5 ms·

Evil lobbyists accidentally creating a cleaner world is something I can live with.

by conk 3y ago

ggm 3y ago
If the outcome is demonstrably beneficial yes. But there's greenwashing, and huge amounts of it. So.. if Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) proposals get significant funding, thats a giant black hole of fugitive methane gas coming back to haunt us: It doesn't work except to push MORE extraction from tired wells. (ie, fracking)
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  I don’t see any scenario where this is worse than the status quo in the narrative put forth by grandparent comment. Is the implication here that the end result of the efforts mentioned is somehow more greenhouse gas emissions? If so, I would love to hear more of the rationale and statistics behind it. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the decent (not even good, but way better than the shit world we live in now)
  - andromeduck 3y ago
    Germany.
  - prepend 3y ago
    The scenario where it is worse is that it results in less overall improvement because now we are paying for show projects brought on by lobbyists rather than valid investment in useful projects. If we don’t have evidence based evaluation and selection and rather lobbyist based selection then we will not make sound investments and this can harm the environment. Ie spending $100B on bullshit rather than effective clean energy or whatnot. I was working on an island in Uganda and we drove past a solar energy array. Me and the other foreigners were like “oh cool, that’s really nice” and the local collaborators we were with explained that it was the result of $100M in foreign funding and would have cost about $500k if it used local firms. And that it displaced a local firm that was trying to do solar stuff. Instead they flew in people from outside the country and continent even to install and perform routine maintenance. The local collaborator said it produces the electricity of a small diesel generator. This is just an anecdote and I was never able to check the numbers, but it’s an example of how we can do harm by trying to do good. Bullshit projects and funding can harm good projects. So please let horrible be the enemy of minimally effective. And don’t pretend that horrible is good and minimally effective is perfect.
- rvense 3y ago
  I'm seeing quite a few startups who seem to focus on helping people document and discover their environmental footprint more so than changing it, often with a focus on compliance. This is obviously great if it does lead to real initiatives and changes in the companies and the markets they act in, but there is a hint of bureaucratic busywork to it. A focus on papers over improvements.
quickthrower2 3y ago
Let's pay down the climate tech debt, before the lobbying tech debt.
up2isomorphism 3y ago
Believing evil lobbyists can possibly “accidentally” create a cleaner world, or anything useful, shows how screwed up our educational system is.
- flangola7 3y ago
  I don't understand what your comment about the education system means. Do you mean people won't know about how to squelch carbon?
  - adave 3y ago
    Means people are dumb to think, lobbyists are bad but dumb that they will let $800B to actually amount to something useful. Being the pleb they are probably should have figured out how its PR and meant to exactly bring up that kind of thinking of them being dumb so normal folks stay quiet.
hnlmorg 3y ago
Creating a cleaner world is more expensive than pretending to clean the world by using loopholes such as “offsetting” carbon (which doesn’t actually mean anything in practical terms). My point is this: if a business is going to invest substantial sums on what is effectively legalised bribery, then you can bet their motives are not for the betterment of humanity. This “capitalism at all costs” approach is what got us into our current state. What we really need is governments to step up and impose sensible regulations without having businesses whispering in their ear. Which I know is an unpopular opinion to voice among the libertarians on here but we’re all entitled to our own opinion.
- dr_dshiv 3y ago
  “rational self-interested thinking is what got us into this mess” therefore the solution is “you guys should all elect good politicians and be motivated by my altruism” Honestly, I wouldn’t trust that solution further than I can throw it. I absolutely want effective climate solutions people can pursue out of greed. Then I can believe in them! Not because I like greed but because I trust it. Do you see what I mean?
  - hnlmorg 3y ago
    We’ve had more than a hundred years of industry and it has been demonstrated time and time again that greed doesn’t fuel positive change when it comes to matters of the environment. Greed only leads to greenwashing (on phone so no citation but you can look the term up - ostensibly it’s where companies run PR campaigns to promote greenness while not actually doing much, if anything, to improve the situation). Examples of this are carbon offsetting instead of reducing the carbon they use, recycling campaigns instead of actually using less environmentally harmful packaging. The “right thing” here is always more expensive. This is a trend we’ve already seen for decades. Why should it suddenly be different now? I’m not saying politicians can be trusted either but at least politicians goals aren’t contradictory to environmental concerns, unlike greed vs environmentally sympathetic products that generally cost more to produce. And here lies the problem: companies can’t be trusted to do the right thing for the environment because it costs more for them to do so. And if there is one thing we should have learned by now it’s that most companies will gladly take shortcuts if it raises their profits and/or share value. Asking readers of HN to trust businesses to do the right thing is like repeatedly approaching a barking dog after getting bitten multiple times thinking “this time I’m positive the dog won’t bite me”. At some point you have to set boundaries otherwise they’ll continue to misbehave knowing they can always get away with it.
devjab 3y ago
It’s not accidentally though, it’s entirely on purpose. I work in climate tech, or sort of, because what I really work for is an investment bank owned by a hedgefund, and the sole product we sell to investors is good returns. You can do that in a lot of ways, however, but our way is to use their investments to build green energy plants, ride them to a profit and then sell them. Which creates a better world, but it’s very much intentionally. The increasing climate awareness, especially among the generation of wealthy 60+ year olds who want to leave their grandchildren a better world is simply a good business case. It’s much easier to sell that group of people a green investment in 2023 than it was in 1993, in fact it’s hard to sell them an investment that is not green. That last part is why you see the corporate world turning eco-friendly. But I think it’s wrong to say that’s it’s accidental, because it comes after five decades of climate science and politics turning the hearts and minds of society, and now that they’ve been successful, and there is a lot of money to be made off green energy, the corporate interest follows. I’m not a fan of the way lobbying impacts our democracies, but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil (at least not in general terms), no, it’s primary function is to influence society in a way that allows businesses to make money. If society wants cheap gas in their cars, or if big sugar/tobacco wants to keep their massive market shares then lobbying does evil, but if the best way to make money is to generate a profitable green energy market, then lobbying will likely do good. At least as far as capitalism is concerned. You can think about that what you will, I would personally prefer if my own government had not sold off much of our energy sector as a citizen, but I both work and invest in the sector so it also benefits me immensely as an individual. That being said. By 2030 we’ll have build more than ten thousand solar plants of different sizes, and while we couldn’t have done that without climate science and climate NGOs (and corporate lobbyists) creating a political climate to drive green energy forward, climate science and climate NGOs couldn’t have build those plants without private money. So while it’s fine to have ideals, it’s the realism and the compromises that actually change the world.
- prepend 3y ago
  > lobbying…but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil Its primary function is to maximize returns. That’s not necessarily evil, but amoral. Evil in the sense you’re using it is not real, but if it is, then pushing for a local advantage by externalizing costs onto others seems pretty bad to me. My issue is that lobbying is inefficient and bad overall as it increases the costs spread across the system and focuses the benefits in a specific area. Usually to a net negative. For example, spend $1M in lobbying to earn $2M in benefits at a cost of $100M to the system (see US agricultural subsidies on sugar, corn, etc that help a very small section of an industry at great expense). Again, not evil in the sense of eating babies or gas chambers or whatnot, but banal and causing harm. There’s not much true evil in the short term and even Nazis (the most evil I can think of) would be perceived very differently had they won (see the opinion on Ghengis Khan).
refurb 3y ago
Whoa, whoa, whoa there. Who said anything about a cleaner world? To get the money they only have to promise a cleaner world. Or do something that the government thinks will result in a cleaner world.
- diordiderot 3y ago
  Clean coal baby!
  - refurb 3y ago
    Or the guy who was selling carbon credits by grinding up old cars and dumping them in the ocean (theoretically would cause algae blooms that trap CO2 then sink). "So you're telling me that instead of selling my cars for scrap, I can grind them up, dump them in the ocean and you'll give me way more money?"
    - dr_dshiv 3y ago
      I liked that solution much better than the response: “all scientific study on the merits of this approach shall henceforth be banned”
ars 3y ago
Most environmentalists are incapable of actually identifying things that would cause a cleaner world. For example they actually think recycling plastic is better than incinerating it (it's not - incineration uses less energy in total because you need to pump less oil from the ground and produces less pollution because you don't need to work so hard to clean and separate the plastic).
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  You should go and correct Wikipedia, because they have lots of cites saying that incineration with energy capture is lower on the waste hierarchy than recycling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy
adave 3y ago
You think they will do that, just another way to get money for them.
prepend 3y ago
Do you think they are interested in creating a cleaner world? Or just bill rates and collecting fees? It’s not just an opportunity cost of what we could do with $100 investment in climate change remediation vs $50 investment and $50 lobbyist. I think it’s that the $50 lobbyist don’t really result in $50 investment in climate change, but $50 investment in things that lead to more lobbying.

Evil lobbyists accidentally creating a cleaner world is something I can live with.

by conk 3y ago

Evil lobbyists accidentally creating a cleaner world is something I can live with.

ggm 3y ago

If the outcome is demonstrably beneficial yes. But there's greenwashing, and huge amounts of it. So.. if Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) proposals get significant funding, thats a giant black hole of fugitive methane gas coming back to haunt us: It doesn't work except to push MORE extraction from tired wells. (ie, fracking)

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
I don’t see any scenario where this is worse than the status quo in the narrative put forth by grandparent comment. Is the implication here that the end result of the efforts mentioned is somehow more greenhouse gas emissions? If so, I would love to hear more of the rationale and statistics behind it. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the decent (not even good, but way better than the shit world we live in now)
- andromeduck 3y ago
  Germany.
- prepend 3y ago
  The scenario where it is worse is that it results in less overall improvement because now we are paying for show projects brought on by lobbyists rather than valid investment in useful projects. If we don’t have evidence based evaluation and selection and rather lobbyist based selection then we will not make sound investments and this can harm the environment. Ie spending $100B on bullshit rather than effective clean energy or whatnot. I was working on an island in Uganda and we drove past a solar energy array. Me and the other foreigners were like “oh cool, that’s really nice” and the local collaborators we were with explained that it was the result of $100M in foreign funding and would have cost about $500k if it used local firms. And that it displaced a local firm that was trying to do solar stuff. Instead they flew in people from outside the country and continent even to install and perform routine maintenance. The local collaborator said it produces the electricity of a small diesel generator. This is just an anecdote and I was never able to check the numbers, but it’s an example of how we can do harm by trying to do good. Bullshit projects and funding can harm good projects. So please let horrible be the enemy of minimally effective. And don’t pretend that horrible is good and minimally effective is perfect.
rvense 3y ago
I'm seeing quite a few startups who seem to focus on helping people document and discover their environmental footprint more so than changing it, often with a focus on compliance. This is obviously great if it does lead to real initiatives and changes in the companies and the markets they act in, but there is a hint of bureaucratic busywork to it. A focus on papers over improvements.

quickthrower2 3y ago

Let's pay down the climate tech debt, before the lobbying tech debt.

up2isomorphism 3y ago

Believing evil lobbyists can possibly “accidentally” create a cleaner world, or anything useful, shows how screwed up our educational system is.

flangola7 3y ago
I don't understand what your comment about the education system means. Do you mean people won't know about how to squelch carbon?
- adave 3y ago
  Means people are dumb to think, lobbyists are bad but dumb that they will let $800B to actually amount to something useful. Being the pleb they are probably should have figured out how its PR and meant to exactly bring up that kind of thinking of them being dumb so normal folks stay quiet.

hnlmorg 3y ago

Creating a cleaner world is more expensive than pretending to clean the world by using loopholes such as “offsetting” carbon (which doesn’t actually mean anything in practical terms). My point is this: if a business is going to invest substantial sums on what is effectively legalised bribery, then you can bet their motives are not for the betterment of humanity. This “capitalism at all costs” approach is what got us into our current state. What we really need is governments to step up and impose sensible regulations without having businesses whispering in their ear. Which I know is an unpopular opinion to voice among the libertarians on here but we’re all entitled to our own opinion.

dr_dshiv 3y ago
“rational self-interested thinking is what got us into this mess” therefore the solution is “you guys should all elect good politicians and be motivated by my altruism” Honestly, I wouldn’t trust that solution further than I can throw it. I absolutely want effective climate solutions people can pursue out of greed. Then I can believe in them! Not because I like greed but because I trust it. Do you see what I mean?
- hnlmorg 3y ago
  We’ve had more than a hundred years of industry and it has been demonstrated time and time again that greed doesn’t fuel positive change when it comes to matters of the environment. Greed only leads to greenwashing (on phone so no citation but you can look the term up - ostensibly it’s where companies run PR campaigns to promote greenness while not actually doing much, if anything, to improve the situation). Examples of this are carbon offsetting instead of reducing the carbon they use, recycling campaigns instead of actually using less environmentally harmful packaging. The “right thing” here is always more expensive. This is a trend we’ve already seen for decades. Why should it suddenly be different now? I’m not saying politicians can be trusted either but at least politicians goals aren’t contradictory to environmental concerns, unlike greed vs environmentally sympathetic products that generally cost more to produce. And here lies the problem: companies can’t be trusted to do the right thing for the environment because it costs more for them to do so. And if there is one thing we should have learned by now it’s that most companies will gladly take shortcuts if it raises their profits and/or share value. Asking readers of HN to trust businesses to do the right thing is like repeatedly approaching a barking dog after getting bitten multiple times thinking “this time I’m positive the dog won’t bite me”. At some point you have to set boundaries otherwise they’ll continue to misbehave knowing they can always get away with it.

devjab 3y ago

It’s not accidentally though, it’s entirely on purpose. I work in climate tech, or sort of, because what I really work for is an investment bank owned by a hedgefund, and the sole product we sell to investors is good returns. You can do that in a lot of ways, however, but our way is to use their investments to build green energy plants, ride them to a profit and then sell them. Which creates a better world, but it’s very much intentionally. The increasing climate awareness, especially among the generation of wealthy 60+ year olds who want to leave their grandchildren a better world is simply a good business case. It’s much easier to sell that group of people a green investment in 2023 than it was in 1993, in fact it’s hard to sell them an investment that is not green. That last part is why you see the corporate world turning eco-friendly. But I think it’s wrong to say that’s it’s accidental, because it comes after five decades of climate science and politics turning the hearts and minds of society, and now that they’ve been successful, and there is a lot of money to be made off green energy, the corporate interest follows. I’m not a fan of the way lobbying impacts our democracies, but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil (at least not in general terms), no, it’s primary function is to influence society in a way that allows businesses to make money. If society wants cheap gas in their cars, or if big sugar/tobacco wants to keep their massive market shares then lobbying does evil, but if the best way to make money is to generate a profitable green energy market, then lobbying will likely do good. At least as far as capitalism is concerned. You can think about that what you will, I would personally prefer if my own government had not sold off much of our energy sector as a citizen, but I both work and invest in the sector so it also benefits me immensely as an individual. That being said. By 2030 we’ll have build more than ten thousand solar plants of different sizes, and while we couldn’t have done that without climate science and climate NGOs (and corporate lobbyists) creating a political climate to drive green energy forward, climate science and climate NGOs couldn’t have build those plants without private money. So while it’s fine to have ideals, it’s the realism and the compromises that actually change the world.

prepend 3y ago
> lobbying…but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil Its primary function is to maximize returns. That’s not necessarily evil, but amoral. Evil in the sense you’re using it is not real, but if it is, then pushing for a local advantage by externalizing costs onto others seems pretty bad to me. My issue is that lobbying is inefficient and bad overall as it increases the costs spread across the system and focuses the benefits in a specific area. Usually to a net negative. For example, spend $1M in lobbying to earn $2M in benefits at a cost of $100M to the system (see US agricultural subsidies on sugar, corn, etc that help a very small section of an industry at great expense). Again, not evil in the sense of eating babies or gas chambers or whatnot, but banal and causing harm. There’s not much true evil in the short term and even Nazis (the most evil I can think of) would be perceived very differently had they won (see the opinion on Ghengis Khan).

refurb 3y ago

Whoa, whoa, whoa there. Who said anything about a cleaner world? To get the money they only have to promise a cleaner world. Or do something that the government thinks will result in a cleaner world.

diordiderot 3y ago
Clean coal baby!
- refurb 3y ago
  Or the guy who was selling carbon credits by grinding up old cars and dumping them in the ocean (theoretically would cause algae blooms that trap CO2 then sink). "So you're telling me that instead of selling my cars for scrap, I can grind them up, dump them in the ocean and you'll give me way more money?"
  - dr_dshiv 3y ago
    I liked that solution much better than the response: “all scientific study on the merits of this approach shall henceforth be banned”

ars 3y ago

Most environmentalists are incapable of actually identifying things that would cause a cleaner world. For example they actually think recycling plastic is better than incinerating it (it's not - incineration uses less energy in total because you need to pump less oil from the ground and produces less pollution because you don't need to work so hard to clean and separate the plastic).

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
You should go and correct Wikipedia, because they have lots of cites saying that incineration with energy capture is lower on the waste hierarchy than recycling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waste_hierarchy

adave 3y ago

You think they will do that, just another way to get money for them.

prepend 3y ago

Do you think they are interested in creating a cleaner world? Or just bill rates and collecting fees? It’s not just an opportunity cost of what we could do with $100 investment in climate change remediation vs $50 investment and $50 lobbyist. I think it’s that the $50 lobbyist don’t really result in $50 investment in climate change, but $50 investment in things that lead to more lobbying.