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>"We live in a fossil fuel based economy; the profit from fossil fuel based companies should be reinvested towards transitioning away from fossil fuels. This ju

by nickff 4y ago

>"We live in a fossil fuel based economy; the profit from fossil fuel based companies should be reinvested towards transitioning away from fossil fuels. This just makes sense." These sentences seem like a non-sequitur to me, I'm not sure you're wrong, but why? Is it because transitioning away from fossil fuels is your top priority? If so, why?

andrewxdiamond 4y ago
A large issue with fossil fuels is the externalities that companies can ignore when using them. OP means that companies who are benefiting from these externalities should instead pay the cost
maxbond 4y ago
Not GP but what makes sense about it for me is that it's a negative feedback loop that stabilizes in a desirable place. If we took the profits generated from a harmful activity, and used invested them into alternatives, than there's a self-correcting nature to it that's appealing. As those alternatives are realized, the pot of money becomes smaller and smaller, and vanishes altogether when the goal has been achieved. I don't know how well this would work in practice, but it seems like something people could tinker with and possibly get to work.
- chrsig 4y ago
  honestly, this is why it's been a bit bizarre to me that oil companies haven't heavily invested in renewable energy. the move away from oil is inevitable - they'd probably stand to make more money by being at the forefront of the change than they will by dragging it out.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    I have noticed this as well. My conclusion is that they value power more than they value money. Sustainable energy is necessarily not a one-size-fits-all solution, but adapted to the local needs & opportunities of each community. It's necessarily more complex and less well suited to economies of scale; it doesn't favor a handful of gigantic multinationals, and probably would look more like hundreds of large regional corporations. I think they're probably waiting for some kind of silver bullet that lets us transition to a sustainable source of very similar chemicals, derived from biomass or directly from the air, without fundamentally changing society or changing how our power structures function, and that they think they're gunnuh do it in just the nick of time. Sort of a greater fool theory of climate brinksmanship, passing on each solution in the hope you'll find the perfect one before time runs out, but you're in a research lab where the clocks have no hands. I fear that it may be worse, and that they may think they can actually just push through ecosystem collapse with technological solutions, and just never transition off of fossil fuels.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
tshaddox 4y ago
I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that statement completely, but the sentiment makes sense when you consider that some portion of the profits from fossil fuel consumption is associated with costs to unrelated third parties, i.e. externalities.

by nickff 4y ago

andrewxdiamond 4y ago

A large issue with fossil fuels is the externalities that companies can ignore when using them. OP means that companies who are benefiting from these externalities should instead pay the cost

maxbond 4y ago

Not GP but what makes sense about it for me is that it's a negative feedback loop that stabilizes in a desirable place. If we took the profits generated from a harmful activity, and used invested them into alternatives, than there's a self-correcting nature to it that's appealing. As those alternatives are realized, the pot of money becomes smaller and smaller, and vanishes altogether when the goal has been achieved. I don't know how well this would work in practice, but it seems like something people could tinker with and possibly get to work.

chrsig 4y ago
honestly, this is why it's been a bit bizarre to me that oil companies haven't heavily invested in renewable energy. the move away from oil is inevitable - they'd probably stand to make more money by being at the forefront of the change than they will by dragging it out.
- maxbond 4y ago
  I have noticed this as well. My conclusion is that they value power more than they value money. Sustainable energy is necessarily not a one-size-fits-all solution, but adapted to the local needs & opportunities of each community. It's necessarily more complex and less well suited to economies of scale; it doesn't favor a handful of gigantic multinationals, and probably would look more like hundreds of large regional corporations. I think they're probably waiting for some kind of silver bullet that lets us transition to a sustainable source of very similar chemicals, derived from biomass or directly from the air, without fundamentally changing society or changing how our power structures function, and that they think they're gunnuh do it in just the nick of time. Sort of a greater fool theory of climate brinksmanship, passing on each solution in the hope you'll find the perfect one before time runs out, but you're in a research lab where the clocks have no hands. I fear that it may be worse, and that they may think they can actually just push through ecosystem collapse with technological solutions, and just never transition off of fossil fuels.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

tshaddox 4y ago

I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with that statement completely, but the sentiment makes sense when you consider that some portion of the profits from fossil fuel consumption is associated with costs to unrelated third parties, i.e. externalities.