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Democrats Seek $500B in Climate Damages from Big Polluting Companies
- the-dude 5y agohttps://archive.is/TqOuU https://archive.is/TqOuU
- fxtentacle 5y agoA one time $500B payment spread out over, multiple companies kind of seems like a gift to me... Pay once, and you're absolved of all past environmental wrongs. Sounds almost like the church 500 years ago ^^
- Tycho 5y agoMakes sense. The climate movement has always blatantly been about non-productive people appropriating money from others who have been engaged in productive enterprise.
- WitCanStain 5y agoA truly strange take. For decades people barely cared about scientists warning of the horrors to come. Participating in the climate movement is a very inefficient way to acquire money.
- the-dude 5y agoWas very inefficient perhaps. Now it is a prerequisite for politicians and scientists. Otherwise, no funds for you.
- Balero 5y agoThe climate movement has been about holding people accountable. Specifically people who have made money causing the biggest problem we have to date, and who are currently trying to slow down people actually fixing things. If you made your money relying on the tragedy of the commons, then you were not in a productive enterprise.
- Tycho 5y agoBasically everyone has benefited and chosen to use energy generated from fossil fuels, except maybe remote hunter gatherer tribes. It’s ridiculous to single out enterprises involved in the extraction of generation part of the supply chain while the whole world cheerfully used their output. Unless you’re just a political money grabbing operation, in which case principles don’t matter, obviously.
- Omniusaspirer 5y agoI have absolutely no love for oil companies, but retroactive penalties for actions that weren't illegal at the time and that all of American society contributed to seems misguided to me. This is in the same vein to me as letting websites get sued for actions of their users, and gun manufacturers getting sued for shootings. It's antithetical with the concept of personal responsibility and impossible for a business owner to plan for. I wish our politicians would focus more aggressively on actually incentivising emission reduction/carbon capture investment and less on pointing fingers and shifting blame.
- Dobbs 5y agoBut if the companies knew what they were doing was harmful and did it anyways? Or what if the companies purposefully suppressed research that showed that their actions are bad?
- scrollaway 5y ago> This is in the same vein to me as letting websites get sued for actions of their users, and gun manufacturers getting sued for shootings I wonder why you think these are comparable to retroactive sanctions? I think the idea is that the penalties are retroactive because the companies knew the damage they were causing and didn't care. A more similar comparison point would be retroactive fines against tobacco companies that knew they were making people sick and didn't care.
- ethbr0 5y agoOr opioid manufacturers and distributors who knew they were getting people addicted and didn't care.
- mandmandam 5y agoOr vice-presidents and their weapons companies and their Democrat cheerleaders, who knew Iraq didn't have WMDs and didn't care.
- Omniusaspirer 5y ago
- ethbr0 5y ago> "draft legislation [...] directs the Treasury Department and the Environmental Protection Agency to identify the companies that released the most greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from 2000 to 2019 and assess a fee based on the amounts they emitted Seems pretty reasonable to retroactively tax previously untaxed externalities. By 2000, the science was pretty conclusive. If fossil fuel companies' reaction was full-steam-ahead, they deserve what they get. That said, the revenue generated should definitely be used to fund climate mitigation and backstop unfunded insurance shortfalls. I.e. costs directly caused by the profits made. Also, cited in article as an example of work to base such a decision off of, Climate Accountability's "Carbon Majors Report": https://climateaccountability.org/carbonmajors.html https://climateaccountability.org/carbonmajors.html (attempts to quantify emissions by company)
- engineer_22 5y agoTo play devil's advocate, you could make a similar counter argument. By 2000, the science was pretty conclusive. If coastal city builders' reaction was full-steam-ahead, they deserve what they get. IMO this kind of legislation isn't serious. It's a political stunt to grab headlines.
- ethbr0 5y agoCoastal city building has a heck of a larger web of at-fault parties and rights issues in play. For starters: oil companies understood climate change was linked to greenhouse gas emissions (because their own experts told them so, and they funded counter-arguments). They made profits on something that generated ~12 gigatons of emissions. Those profits are directly related to (a) something they wilfully did and (b) that they knew would cause harm. In coastal building, who's the analogous party that fulfills those criteria? The homebuyer? The developer? The local zoning board?
- engineer_22 5y agoTo play devil's advocate again: These companies were providing goods and services demanded by US civil society, industry, and military. Surely US citizens and the US Government enjoyed the benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. Are they also not culpable?
- fny 5y agoWe're so busy attacking supply, and yet demand continues to grow an grow. Why do I feel like we're heading for another energy crisis?
- robbie-c 5y ago"Personal carbon footprint" was an incredibly successful PR campaign by the biggest polluters to shift the responsibility onto individual consumers (who have much less ability to actually change anything). I'm glad to see the trend of pushing back this narrative. It's clear that the biggest polluters have profited immensly from pushing their externalities onto the rest of the world. As much as I do like my personal choices and responsibilites, I don't even know why some things are available for me to buy. Isn't it kind of insane to think that I could walk into a supermarket and buy chocolate that was produced with slave labour? Why is that even an option? Similar for any product with an outsized negative environmental impact. I'm not sure that the Democrats' path here is the way forward (I'm not American and don't want to try to understand if something like this is even legally possible), but expecting consumers to educate themselves about climate change in a meaningful way as an approach to preventing disaster is doomed from the start.
- Bostonian 5y agoThe American people have continued to enjoy the benefits of hydrocarbons for electricity, transportation, heating, and other uses. The "big polluting companies" produce legal products that meet vital needs. Demonizing them is hypocritical unless one lives like the Amish without electricity, and I doubt these retroactive taxes would stand up in court. It would be legal for Democrats to drastically raise the gasoline tax, but they avoid that because they know that people are not willing to pay much to ameliorate climate change.
- h2odragon 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_of_attainder
- Proven 5y agoHahaha! Another gangsta-style shakedown! This is getting more and more fun! Red states should secede and tell them to go fxxx themselves!