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Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. You think 20 years is

by wredue 3y ago

Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming. You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.

MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago
Even if 100% of the global population was on board with getting rid of oil it would take more than 2 decades to lower demand by even 30% without causing massive decline in living standards.
throwaway103xx 3y ago
I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.
- WJW 3y ago
  I think GP meant that in a hundred years WE will all be dead, not that our descendants won't be there.
tw04 3y ago
I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant. I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  The world isn’t just the USA and Europe, and their proclamations aren’t the law of the world nor are they the world police. Nor do the majority of the Earth’s emissions come from developed countries. Go ask some people in developing countries if they think they should sacrifice economic growth for climate change. The answer is going to be overwhelmingly no. The developing world also has the majority of the world’s population, so the global consensus actually belongs to them, not us.
  - tw04 3y ago
    I think what you'll find is if all the developed nations believe their very existence is at stake due to actions of the un-developed, it will result in war/the end of the threat very quickly. Case in point: the fabricated idea that Iraq had chemical weapons that could hit western Europe. There wasn't a lot of debate on whether or not the western world was willing to eliminate the threat if it existed. (note, I'm not trying to turn this into a discussion of the fabricated information, simply using it as an example that war is always on the table if a country feels its existence is in danger).
atoav 3y ago
> You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? 20 years minus the latency inherent to the system. If I recall correctly the latency from "stopping to emit CO2" to "starting to see effects" is estimated to be 13 years.
robnado 3y ago
The earth is getting warmer. To try to guilt people about it achieves nothing. The only action humanity can take at this point is to predict the effects of global warming and build infrastructure to slow it down, mitigate it or plan for the mass migrations.
- IKantRead 3y ago
  I do believe that included in "only action" is: keep fossil fuels in the ground. The idea that we can only mitigate is insane. Yes we've already signed up for a lot of pain as a civilization, but as long we keep burning fossil fuels we are looking at an increasingly worse future. It's not like a smoker who has gotten lung cancer, where the best we can do is try to ease the pain, and more smoking won't really matter. The biggest first step in preventing the worse case is to be able to point to an established oil field and say "that will never be extracted, and will remain in the earth for at least a 1000 years." Every ton of carbon we can keep in the ground that way, the better of our future, even if that future is already slated to be bad.
  - robnado 3y ago
    We can slow down the use of fossil fuels, but as long as we are 8 billion people on the planet and we find no better way to produce ammonia, steel, concrete and plastics, we will keep needing huge amounts of fossil fuels. Personally, I feel that the solution is to gradually raise the tax rate on fossil fuels in order to disincentives their use and incentivize the production of alternatives. We've done this for cigarettes and it has worked. However, you will probably have the vaping equivalent of petrol that will come out and gain more marketshare. The second solution is to make energy so cheap and abundant that petrol becomes unattractive. To massively and suddenly restrict petrol use is a great way to start riots and ensure that your government will either be overthrown or has to descend into tyranny.
    - sgu999 3y ago
      > However, you will probably have the vaping equivalent of petrol that will come out and gain more marketshare. I believe that's electric SUVs and solar roofs on single family homes :D
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. Suppose for a moment that I completely agree with you on all points of substance. Even then, I would have to tell you that corporations are designed (not metaphorically, but literally designed) to deflect and shield liability. There never is anyone to be held accountable, because everyone who acts is an employee, and the ownership is divided among millions of people, through many layers of misdirection. None of whom make any decisions. Unless you were careful, and if you have a 401K, you yourself may in fact be part owner. Or owner of an owner of an owner of an owner. Should you be held accountable? You can't arrest a corporation. You can't put it in a holding cell overnight. You can't sentence it to prison for 10 years. You definitely can't give it the death penalty and execute it. And it's no accident this is the case. The major (and perhaps only real) difference between a corporation and simpler business customs is that the corporation is this magical wall between the owner and the business that can't usually be breached. If the business goes bankrupt, no one can seize the businessman's home as collateral. That's what a corporation is for. You live in a society that, however upset it might be over climate change, isn't upset at all over this "design". They like it. They revel in it. And it's not going away. > If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead. But that's already true from a pragmatic standpoint. Even the CEO now, he was hired in a few years ago, He's just some schlub taking the jobs he knows how to do, without any real power to change what you want. If he tried, they'd fire him and get another. The people who set the ball rolling made sure of that. And even they aren't guilty in any real way, either, unless you want to pretend that someone in the early 1900s should have known better.
- sobkas 3y ago
  Then civil forfeiture every dollar and every thing they own. For some reason police can do it to the poor, why not do the same for corporations and people making decisions there? Maybe executives are "not guilty", but their possessions doesn't have same rights as they do. So take it all away.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Price is set at the margin. Supply 100, demand 101 price goes up. Supply 100 demand 99 price goes down until supply and demand equalize. 75% of new electricity production is renewable. 10% of new car sales are EV's. A large fraction of new home heating installations are heat pumps. The three largest hydrocarbon demands are transitioning. That's going to have a meaningful effect on demand. It'll take decades to get anywhere close to zeroing demand, but it's going to have an effect on the margin quite quickly. Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? OPEC is trying but they're only a small and shrinking fraction of production and the gains from defection are so large...
- logifail 3y ago
  > Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? If you look at the Brent Crude (oil) price chart and zoom out so you can see the last 10 years it's definitely not showing any sign of a long-term downward trend. https://www.google.com/search?q=brent+crude+oil+price https://www.google.com/search?q=brent+crude+oil+price
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Yes, price goes up when demand goes up. What's going to happen when demand starts going down?
corethree 3y ago
Is it still 40 percent? Seems much more evident now what's happening. Maybe 40 percent is still pro big oil but they don't deny the causal link. I'm pro big oil because I still drive a gas car. In that sense if you use big oil products you are a supporter. I would put supporters at over waaaaay over 40 percent. 95% is a better estimate.
- wredue 3y ago
  That’s a weird way to put it. Driving a gas car doesn’t make you pro-big oil. Most of us are beholden to market pressures and have no realistic option. Everyone still has to make their living, and they have to do it inside the elites construction of the market.
  - corethree 3y ago
    The elites didn't construct the market. You're just looking for someone to blame. The market came as an emergent property. The elites are at fault as much as you and I are at fault. The story of oil is a human crisis caused by humanity itself. We like to blame specific groups but that's just not reality.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      If this was true, then the for-profit fossil fuel industry wouldn't spend so much money on PR and political lobbying. They'd return that money to their shareholders instead.
      - corethree 3y ago
        You and I enable that behavior by buying oil.

by wredue 3y ago

MaxHoppersGhost 3y ago

Even if 100% of the global population was on board with getting rid of oil it would take more than 2 decades to lower demand by even 30% without causing massive decline in living standards.

throwaway103xx 3y ago

I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.

WJW 3y ago
I think GP meant that in a hundred years WE will all be dead, not that our descendants won't be there.

tw04 3y ago

I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant. I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.

oceanplexian 3y ago
The world isn’t just the USA and Europe, and their proclamations aren’t the law of the world nor are they the world police. Nor do the majority of the Earth’s emissions come from developed countries. Go ask some people in developing countries if they think they should sacrifice economic growth for climate change. The answer is going to be overwhelmingly no. The developing world also has the majority of the world’s population, so the global consensus actually belongs to them, not us.
- tw04 3y ago
  I think what you'll find is if all the developed nations believe their very existence is at stake due to actions of the un-developed, it will result in war/the end of the threat very quickly. Case in point: the fabricated idea that Iraq had chemical weapons that could hit western Europe. There wasn't a lot of debate on whether or not the western world was willing to eliminate the threat if it existed. (note, I'm not trying to turn this into a discussion of the fabricated information, simply using it as an example that war is always on the table if a country feels its existence is in danger).

atoav 3y ago

> You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning? 20 years minus the latency inherent to the system. If I recall correctly the latency from "stopping to emit CO2" to "starting to see effects" is estimated to be 13 years.

robnado 3y ago

The earth is getting warmer. To try to guilt people about it achieves nothing. The only action humanity can take at this point is to predict the effects of global warming and build infrastructure to slow it down, mitigate it or plan for the mass migrations.

IKantRead 3y ago
I do believe that included in "only action" is: keep fossil fuels in the ground. The idea that we can only mitigate is insane. Yes we've already signed up for a lot of pain as a civilization, but as long we keep burning fossil fuels we are looking at an increasingly worse future. It's not like a smoker who has gotten lung cancer, where the best we can do is try to ease the pain, and more smoking won't really matter. The biggest first step in preventing the worse case is to be able to point to an established oil field and say "that will never be extracted, and will remain in the earth for at least a 1000 years." Every ton of carbon we can keep in the ground that way, the better of our future, even if that future is already slated to be bad.
- robnado 3y ago
  We can slow down the use of fossil fuels, but as long as we are 8 billion people on the planet and we find no better way to produce ammonia, steel, concrete and plastics, we will keep needing huge amounts of fossil fuels. Personally, I feel that the solution is to gradually raise the tax rate on fossil fuels in order to disincentives their use and incentivize the production of alternatives. We've done this for cigarettes and it has worked. However, you will probably have the vaping equivalent of petrol that will come out and gain more marketshare. The second solution is to make energy so cheap and abundant that petrol becomes unattractive. To massively and suddenly restrict petrol use is a great way to start riots and ensure that your government will either be overthrown or has to descend into tyranny.
  - sgu999 3y ago
    > However, you will probably have the vaping equivalent of petrol that will come out and gain more marketshare. I believe that's electric SUVs and solar roofs on single family homes :D

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. Suppose for a moment that I completely agree with you on all points of substance. Even then, I would have to tell you that corporations are designed (not metaphorically, but literally designed) to deflect and shield liability. There never is anyone to be held accountable, because everyone who acts is an employee, and the ownership is divided among millions of people, through many layers of misdirection. None of whom make any decisions. Unless you were careful, and if you have a 401K, you yourself may in fact be part owner. Or owner of an owner of an owner of an owner. Should you be held accountable? You can't arrest a corporation. You can't put it in a holding cell overnight. You can't sentence it to prison for 10 years. You definitely can't give it the death penalty and execute it. And it's no accident this is the case. The major (and perhaps only real) difference between a corporation and simpler business customs is that the corporation is this magical wall between the owner and the business that can't usually be breached. If the business goes bankrupt, no one can seize the businessman's home as collateral. That's what a corporation is for. You live in a society that, however upset it might be over climate change, isn't upset at all over this "design". They like it. They revel in it. And it's not going away. > If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead. But that's already true from a pragmatic standpoint. Even the CEO now, he was hired in a few years ago, He's just some schlub taking the jobs he knows how to do, without any real power to change what you want. If he tried, they'd fire him and get another. The people who set the ball rolling made sure of that. And even they aren't guilty in any real way, either, unless you want to pretend that someone in the early 1900s should have known better.

sobkas 3y ago
Then civil forfeiture every dollar and every thing they own. For some reason police can do it to the poor, why not do the same for corporations and people making decisions there? Maybe executives are "not guilty", but their possessions doesn't have same rights as they do. So take it all away.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

bryanlarsen 3y ago

Price is set at the margin. Supply 100, demand 101 price goes up. Supply 100 demand 99 price goes down until supply and demand equalize. 75% of new electricity production is renewable. 10% of new car sales are EV's. A large fraction of new home heating installations are heat pumps. The three largest hydrocarbon demands are transitioning. That's going to have a meaningful effect on demand. It'll take decades to get anywhere close to zeroing demand, but it's going to have an effect on the margin quite quickly. Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? OPEC is trying but they're only a small and shrinking fraction of production and the gains from defection are so large...

logifail 3y ago
> Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? If you look at the Brent Crude (oil) price chart and zoom out so you can see the last 10 years it's definitely not showing any sign of a long-term downward trend. https://www.google.com/search?q=brent+crude+oil+price https://www.google.com/search?q=brent+crude+oil+price
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Yes, price goes up when demand goes up. What's going to happen when demand starts going down?

corethree 3y ago

Is it still 40 percent? Seems much more evident now what's happening. Maybe 40 percent is still pro big oil but they don't deny the causal link. I'm pro big oil because I still drive a gas car. In that sense if you use big oil products you are a supporter. I would put supporters at over waaaaay over 40 percent. 95% is a better estimate.

wredue 3y ago
That’s a weird way to put it. Driving a gas car doesn’t make you pro-big oil. Most of us are beholden to market pressures and have no realistic option. Everyone still has to make their living, and they have to do it inside the elites construction of the market.
- corethree 3y ago
  The elites didn't construct the market. You're just looking for someone to blame. The market came as an emergent property. The elites are at fault as much as you and I are at fault. The story of oil is a human crisis caused by humanity itself. We like to blame specific groups but that's just not reality.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    If this was true, then the for-profit fossil fuel industry wouldn't spend so much money on PR and political lobbying. They'd return that money to their shareholders instead.
    - corethree 3y ago
      You and I enable that behavior by buying oil.