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Is that the most hellacious whataboutism ever or just depraved statistical mendacity? Hey, let's run through a thought exercise. Is Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon-

Is that the most hellacious whataboutism ever or just depraved statistical mendacity? Hey, let's run through a thought exercise. Is Darren Woods, CEO of Exxon-Mobil for 7 years, more directly responsible for greenhouse gas emissions, prevalent misinformation campaigns, suppression of alternative energy and EVs, active lobbying against carbon taxes, with a private/company jet, I'm assuming at least a 8,000 sq ft house and likely numerous other properties, etc. or... is an Inuit or African living a subsistence existence not far from what humans have lived for several thousand years without catastrophic warming? Of COURSE it is everyone's problem, because the first world countries who profligately burned fossil fuels for 150 years while gaining global supremacy have visited upon the world environmental misery and perhaps total biosphere collapse. But who's responsible? Yeah, a lot easier to figure out if the responsible parties weren't the ones in power. Now WHY IS THAT? Oh right, because we've all internalized the limited liability corporation, as if it is some physical law or biological reality. It's not, it's a social construct that happened to work well for externalizing costs on the rest of humanity, with the assumption that there's no blowback. You marry the limited liability corporation with the "science" that is economics and the total certainty they have applying sociopathic game theory to complex nonlinear reality that conveniently can't tell me: "how much should we tax carbon?" much less any of a host of other questions that might guide policy in the coming age of scarcity and environmental degradation. If economics can't measure it, it doesn't exist in their science. Which suits the limited liability corporation, which can pollute and destroy with near-complete writ large.

simonh 3y ago
Exxon are not making credible, persistent efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so screw them. However articles like this propagate the illusion that it's somebody else's fault and therefore not our problem. It's our problem. We are consuming all of this oil and gas through the services and products we use. We still want those services and products but we're not accepting the responsibility for it.
- Aerroon 3y ago
  >We are consuming all of this oil and gas through the services and products we use. With cars it's even more direct than that. We are the ones that are actually burning that oil. Exxon might sell us the oil, but we're setting it on fire, literally.
novariation 3y ago
The reason the Guardian now uses "linked to" instead of "responsible for" (which Oxfam used half a decade ago and got ridiculed for years for) is precisely because of what you call "whataboutism" (which it really isn't). Your reply uses a strawman, the argument has never been that a company has less influence than a single customer. The argument is that a company is very often (unless it is a complete monopoly over a non-substitutable good) not as powerful as the consumers (as a group). Companies can do some of the work, but the only reason they're not going bankrupt is because millions of consumers tell them everyday "we need your products, we don't want to change our behavior".

simonh 3y ago

Exxon are not making credible, persistent efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so screw them. However articles like this propagate the illusion that it's somebody else's fault and therefore not our problem. It's our problem. We are consuming all of this oil and gas through the services and products we use. We still want those services and products but we're not accepting the responsibility for it.

Aerroon 3y ago
>We are consuming all of this oil and gas through the services and products we use. With cars it's even more direct than that. We are the ones that are actually burning that oil. Exxon might sell us the oil, but we're setting it on fire, literally.

novariation 3y ago

The reason the Guardian now uses "linked to" instead of "responsible for" (which Oxfam used half a decade ago and got ridiculed for years for) is precisely because of what you call "whataboutism" (which it really isn't). Your reply uses a strawman, the argument has never been that a company has less influence than a single customer. The argument is that a company is very often (unless it is a complete monopoly over a non-substitutable good) not as powerful as the consumers (as a group). Companies can do some of the work, but the only reason they're not going bankrupt is because millions of consumers tell them everyday "we need your products, we don't want to change our behavior".