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Yeah, let’s only focus on the production problem. There is totally no demand for oil or plastics. I assume you are typing this on a laptop or cellphone that has

Yeah, let’s only focus on the production problem. There is totally no demand for oil or plastics. I assume you are typing this on a laptop or cellphone that has plastic parts.

minikites 5y ago
So you can't criticize society if you participate in society? Interesting.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  You can't build a society on oil and gas and then, now that we're experiencing the side effects, just be mad at the companies that provided this service. We all participated in this process. Apportioning blame isn't even particularly useful compared to just fixing the problem.
  - epistasis 5y ago
    We most certainly can be mad at them for intentionally deceiving the public and shareholders. It's one thing to provide a product honestly. It's another to provide a product dishonestly. This entire post is about the dishonesty, so just forgetting about that dishonesty and not addressing is seems odd.
    - refurb 5y ago
      When will tech’s reckoning come? Social media’s negative influence and incitement of violence? When we will start throwing engineers in prison who built these products knowing what they do?
      - minikites 5y ago
        Hopefully soon, but I'm not optimistic about that group ever facing consequences either.
      - epistasis 5y ago
        Tech is bad, but it gets held to a far higher standard than fossil fuel companies. It doesn't take much digging to find far worse direct human death from fossil fuel companies, instead of the second-degree human death from social networks.
      - fallingknife 5y ago
        Probably sometime after the printing press reckoning comes. Because it facilitated the same thing and is equally dumb to blame for how people use it.
    - likecarter 5y ago
      You really think them being honest would change anyone’s usage of fossil fuels? Hell, oil companies are transparent about climate change now, and usage is still going up YOY. Only now that we are experiencing greater effects of climate change, everyone is jumping on half-solutions like electric cars - let’s not even get started on the ecological footprint of batteries.
      - epistasis 5y ago
        So you think the O&G went on a massive, expensive, coordinated disinformation for fun, and without the intention of increasing fossil fuel usage? Why would executives put themselves at risk for nothing? Why would they spend so much money for nothing? Why lie if the lie doesn't benefit them? The truth is that these disinformation campaigns to this day are killing our transition away from fossil fuels. They have spawned a political movement that is far more extreme than the publicly stated opinions of the fossil fuel companies. One prime example of this disinformation campaign is repeated by you: > let's not even get started on the ecological footprint of batteries. This myth that batteries are somehow worse than fuel is exactly the type of disinformation that fossil fuel companies manufacture and that others spread, seemingly willingly, because of their tribal politics motivations. You don't know the footprint of batteries for electrical cars. It's certainly no worse than what we use to make the rest of a car. I've spent hours combing the web for concrete ecological impacts. The only concrete thing anybody talks about are not ecological, but social. Indigenous people in South America not getting compensated for their land. Cobalt mining from artisanal, unaccounted mines using child labor. But the ecological footprint is a tiny shadow of all the steel, copper, etc. that goes into al the rest of society.
        likecarter 5y ago
        > You don't know the footprint of batteries for electrical cars. It's certainly no worse than what we use to make the rest of a car. Have you heard of open-pit mines? I would call the ecological damage of that much higher than a comparable oil drilling site. I have nothing against electric vehicles, or progress away from CO2 emitters. But EVs are a half-backed solution. And EVs might even be net-negative for climate change. What do you think mining equipment runs on? A shit-ton of diesel. The largest cost of a gold mine is energy - diesel. I just think the mental gymnastics people use to justify the smaller ecological impact EVs is ridiculous. Heck, I even own a Tesla.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    So if I live in a city with a corrupt water department, I 1) can't complain about it because I drink water, and 2) should realize the real problem is the concept of corruption, not punishing the corrupt. We punish the corrupt in order to make the decision to be corrupt in future more expensive for the people considering it. A culture of total impunity doesn't help with "the problem."
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      I'm not talking about corruption, but the poster above seemed mad that the oil companies made us use oil, beyond just being angry about the oil companies' corrupt practices. If you drink water from a corrupt company, by all means try to get the corruption fixed but don't blame them that we live in a water based society.
      - KptMarchewa 5y ago
        >oil companies made us use oil They also actively lie about oil usage effects on environment, and lobby governments to not only to allow them to continue destruction, but also give them subsidies for it.
        beaconstudios 5y ago
        They should be punished for misleading people, of course, if we can show that it was done knowingly - which I can imagine it was.
  - Rioghasarig 5y ago
    Nah, man. This "we all did this" is just not true. Power is not equally distributed among people. A few people in charge of oil and gas companies have more power to affect the state of affairs than thousands of normal people. So, no, I do not buy that "it's everyone's fault".
    - beaconstudios 5y ago
      We all use fossil fuels and derived products. It's not easy to replace those things with something more environmentally friendly even now that governments are getting involved.
- wanda 5y ago
  What the parent is saying is that as long as there is legal demand for a substance, the supplier is not the only one to be held accountable. Oil and gas conglomerates emerged and flourished because they met the demand of society. If the demand was irresponsible, then someone has failed to act in addition to the suppliers who are essentially just looking to capitalise on an opportunity in a socio-economic system where to succeed is to capitalise on any legal, available opportunity. Governing bodies have known for decades that the consumption of fossil fuels was both unsustainable and detrimental to the health of the environment. And yet no consequential action has been taken, for a number of understandable, yet ultimately wrong reasons. Governments will argue that the technology wasn't there yet to make a transition away from fossil fuels, but money could have been invested to ensure that it was there. Skip to today, one may retort that the technology is here now, and when governments are reticent and continue to drag their heels — that is perhaps when shadier motivations behind executive inaction emerge. I do not speak as an environmentalist by any means, my net contributions to encouraging social change in this regard are practically zero, I've never made the effort. But over the years I have been alive I have seen this problem growing and the debate becoming increasingly protracted and increasingly unhelpful. The time for debate, inquiry and questions of accountability is not now, as this process will simply result in the burial of the actual problem facing our species and, realistically, very little punitive action against the most significant culprits. Indeed, what point is there in trying to point the finger at suppliers meeting demands and governments seeking to remain in government by giving people what they want? It's a problem to which the solution is political suicide that any subsequent regime can likely overturn. Like financial crises, no one supports change until the proverbial shit hits the fan. This is partially because the general population do not understand the nature or severity of the problem, the timescale, or even believe the problem exists. I would argue that this is not accidental — lots of powerful institutions and people have undoubtedly had a hand in making sure the populace do not understand or take an active interest in problems like environmental and financial crises. This is because the existence and power of these institutions and people would be threatened by a shift in the status quo. The time for decisive action was at least a decade ago, but there's no harm in starting now — it just means that the transition to alternative energy sources must be more abrupt and more investment must be allocated to remedial technologies that can work towards undoing at least some portion of the damage we have done to our biosphere. Let historians and the next generations worry about whose fault it was. It is more important to secure for the next generation a sustainable and habitable future, than it is to look back at past hubris and wonder where it went wrong.
epistasis 5y ago
What does the necessity of the product have to do with malfeasance and unethical behavior? I assert that we can produce plastics without conducting massive deception campaigns that threaten the very future of our economy, the survival of many cities and states, and mass migration across the globe to adapt to new climate.
- andrewmutz 5y ago
  Climate change has been widely known and understood for decades. It is convenient to blame the oil companies, but the fault lies in all of us who live in a democracy but did not prioritize regulating carbon emissions. If you doubt that it is our fault, look at the recent Swiss referendum that failed: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pesticides-ban-terrorism-law-covid-19-aid-2021-06-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pest... It was a referendum in a well educated, first world nation, in 2021 and they could not muster the willpower to solve the problem. The problem is not the oil and gas companies, it is all of us.
  - the-dude 5y ago
    The Swiss referendum was discussed at the time here on HN, and the Swiss citizens who commented on it said it was a thinly veiled tax hike and not much more.
    - gruez 5y ago
      What's the difference between a "veiled tax hike", and raising money to fight climate change?
pjc50 5y ago
There's plenty of demand for opiates too, and somehow Purdue Pharma was held accountable for what they did in meeting that demand - and creating it.
- whoooooo123 5y ago
  > There's plenty of demand for opiates Not nearly as much as there is for energy
  - Balero 5y ago
    So if we can bump up the demand for opiates that would make it ok?
    - likecarter 5y ago
      The difference is people are complaining about fossil fuels as they use them. Be the first, and give up all modern medicine, modern technology, plastics, etc. Nothing wrong with innovating out of fossil fuels, but you just seem to be pointing blame.
      - KozmoNau7 5y ago
        What choice do we have, realistically? How would you even opt out? Everything carries a fossil fuel burden with it, the change cannot come from individuals.
    - quickthrowman 5y ago
      No. Opiates make a person feel really good, fossil fuels enable modern society. I assume you see the difference now.

Yeah, let’s only focus on the production problem. There is totally no demand for oil or plastics. I assume you are typing this on a laptop or cellphone that has plastic parts.

minikites 5y ago

So you can't criticize society if you participate in society? Interesting.

beaconstudios 5y ago
You can't build a society on oil and gas and then, now that we're experiencing the side effects, just be mad at the companies that provided this service. We all participated in this process. Apportioning blame isn't even particularly useful compared to just fixing the problem.
- epistasis 5y ago
  We most certainly can be mad at them for intentionally deceiving the public and shareholders. It's one thing to provide a product honestly. It's another to provide a product dishonestly. This entire post is about the dishonesty, so just forgetting about that dishonesty and not addressing is seems odd.
  - refurb 5y ago
    When will tech’s reckoning come? Social media’s negative influence and incitement of violence? When we will start throwing engineers in prison who built these products knowing what they do?
    - minikites 5y ago
      Hopefully soon, but I'm not optimistic about that group ever facing consequences either.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      Tech is bad, but it gets held to a far higher standard than fossil fuel companies. It doesn't take much digging to find far worse direct human death from fossil fuel companies, instead of the second-degree human death from social networks.
    - fallingknife 5y ago
      Probably sometime after the printing press reckoning comes. Because it facilitated the same thing and is equally dumb to blame for how people use it.
  - likecarter 5y ago
    You really think them being honest would change anyone’s usage of fossil fuels? Hell, oil companies are transparent about climate change now, and usage is still going up YOY. Only now that we are experiencing greater effects of climate change, everyone is jumping on half-solutions like electric cars - let’s not even get started on the ecological footprint of batteries.
    - epistasis 5y ago
      So you think the O&G went on a massive, expensive, coordinated disinformation for fun, and without the intention of increasing fossil fuel usage? Why would executives put themselves at risk for nothing? Why would they spend so much money for nothing? Why lie if the lie doesn't benefit them? The truth is that these disinformation campaigns to this day are killing our transition away from fossil fuels. They have spawned a political movement that is far more extreme than the publicly stated opinions of the fossil fuel companies. One prime example of this disinformation campaign is repeated by you: > let's not even get started on the ecological footprint of batteries. This myth that batteries are somehow worse than fuel is exactly the type of disinformation that fossil fuel companies manufacture and that others spread, seemingly willingly, because of their tribal politics motivations. You don't know the footprint of batteries for electrical cars. It's certainly no worse than what we use to make the rest of a car. I've spent hours combing the web for concrete ecological impacts. The only concrete thing anybody talks about are not ecological, but social. Indigenous people in South America not getting compensated for their land. Cobalt mining from artisanal, unaccounted mines using child labor. But the ecological footprint is a tiny shadow of all the steel, copper, etc. that goes into al the rest of society.
      - likecarter 5y ago
        > You don't know the footprint of batteries for electrical cars. It's certainly no worse than what we use to make the rest of a car. Have you heard of open-pit mines? I would call the ecological damage of that much higher than a comparable oil drilling site. I have nothing against electric vehicles, or progress away from CO2 emitters. But EVs are a half-backed solution. And EVs might even be net-negative for climate change. What do you think mining equipment runs on? A shit-ton of diesel. The largest cost of a gold mine is energy - diesel. I just think the mental gymnastics people use to justify the smaller ecological impact EVs is ridiculous. Heck, I even own a Tesla.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  So if I live in a city with a corrupt water department, I 1) can't complain about it because I drink water, and 2) should realize the real problem is the concept of corruption, not punishing the corrupt. We punish the corrupt in order to make the decision to be corrupt in future more expensive for the people considering it. A culture of total impunity doesn't help with "the problem."
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    I'm not talking about corruption, but the poster above seemed mad that the oil companies made us use oil, beyond just being angry about the oil companies' corrupt practices. If you drink water from a corrupt company, by all means try to get the corruption fixed but don't blame them that we live in a water based society.
    - KptMarchewa 5y ago
      >oil companies made us use oil They also actively lie about oil usage effects on environment, and lobby governments to not only to allow them to continue destruction, but also give them subsidies for it.
      - beaconstudios 5y ago
        They should be punished for misleading people, of course, if we can show that it was done knowingly - which I can imagine it was.
- Rioghasarig 5y ago
  Nah, man. This "we all did this" is just not true. Power is not equally distributed among people. A few people in charge of oil and gas companies have more power to affect the state of affairs than thousands of normal people. So, no, I do not buy that "it's everyone's fault".
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    We all use fossil fuels and derived products. It's not easy to replace those things with something more environmentally friendly even now that governments are getting involved.
wanda 5y ago
What the parent is saying is that as long as there is legal demand for a substance, the supplier is not the only one to be held accountable. Oil and gas conglomerates emerged and flourished because they met the demand of society. If the demand was irresponsible, then someone has failed to act in addition to the suppliers who are essentially just looking to capitalise on an opportunity in a socio-economic system where to succeed is to capitalise on any legal, available opportunity. Governing bodies have known for decades that the consumption of fossil fuels was both unsustainable and detrimental to the health of the environment. And yet no consequential action has been taken, for a number of understandable, yet ultimately wrong reasons. Governments will argue that the technology wasn't there yet to make a transition away from fossil fuels, but money could have been invested to ensure that it was there. Skip to today, one may retort that the technology is here now, and when governments are reticent and continue to drag their heels — that is perhaps when shadier motivations behind executive inaction emerge. I do not speak as an environmentalist by any means, my net contributions to encouraging social change in this regard are practically zero, I've never made the effort. But over the years I have been alive I have seen this problem growing and the debate becoming increasingly protracted and increasingly unhelpful. The time for debate, inquiry and questions of accountability is not now, as this process will simply result in the burial of the actual problem facing our species and, realistically, very little punitive action against the most significant culprits. Indeed, what point is there in trying to point the finger at suppliers meeting demands and governments seeking to remain in government by giving people what they want? It's a problem to which the solution is political suicide that any subsequent regime can likely overturn. Like financial crises, no one supports change until the proverbial shit hits the fan. This is partially because the general population do not understand the nature or severity of the problem, the timescale, or even believe the problem exists. I would argue that this is not accidental — lots of powerful institutions and people have undoubtedly had a hand in making sure the populace do not understand or take an active interest in problems like environmental and financial crises. This is because the existence and power of these institutions and people would be threatened by a shift in the status quo. The time for decisive action was at least a decade ago, but there's no harm in starting now — it just means that the transition to alternative energy sources must be more abrupt and more investment must be allocated to remedial technologies that can work towards undoing at least some portion of the damage we have done to our biosphere. Let historians and the next generations worry about whose fault it was. It is more important to secure for the next generation a sustainable and habitable future, than it is to look back at past hubris and wonder where it went wrong.

epistasis 5y ago

What does the necessity of the product have to do with malfeasance and unethical behavior? I assert that we can produce plastics without conducting massive deception campaigns that threaten the very future of our economy, the survival of many cities and states, and mass migration across the globe to adapt to new climate.

andrewmutz 5y ago
Climate change has been widely known and understood for decades. It is convenient to blame the oil companies, but the fault lies in all of us who live in a democracy but did not prioritize regulating carbon emissions. If you doubt that it is our fault, look at the recent Swiss referendum that failed: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pesticides-ban-terrorism-law-covid-19-aid-2021-06-12/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/swiss-voters-decide-pest... It was a referendum in a well educated, first world nation, in 2021 and they could not muster the willpower to solve the problem. The problem is not the oil and gas companies, it is all of us.
- the-dude 5y ago
  The Swiss referendum was discussed at the time here on HN, and the Swiss citizens who commented on it said it was a thinly veiled tax hike and not much more.
  - gruez 5y ago
    What's the difference between a "veiled tax hike", and raising money to fight climate change?

pjc50 5y ago

There's plenty of demand for opiates too, and somehow Purdue Pharma was held accountable for what they did in meeting that demand - and creating it.

whoooooo123 5y ago
> There's plenty of demand for opiates Not nearly as much as there is for energy
- Balero 5y ago
  So if we can bump up the demand for opiates that would make it ok?
  - likecarter 5y ago
    The difference is people are complaining about fossil fuels as they use them. Be the first, and give up all modern medicine, modern technology, plastics, etc. Nothing wrong with innovating out of fossil fuels, but you just seem to be pointing blame.
    - KozmoNau7 5y ago
      What choice do we have, realistically? How would you even opt out? Everything carries a fossil fuel burden with it, the change cannot come from individuals.
  - quickthrowman 5y ago
    No. Opiates make a person feel really good, fossil fuels enable modern society. I assume you see the difference now.