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Literally no one in the oil industry cares enough to quit the oil industry. Also: environmentalism will always be politics. Our opponents don’t have “different
by bbor 2y ago
Literally no one in the oil industry cares enough to quit the oil industry. Also: environmentalism will always be politics. Our opponents don’t have “different priorities” as in philosophical differences, it’s a matter of profit and control and freedom to litter when they feel the urge.
- exabrial 2y agoPart of the problem with the oil industry is we use the hydrocarbons in the most wasteful/dumbest of ways: Burn them. I'd be happy to never see hydrocarbons burnt again in my lifetime. However, they still have important applications: everything from textiles to medicine to structural components to the insulation your the ethernet cables that transferred the data you're reading this post on. My opinion is we need to get rid of the "burning things" industry but keep the capacity to extract this useful natural resource in a way that doesn't add C02 to the air, doesn't harm the environment, and benefits us and leaves something for future generations.
- bbor 2y agoWow GREAT point actually, I am a huge fan of plastic. It’s impossibly tough to know how to support plastic without supporting the combustion industry (Miltary-Incendiary Complex?), but that’s life for everyone who can afford to choose their job. I have a friend who’s struggling with how to use his ChemE degree to help create lifesaving medicine without giving his career to some of our most cartoonishly evil corporations, and I personally struggled with the desire to work on LEO satellites without supporting the US military directly. A good lesson to never deal in absolutes :). I’ll say this instead: most people working in oil and gas aren’t doing it because they considered the facts and decided that it was a good future. They’re just there because it pays well and they figure the earth will prolly be fine. I mean, it’s huge! And I’ve never seen a climate apocalypse…
- kmbfjr 2y agoMaking plastics still generates carbon dioxide, and their existence has their own problems. Some of them, are apparently quite bad such as microplastics.
- exabrial 2y agoYeah, disposable plastics for instance. Thats why I qualified it, because burning them is dumb, throwing them away is just as dumb, especially when people don't throw them away properly and they end up in the ocean.
- surfingdino 2y agoA lot of that burning is not even being used to make stuff or heat our homes. Flaring is the most wasteful solution to a problem of storage.