denialism... how brave of you
    - acdha 5y ago
      Do you have any citation? This is a common claim by deniers, many of whom are paid to create the illusion of scientific disagreement, but it's not true. If you look at, for example, the 1990 IPCC report the subsequent 3 decades were within the report's estimated ranges: https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projections-on-target-so-far/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projec... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jun/25/30-years-later-deniers-are-still-lying-about-hansens-amazing-global-warming-prediction https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Similarly, while certain people like to repeat the claim that scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s it's grossly overstating the degree to which that was taken seriously by the academic community back then and how quickly it was conclusively rejected long before the turn of the century. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...
trueluk 5y ago
Don't be daft. His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels. > Burning fossil fuels is bad. Why is it bad? Becuase the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers and we build solutions to adapt to an ever-changing world. We don't make progress by stifling productivity. > Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. No, they don't NEED to do that. Well, not until the government mandates it anyway. And that's the problem. Perhaps they will leave the business, but they shouldn't until renewable energy becomes more economical than producing fossil fuels. In the meantime, it makes more sense to move production to developing countries so they have the same opportunity we had here to benefit from cheap energy.
- zackees 5y ago
  To add to this... the government killed the alternative which was nuclear. If the government were serious about ending CO2 emissions they should start building a massive number of nuclear. Hitting Shell like this is a disaster of policy.
- FridayoLeary 5y ago
  >His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Thanks for that! I do try and pick my comparisons and words carefully. I sometimes fail miserably but i'm glad you picked up on it.
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    There's an argument for storing carbon as finished wood products.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      But that was not even a tangential side point of mine. To my mind it was just a pertinent comparison. I'll bear in mind what you said but i'm slightly disappointed.
barelysapient 5y ago
The problem is that this is one company in the EU. It won't change how America, Russia, the middle east, or anyone else produces fossil fuels. Shell will desiccate from this action. And people will declare victory. But EU member states will simply import more fossil fuels from elsewhere. And the environment will not be helped. I agree that we need to cut CO2 emissions. But we need global solutions to these problems. Not one-off court victories in small municipalities with liberal trade policies.
- archontes 5y ago
  Or they implement carbon fixing, and the EU implements tariffs on non-carbon-neutral petro such that the environment is helped...
  - barelysapient 5y ago
    Great ideas. Sadly not the direction being taken by the EU.
- kokanator 5y ago
  Did you hear that? All the other oil companies just cheered! What a great day when a huge competitor is taken down by the very government it supports. ( sarcasm intended ) The other opportunity was to find a way to work with Shell to change the world. They are a huge power. Not make room for the others listed above to fill the void.
whatshisface 5y ago
>I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so! Last time they tried this the United States rent itself apart in its bloodiest war.
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  They just reinvented slavery with prison labor of blacks under Jim Crow laws (and plea bargain scammery) that are still used in the worlds largest concentration camps ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    It's a mischaracterization to say that Jim Crow made emancipation pointless. It may have been an attempt to reduce its practical importance, but it didn't come close to reversing it in the vast majority of cases.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - aww_dang 5y ago
    Surprisingly, there's a connection to the topic at hand if you look at the parallel of prohibition and economic situations resulting from highly regulated markets.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Better than the alternative.
phkahler 5y ago
>> Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here? Shell doesn't burn fossil fuels. As you note they produce them (or pump them out of the ground and refine them). Telling Shell to produces less in one country means the people buying those fuels will simply get them from somewhere else, probably at higher price.
ffggvv 5y ago
can you not compare the brutal practice of slavery (and accompanying rape and torture) to fossil fuels? it’s deeply offensive to those whose ancestors actually were slaves
- mikeyjk 5y ago
  Is the issue that the comparison is bad and/or doesn't add much value - or just that we should generally avoid discussing that topic unless directly related?
  - ffggvv 5y ago
    in general imo one shouldn’t make comparisons to: 1. nazis/holocaust 2. slavery etc… as it devalues the actual event you’re comparing it to. i get that it’s just meant to make a point but even over using the comparison in everyday speech devalues it it’s fine talking about those issues in general.
    - FridayoLeary 5y ago
      Not sure why people don't get it. It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
xyzelement 5y ago
> Burning fossil fuels is bad. I would say that like many things in life, it's a tradeoff. There're costs and benefits to using these things. Talking about one side but not the other doesn't make sense. Quick personal example - I lived through energy shortages as a kid in the Soviet Union. Situations where there was no heat in the winter and/or no fuel for cars and public transport. From pure fossil fuel consumption standpoint, these were great times, as we weren't using any. From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times. At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this. None of this is to say that we shouldn't move towards primarily nuclear in the long term - we should but we need to talk about this in a mature way.
- kemitche 5y ago
  > From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times. Unchecked, climate change will ALSO lead to terrible times for humans. Just because it's not immediately impactful, does not make it ignorable. From that perspective, it's arguable that our options are "Some amount of near-term lowering of quality of life" or "A large amount of long-term, in the future, loss of quality of life." Continuing to burn the levels of fossil fuels we currently do is borrowing against a debt that may be literally impossible to repay.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    I think you're saying essentially the same thing as the last paragraph of my post, so not sure why there's an argument. But sure, there's a long run place we want to get to. Today, we're not at that place and we're depending on fossil fuels. So why are we vilifying them and the companies that provide them? Sounds like we should simply work on replacements, like nuclear.
- rkk3 5y ago
  > At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this. You could extend this argument "Slavery is bad", "Genocide is bad", "War is bad" etc. are all statements of "privilege". Completely ignoring climate change, particulate pollution from fossil fuels has killed a terrible amount of people and will continue to do so for some time. Currently its around 13,000 per year in the US.
kansface 5y ago
The problem is that this ruling was unequivocally outside the rule of law in my estimate. You want to stop climate change? Great! Pass some laws via the legislature, enforce them via fines and jail through action initiated by the executive branch under the oversight of an impartial judicial system. Exactly which law could not be enacted by a judge under this precedent/newly found tort? Why are we foisting our collective guilt as a society onto a single hate-able company as if ordinary people making quotidian decisions lack fault, agency, and responsibility? Yes, I realize we are not talking about the US...

by SCHiM 5y ago

berkes 5y ago

What is more, Shell already planned to divert investments from fossil fuel to renewables. The court ordered them to do this earlier and in larger numbers. That would be like IKEA telling you "we don't have those shelves. See, were already working on selling less wooden furniture over the coming ten years, but the court ordered us to this now. So we now already have these awesome cardboard shelves for you. And next year we'll have plastic and metal ones too".

FridayoLeary 5y ago
I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. I think it would be wiser to work with Shell to see if their timeline can be compressed, their investments expanded etc. rather then throwing out unreasonable demands.
- berkes 5y ago
  > I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business. Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end. Shell has known this for over 60 years now; they acknowledge that themselves! Requiring the change that apparently a corporate moloch is not able to make themselves is neither unreasonable nor overnight. As I point out elsewhere in this thread: competition manages fine to pivot to renewable fuels (diesel, ethanol, kerozine etc) and beyond that, in far less time, as can be seen in action with e.g. Neste Oyi
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    >Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end If that is true Shell should die naturally. Images of stranded fish, flopping and gasping for breath springs to mind. This court order indicates otherwise. I'm under no illusions that orders like this won't hurt me in a real way. And i am not a fan at all of EV's in their current format. Despite (what i perceive) propaganda (NOT a negative connotation, mind you) to the contrary, i don't think they are mature enough to replace ICE. Slightly off topic but i'm a huge fan of those electric scooters and bikes. I think they are the way forward, not some huge EV. They should definitely be made legal, anyway everyone uses them. I just have a depressing feeling that they shall be slaughtered, hamstrung and/ or castrated on the altar of pedestrian safety.
  - kokanator 5y ago
    >If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business. There are 1.4 Billion cars in the world. They are obviously focused on the demand. [0] https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-there-in-the-world-70629 https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-th...
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  They were poisoning planet for decades, so now we have to pay them to find other business.

dylan604 5y ago

>Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Playing devil's advocate, but what about all of the oil that is not burnt but turned into plastics and other products?

eloff 5y ago
It's a very tiny percentage of oil that gets used in this way.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  about 3/4 is used as fuel (gas/diesel/jet) with the rest building your roads and the plastic life we all enjoy.
  - eloff 5y ago
    This source puts it at 86% as fuel: https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/ https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc... Not sure why the discrepancy.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Roughly 15% of petroleum goes into chemical feedstocks. Not all of that is plastics. I suspect natural-gas-fired ammonia synthesis (Haber-Bosch process) is a major fraction. But it's not a tiny percentage.
brtkdotse 5y ago
Best case: It will end up burnt as trash. Realistic case: it will end up in the oceans as microplastics
- yholio 5y ago
  Nonetheless, have the plaintiffs proved that Shell is responsible for plastic that is burned or thrown in the ocean, as opposed to those that burn, dispose or produce plastics? Have they proven that there is NO legitimate and lawful use of oil? This is most likely a vacuous decision of one trigger happy judge with an ax to grind. The idea that global climate change is "tort" is absurd, the phenomenon is a defining feature of the Anthropocene.

gruez 5y ago

> I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so! I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal because of some vague law (ie. because of a tort or "the right to life and the right to family life"). In your comment the [item] was something most people would find objectionable (slaves), but you can very well substitute this for other stuff you enjoy, eg. beef, coffee, chocolate, etc.

chefkoch 5y ago
>I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal They lied for decades about the dangers of climate change.
- jujkjkm 5y ago
  Scientists and governments lied about climate change as well. Go back and look up the many, many wrong predictions over the decades. You have no argument.
  - shlant 5y ago
    A brand new account to spout climate change denialism... how brave of you
  - acdha 5y ago
    Do you have any citation? This is a common claim by deniers, many of whom are paid to create the illusion of scientific disagreement, but it's not true. If you look at, for example, the 1990 IPCC report the subsequent 3 decades were within the report's estimated ranges: https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projections-on-target-so-far/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projec... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/jun/25/30-years-later-deniers-are-still-lying-about-hansens-amazing-global-warming-prediction https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97... Similarly, while certain people like to repeat the claim that scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s it's grossly overstating the degree to which that was taken seriously by the academic community back then and how quickly it was conclusively rejected long before the turn of the century. https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-climate-science-really-call-for-a-coming-ice-age/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cl...

trueluk 5y ago

Don't be daft. His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels. > Burning fossil fuels is bad. Why is it bad? Becuase the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers and we build solutions to adapt to an ever-changing world. We don't make progress by stifling productivity. > Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. No, they don't NEED to do that. Well, not until the government mandates it anyway. And that's the problem. Perhaps they will leave the business, but they shouldn't until renewable energy becomes more economical than producing fossil fuels. In the meantime, it makes more sense to move production to developing countries so they have the same opportunity we had here to benefit from cheap energy.

zackees 5y ago
To add to this... the government killed the alternative which was nuclear. If the government were serious about ending CO2 emissions they should start building a massive number of nuclear. Hitting Shell like this is a disaster of policy.
FridayoLeary 5y ago
>His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels. Thanks for that! I do try and pick my comparisons and words carefully. I sometimes fail miserably but i'm glad you picked up on it.
- aww_dang 5y ago
  There's an argument for storing carbon as finished wood products.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    But that was not even a tangential side point of mine. To my mind it was just a pertinent comparison. I'll bear in mind what you said but i'm slightly disappointed.

barelysapient 5y ago

The problem is that this is one company in the EU. It won't change how America, Russia, the middle east, or anyone else produces fossil fuels. Shell will desiccate from this action. And people will declare victory. But EU member states will simply import more fossil fuels from elsewhere. And the environment will not be helped. I agree that we need to cut CO2 emissions. But we need global solutions to these problems. Not one-off court victories in small municipalities with liberal trade policies.

archontes 5y ago
Or they implement carbon fixing, and the EU implements tariffs on non-carbon-neutral petro such that the environment is helped...
- barelysapient 5y ago
  Great ideas. Sadly not the direction being taken by the EU.
kokanator 5y ago
Did you hear that? All the other oil companies just cheered! What a great day when a huge competitor is taken down by the very government it supports. ( sarcasm intended ) The other opportunity was to find a way to work with Shell to change the world. They are a huge power. Not make room for the others listed above to fill the void.

whatshisface 5y ago

>I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so! Last time they tried this the United States rent itself apart in its bloodiest war.

1cvmask 5y ago
They just reinvented slavery with prison labor of blacks under Jim Crow laws (and plea bargain scammery) that are still used in the worlds largest concentration camps ever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
- whatshisface 5y ago
  It's a mischaracterization to say that Jim Crow made emancipation pointless. It may have been an attempt to reduce its practical importance, but it didn't come close to reversing it in the vast majority of cases.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- aww_dang 5y ago
  Surprisingly, there's a connection to the topic at hand if you look at the parallel of prohibition and economic situations resulting from highly regulated markets.
jayd16 5y ago
Better than the alternative.

phkahler 5y ago

>> Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here? Shell doesn't burn fossil fuels. As you note they produce them (or pump them out of the ground and refine them). Telling Shell to produces less in one country means the people buying those fuels will simply get them from somewhere else, probably at higher price.

ffggvv 5y ago

can you not compare the brutal practice of slavery (and accompanying rape and torture) to fossil fuels? it’s deeply offensive to those whose ancestors actually were slaves

mikeyjk 5y ago
Is the issue that the comparison is bad and/or doesn't add much value - or just that we should generally avoid discussing that topic unless directly related?
- ffggvv 5y ago
  in general imo one shouldn’t make comparisons to: 1. nazis/holocaust 2. slavery etc… as it devalues the actual event you’re comparing it to. i get that it’s just meant to make a point but even over using the comparison in everyday speech devalues it it’s fine talking about those issues in general.
  - FridayoLeary 5y ago
    Not sure why people don't get it. It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

xyzelement 5y ago

> Burning fossil fuels is bad. I would say that like many things in life, it's a tradeoff. There're costs and benefits to using these things. Talking about one side but not the other doesn't make sense. Quick personal example - I lived through energy shortages as a kid in the Soviet Union. Situations where there was no heat in the winter and/or no fuel for cars and public transport. From pure fossil fuel consumption standpoint, these were great times, as we weren't using any. From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times. At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this. None of this is to say that we shouldn't move towards primarily nuclear in the long term - we should but we need to talk about this in a mature way.

kemitche 5y ago
> From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times. Unchecked, climate change will ALSO lead to terrible times for humans. Just because it's not immediately impactful, does not make it ignorable. From that perspective, it's arguable that our options are "Some amount of near-term lowering of quality of life" or "A large amount of long-term, in the future, loss of quality of life." Continuing to burn the levels of fossil fuels we currently do is borrowing against a debt that may be literally impossible to repay.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  I think you're saying essentially the same thing as the last paragraph of my post, so not sure why there's an argument. But sure, there's a long run place we want to get to. Today, we're not at that place and we're depending on fossil fuels. So why are we vilifying them and the companies that provide them? Sounds like we should simply work on replacements, like nuclear.
rkk3 5y ago
> At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this. You could extend this argument "Slavery is bad", "Genocide is bad", "War is bad" etc. are all statements of "privilege". Completely ignoring climate change, particulate pollution from fossil fuels has killed a terrible amount of people and will continue to do so for some time. Currently its around 13,000 per year in the US.

kansface 5y ago

The problem is that this ruling was unequivocally outside the rule of law in my estimate. You want to stop climate change? Great! Pass some laws via the legislature, enforce them via fines and jail through action initiated by the executive branch under the oversight of an impartial judicial system. Exactly which law could not be enacted by a judge under this precedent/newly found tort? Why are we foisting our collective guilt as a society onto a single hate-able company as if ordinary people making quotidian decisions lack fault, agency, and responsibility? Yes, I realize we are not talking about the US...