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> How much do you trust giant Energy megacorp to do the right thing Just as much as I trust any giant megacorp to do the right thing?! Which is to say slightly
by nickpp 3y ago
> How much do you trust giant Energy megacorp to do the right thing
Just as much as I trust any giant megacorp to do the right thing?! Which is to say slightly more than my government and slightly less than my neighbors.
Everything around me that I use and enjoy (my phone, my car, my laptop, my clothes, my food, movies, music, internet etc) is created&delivered by a megacorp or other. I hope someday we will each produce our own energy but so far solar mostly works on sunny days and home nuclear is probably illegal - regulated to death.
- danielbln 3y agoThat's why I wrote "Energy" megacorp. Apple dropping the ball on the iPhone has slightly different externalities than BP's corner cutting causing a blowout on Deep Water Horizon and creating havoc an entire ecosystems, or Met Ed causing a partial meltdown in Pennsylvania with all the fun stuff that came with that. The reason why you don't die of lead poisoning while enjoying your megacorp food is regulation by the way.
- nickpp 3y agoSo what exactly are you proposing?! Who is supposed to generate all that energy we are using instead of "megacorps" and how?
- danielbln 3y agoWe made our bed and need to sleep in it, but we should be careful what sort of technology we allow them to handle, especially if/when we push for more deregulation. Corps have a singular goal, making money, everything else is secondary unless imposed externally. Exxon can't mess up wind or solar power in a way that it pollutes entire landscapes, but they can do (and have done) so with fossil fuel production, and heavy heavy regulation is presumably one of the few reasons why we haven't seen more issues with nuclear fission on that front. If not for that, some Exxon exec will one day get the bright idea on how to cut a lot of corners to boost quarterly profits, and a windmill toppling over has different externalities than a meltdown, or even just inadvertent radioactive gas/particle release. I'm not saying the likes of Shell, BP and Exxon can't handle it (they certainly can) but it needs to happen in an environment that prioritizes safety above all else, because in the case of fission the fallout is quite severe if they/we mess up (compared to other energy sources).
- nickpp 3y agoSo... your proposal is to not change anything because something could go wrong? Keep things as they are because corporations wanna make money (who doesn't)? This mentality is exactly how we sleep-walked into the current Climate Change predicament. "We" did not make this particular bed. Nuclear fear mongering (well financed by oil producing enemy states) and anti-capitalist mentality stopped the switch to nuclear power that would've prevented our carbon problem from happening in the first place. And now we are facing a Civilization Ending Event. We can't get out of this hole with the same way of thinking that got us in. No thanks. I vote progress. Deregulate. Risk. Try. Test. Build.