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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 hedg
by devjab 4y 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 4y 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).
- devjab 4y agoDo you have any sources to back up your claims? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of any propaganda where an 1 million investment would cause 100 million worth of unintended harm.