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I omitted to enumerate corporations above. Plenty of those have the resources for it, Exxon and BP included - the estimates I've seen are in the order of tens o

I omitted to enumerate corporations above. Plenty of those have the resources for it, Exxon and BP included - the estimates I've seen are in the order of tens of millions of dollars per year, with capex amortization included. It's not as if oil companies haven't known about the externalities for a long time, probably longer than a lot of participants in this discussion have been alive. Do you think they're more likely to declare their entire business model obsolete and close shop, or to investigate the option?

matthewdgreen 3y ago
Resource extraction companies have huge investments in existing and future wells. They're not dumb -- they know that continued extraction of fossil fuels at today's rate isn't sustainable -- but they also know that their current stock price is propped up by the perception that it is. The game here is to extend the period of time during which those resources can be plausibly exploited. Every additional year translates into trillions of dollars. Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. These companies aren't good or evil, they're just amoral: and they'll do everything they can to prevent and delay that consensus from forming, even if (1) sulfur injection wouldn't directly hurt their business, and (2) opposing action kills us all.
- throwanem 3y ago
  > Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. Would it? The entire global economy runs on those resources. I think you're overestimating how willing governments and publics worldwide would be to accept "spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" over "change literally everything about how everyone lives everywhere," especially when the second one has a cost in lives much more easily measured (and propagandized!) than the first.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    We’re already in the process of making that change. Wind and solar and storage are going to wipe out most fossil fuel usage within a few decades, and it’s pretty obvious that fossil fuel interests realize this — you can see it in the way firms are shifting investments from new resource development into profit-maximization. This will happen even if governments don’t put their thumb on the scale, but they certainly are doing that: the political pressure to transition is only going to get more intense as we see more severe weather events. The question isn’t “can we keep using (substantial amounts of) fossil fuels long term”, that’s decided. What’s up for debate is how quickly we’ll reach the tipping point where it becomes obvious to investors that existing reserves are stranded. This will be a long time before we stop using lots of fossil fuels! The battle that (smart) fossil fuel companies are fighting is to push that date a decade or two into the future. I hope and wish for a future where there is a reasonable accommodation and fossil fuel interests support action on global warming, even if it’s only SRM. In the real world I think these companies are fighting a vicious rear-guard action to get every scrap of profit out of the industry before it folds up and dies. It’s going to be messy and destructive and the strategy right now is to promote denial and sabotage anything that could result in further political consensus for rapid decarbonization.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

Resource extraction companies have huge investments in existing and future wells. They're not dumb -- they know that continued extraction of fossil fuels at today's rate isn't sustainable -- but they also know that their current stock price is propped up by the perception that it is. The game here is to extend the period of time during which those resources can be plausibly exploited. Every additional year translates into trillions of dollars. Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. These companies aren't good or evil, they're just amoral: and they'll do everything they can to prevent and delay that consensus from forming, even if (1) sulfur injection wouldn't directly hurt their business, and (2) opposing action kills us all.

throwanem 3y ago
> Allowing the development of a popular consensus that global warming is "bad enough to spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" would be absolutely catastrophic, since it would also reduce the window they have to exploit those resources. Would it? The entire global economy runs on those resources. I think you're overestimating how willing governments and publics worldwide would be to accept "spray stuff into the sky to cool the earth down" over "change literally everything about how everyone lives everywhere," especially when the second one has a cost in lives much more easily measured (and propagandized!) than the first.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  We’re already in the process of making that change. Wind and solar and storage are going to wipe out most fossil fuel usage within a few decades, and it’s pretty obvious that fossil fuel interests realize this — you can see it in the way firms are shifting investments from new resource development into profit-maximization. This will happen even if governments don’t put their thumb on the scale, but they certainly are doing that: the political pressure to transition is only going to get more intense as we see more severe weather events. The question isn’t “can we keep using (substantial amounts of) fossil fuels long term”, that’s decided. What’s up for debate is how quickly we’ll reach the tipping point where it becomes obvious to investors that existing reserves are stranded. This will be a long time before we stop using lots of fossil fuels! The battle that (smart) fossil fuel companies are fighting is to push that date a decade or two into the future. I hope and wish for a future where there is a reasonable accommodation and fossil fuel interests support action on global warming, even if it’s only SRM. In the real world I think these companies are fighting a vicious rear-guard action to get every scrap of profit out of the industry before it folds up and dies. It’s going to be messy and destructive and the strategy right now is to promote denial and sabotage anything that could result in further political consensus for rapid decarbonization.