3 ms·

It seems a bit rich to look at a climate crisis created by current capitalism's "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" approach, note one recent small chan

It seems a bit rich to look at a climate crisis created by current capitalism's "privatize the gains, socialize the losses" approach, note one recent small change nominally driven by a small subset of investors, and then declare investors actually good. If you count all the times a major oil company made a climate-worsening choice because investors demand profits, and then count the choices like the one you point at, I'd expect it would be 99.9% the former. And I'll note that the link you give does not include actually "reducing carbon emissions". They're promising to invest more in research. How will they pay for that? Selling more oil. So even if they do the research and even if something comes of it, there's no particular reason to think that on net this choice will reduce total atmospheric carbon.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> If you count all the times a major oil company made a climate-worsening choice because investors demand profits, and then count the choices like the one you point at, I'd expect it would be 99.9% the former Sorry, do non-market economies have a better track record when it comes to the environment? Eastern Europe says no [1]. Pollution intensity metrics relative to private property rights say no [2]. I cherry picked examples for narrative value. I didn't realize what I took to be an extremist claim--the less influence investors have over private companies the better--had so much purchase. [1] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/807441493305588896/pdf/Environmental-management-in-centrally-planned-non-market-economies-of-Eastern-Europe.pdf https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/8074414933055888... [2] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48717/1/MPRA_paper_48717.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48717/1/MPRA_paper_48717.pdf
- wpietri 5y ago
  What you're doing here is creating a false dichotomy. Eastern Europe is (or at least was) worse because the problem -- elites extracting wealth regardless of consequences to others -- was worse there. But it's not like self-interested elites capturing both economic and regulatory problems isn't a problem here. Indeed, in now might be worse here. The two choices available aren't eco-collapse in the 1980s American greed-is-good capitalism style or the 1980s Eastern Europe totalitarian style. There are more things, Horatio. But if you spend all your time cherry-picking citations to soothe your fundamentalist capitalism feelings, you're not going to see them.

JumpCrisscross 5y ago

> If you count all the times a major oil company made a climate-worsening choice because investors demand profits, and then count the choices like the one you point at, I'd expect it would be 99.9% the former Sorry, do non-market economies have a better track record when it comes to the environment? Eastern Europe says no [1]. Pollution intensity metrics relative to private property rights say no [2]. I cherry picked examples for narrative value. I didn't realize what I took to be an extremist claim--the less influence investors have over private companies the better--had so much purchase. [1] https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/807441493305588896/pdf/Environmental-management-in-centrally-planned-non-market-economies-of-Eastern-Europe.pdf https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/8074414933055888... [2] https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48717/1/MPRA_paper_48717.pdf https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/48717/1/MPRA_paper_48717.pdf

wpietri 5y ago
What you're doing here is creating a false dichotomy. Eastern Europe is (or at least was) worse because the problem -- elites extracting wealth regardless of consequences to others -- was worse there. But it's not like self-interested elites capturing both economic and regulatory problems isn't a problem here. Indeed, in now might be worse here. The two choices available aren't eco-collapse in the 1980s American greed-is-good capitalism style or the 1980s Eastern Europe totalitarian style. There are more things, Horatio. But if you spend all your time cherry-picking citations to soothe your fundamentalist capitalism feelings, you're not going to see them.