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Nevermind the billions of people who (still) drive cars and buy shipped products because there hasn't been a more cost-effective alternative. This entire oil-ba

Nevermind the billions of people who (still) drive cars and buy shipped products because there hasn't been a more cost-effective alternative. This entire oil-based economy situation is simple supply and demand and transitioning to clean energy takes a lot of time. I get that their motive comes from oil companies not disclosing the risks to the environment but this is a bit of a stretch and an obvious political stunt.

keybored 2y ago
Never mind what? Companies like British Petroleum have used marketing to frame climate change as “consumers doing bad things” with their “carbon footprint”. So if that’s what your mind goes to first, that’s no coincidence. It’s all about the money. Money buys media which buys narrative and mindshare.
- cogman10 2y ago
  And these fossil fuel companies aren't just doing this in the US. When you look at what they view as the path forward to keep selling oil to burn, it's all about doing things like setting up floating power plants for developing nations and subsidizing road construction to aid in the sale of ICE vehicles. The problem with these companies is the externalities of their actions are not priced in. For them, it's more a simple game of figuring out how to get the world to burn more oil. This lawsuit may not have merit, but it does point to the need for trying to price in the impact on climate change with oil burning.
- LudwigNagasena 2y ago
  > Companies like British Petroleum have used marketing to frame climate change as “consumers doing bad things” with their “carbon footprint”. So if that’s what your mind goes to first, that’s no coincidence. It's also common sense. Literally nothing stops first-world consumers from not buying stuff that requires emission of greenhouse gases except for their lifestyle preferences. > It’s all about the money. Money buys media which buys narrative and mindshare. Yep, you bought into the idea that you don't have to change your lifestyle because it is all fault of the big oil.
  - keybored 2y ago
    Lies repeated enough become truth which becomes common sense. > Literally nothing stops first-world consumers from not buying stuff that requires emission of greenhouse gases except for their lifestyle preferences. Literally nothing. Uh-huh as if we’re talking about buying a monster truck compared to a Volvo instead of the lifeblood of the whole modern (inefficient) supply chain. > Yep, you bought into the idea that you don't have to change your lifestyle because it is all fault of the big oil. Via what money?
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    You call it a lifestyle preference, I call it staying alive. But that bag of potatoes I just bought wouldn't be in the grocery store without a long chain of greenhouse gas emissions.
bognition 2y ago
> not disclosing the risks to the environment It's more than that, it was the willful misrepresentation of the truth. The oil companies didn't accidentally end up in this situation. They knew back in the 80s the effects that oil consumption would have on the ecosystem and they covered it up and actively pushed lies that prevented any kind of meaningful change.
- ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
  This is true, but my point is there weren't cost-effective alternatives at that time anyway so blaming climate disasters squarely on the shoulders of oil companies and not acknowledging the fact that demand fueled the value of oil doesn't make logical sense, even from an empirical perspective. Now, lawsuits for local disasters and oil spills do make sense.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    It does if you think that alternatives to fossil fuel would have become economical earlier, had the fossil fuel industry not intervened. Another framing: how many wind, solar, hydrothermal, etc. plants did we not build because their economic envelope was artificially dampened by investment and legislative preference for fossil fuels?
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
      I do agree with this. They stifled progress as much as they could but that only slows things down, and because we don't truly know what would have happened, it's not productive to play the blame game and say we'd have a spotless utopia if it weren't for the oil companies. Who knows, not enough people at that time may not have cared or maybe we would have the utopia we all want. It's all guesswork and at this point we need to spend our energy moving forward instead of focusing on the past.
dtjb 2y ago
Seems like this could be one of the mechanisms to encourage that transition. One persons stunt is another's advocacy.
- ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
  True and it does bring some awareness, but this is lazy approach. I love the passion people have in cleaning up the environment but we all know (especially the engineers among us) that building a solution, or contributing to one, is far more effective than complaining about a problem.
andylynch 2y ago
They are arguing that the companies concerned were not, but should be compelled to, price in at least some of the negative externalities of their product. Not doing so of course makes their product's price not reflect its true cost to produce, and distorts that same supply and demand.
- ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
  I completely agree if these negative externalities weren't several degrees of separation. Car companies could have produced cars with better emissions which isn't the fault of the oil companies, people could get their products later instead of next-day (I'm also guilty of this), you get the picture. I'm glad oil companies are having to be more transparent but the blame is on the entire population of the world.
zug_zug 2y ago
This actually, according to hard economics, is potentially an optimal solution. Fossil fuels provide a great benefit to one party but produce negative externalities to other parties (people in hurricane zones, people born into hot regions, people who live in the future). If it's worth it economically because the value is so great, then an optimal economic solution is to say "You can have this thing, but you are accountable for the damages it causes to other parties" Once we start pricing in the costs of the side-effects of fossil-fuels, the tradeoffs will be more clear, and the market will create faster incentives toward the ideal tradeoff.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  And that's not even going into the fact that we would already be pushing for more fuel efficiency in vehicles especially if gas wasn't so incredibly subsidized here in the United States. We pay absurdly low prices compared to basically everywhere else and you cannot convince me that is not a significant factor in why we still have so many massive trucks, SUV's, and V8 sports cars. And don't get me wrong, I love my sports car and it's big thundering V8. But I also know the negative effects it has and I'm completely fine paying a higher price at the pump to offset that.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    I hear this often, but my understanding is that gas is has very high sin taxes, there are no subsidies, and some tax breaks, but are the type that most businesses qualify for. Every time I look it up, the results are so full of rhetoric and conflating I can't find an answer. Most top line numbers count on priced externalities as a implicit subsidy. That's fine and well for some analyzes, but very different than Direct Cash subsidies or tax breaks
    - pohl 2y ago
      > there are no subsidies I thought the oil and gas industry famously got about $4B in subsidies per year, and about $20B to fossil fuel industries in general. Has that changed recently?
mc32 2y ago
And never mind the activists who retarded nuclear power for fifty years. When do they get sued for fearmongering misleading and putting an industry fifty years behind where they’d be today?

keybored 2y ago

Never mind what? Companies like British Petroleum have used marketing to frame climate change as “consumers doing bad things” with their “carbon footprint”. So if that’s what your mind goes to first, that’s no coincidence. It’s all about the money. Money buys media which buys narrative and mindshare.

cogman10 2y ago
And these fossil fuel companies aren't just doing this in the US. When you look at what they view as the path forward to keep selling oil to burn, it's all about doing things like setting up floating power plants for developing nations and subsidizing road construction to aid in the sale of ICE vehicles. The problem with these companies is the externalities of their actions are not priced in. For them, it's more a simple game of figuring out how to get the world to burn more oil. This lawsuit may not have merit, but it does point to the need for trying to price in the impact on climate change with oil burning.
LudwigNagasena 2y ago
> Companies like British Petroleum have used marketing to frame climate change as “consumers doing bad things” with their “carbon footprint”. So if that’s what your mind goes to first, that’s no coincidence. It's also common sense. Literally nothing stops first-world consumers from not buying stuff that requires emission of greenhouse gases except for their lifestyle preferences. > It’s all about the money. Money buys media which buys narrative and mindshare. Yep, you bought into the idea that you don't have to change your lifestyle because it is all fault of the big oil.
- keybored 2y ago
  Lies repeated enough become truth which becomes common sense. > Literally nothing stops first-world consumers from not buying stuff that requires emission of greenhouse gases except for their lifestyle preferences. Literally nothing. Uh-huh as if we’re talking about buying a monster truck compared to a Volvo instead of the lifeblood of the whole modern (inefficient) supply chain. > Yep, you bought into the idea that you don't have to change your lifestyle because it is all fault of the big oil. Via what money?
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  You call it a lifestyle preference, I call it staying alive. But that bag of potatoes I just bought wouldn't be in the grocery store without a long chain of greenhouse gas emissions.

bognition 2y ago

> not disclosing the risks to the environment It's more than that, it was the willful misrepresentation of the truth. The oil companies didn't accidentally end up in this situation. They knew back in the 80s the effects that oil consumption would have on the ecosystem and they covered it up and actively pushed lies that prevented any kind of meaningful change.

ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
This is true, but my point is there weren't cost-effective alternatives at that time anyway so blaming climate disasters squarely on the shoulders of oil companies and not acknowledging the fact that demand fueled the value of oil doesn't make logical sense, even from an empirical perspective. Now, lawsuits for local disasters and oil spills do make sense.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  It does if you think that alternatives to fossil fuel would have become economical earlier, had the fossil fuel industry not intervened. Another framing: how many wind, solar, hydrothermal, etc. plants did we not build because their economic envelope was artificially dampened by investment and legislative preference for fossil fuels?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
    I do agree with this. They stifled progress as much as they could but that only slows things down, and because we don't truly know what would have happened, it's not productive to play the blame game and say we'd have a spotless utopia if it weren't for the oil companies. Who knows, not enough people at that time may not have cared or maybe we would have the utopia we all want. It's all guesswork and at this point we need to spend our energy moving forward instead of focusing on the past.

dtjb 2y ago

Seems like this could be one of the mechanisms to encourage that transition. One persons stunt is another's advocacy.

ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
True and it does bring some awareness, but this is lazy approach. I love the passion people have in cleaning up the environment but we all know (especially the engineers among us) that building a solution, or contributing to one, is far more effective than complaining about a problem.

andylynch 2y ago

They are arguing that the companies concerned were not, but should be compelled to, price in at least some of the negative externalities of their product. Not doing so of course makes their product's price not reflect its true cost to produce, and distorts that same supply and demand.

ChurchillsLlama 2y ago
I completely agree if these negative externalities weren't several degrees of separation. Car companies could have produced cars with better emissions which isn't the fault of the oil companies, people could get their products later instead of next-day (I'm also guilty of this), you get the picture. I'm glad oil companies are having to be more transparent but the blame is on the entire population of the world.

zug_zug 2y ago

This actually, according to hard economics, is potentially an optimal solution. Fossil fuels provide a great benefit to one party but produce negative externalities to other parties (people in hurricane zones, people born into hot regions, people who live in the future). If it's worth it economically because the value is so great, then an optimal economic solution is to say "You can have this thing, but you are accountable for the damages it causes to other parties" Once we start pricing in the costs of the side-effects of fossil-fuels, the tradeoffs will be more clear, and the market will create faster incentives toward the ideal tradeoff.

ToucanLoucan 2y ago
And that's not even going into the fact that we would already be pushing for more fuel efficiency in vehicles especially if gas wasn't so incredibly subsidized here in the United States. We pay absurdly low prices compared to basically everywhere else and you cannot convince me that is not a significant factor in why we still have so many massive trucks, SUV's, and V8 sports cars. And don't get me wrong, I love my sports car and it's big thundering V8. But I also know the negative effects it has and I'm completely fine paying a higher price at the pump to offset that.
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  I hear this often, but my understanding is that gas is has very high sin taxes, there are no subsidies, and some tax breaks, but are the type that most businesses qualify for. Every time I look it up, the results are so full of rhetoric and conflating I can't find an answer. Most top line numbers count on priced externalities as a implicit subsidy. That's fine and well for some analyzes, but very different than Direct Cash subsidies or tax breaks
  - pohl 2y ago
    > there are no subsidies I thought the oil and gas industry famously got about $4B in subsidies per year, and about $20B to fossil fuel industries in general. Has that changed recently?

mc32 2y ago

And never mind the activists who retarded nuclear power for fifty years. When do they get sued for fearmongering misleading and putting an industry fifty years behind where they’d be today?