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And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https:/

And they knew about impacts of climate change in the 70s https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... Reminds me of how I see executives manage to “fail upward”, where it’s just so clear the people pulling the strings don’t give a darn about workers or the population at large.

immibis 2y ago
[flagged]
- christophilus 2y ago
  Would you? If you knew your actions would kill a billion people, you’d still do it for $1T?
  - immibis 2y ago
    Recent political events have proven that if I wouldn't, someone else would do it anyway, and then I'd have the disadvantage of not being them. The world is significantly more atomized than I'd like; you can either play the game that everyone else is playing, or forfeit by default.
- Evil_Saint 2y ago
  No. No I wouldn't.
- NegativeLatency 2y ago
  Can’t tell if this is satire but I most certainly would not, and I would hope that society would hold someone responsible for doing that.
- artistic_regard 2y ago
  [flagged]
- goatlover 2y ago
  Only if you're a sociopath. But I also don't buy the framing that oil companies are murdering people when they're providing the energy society needs. Fossil fuels have largely powered the modern world. That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either. But there's tradeoffs and nuance to all this. Was solar and battery technology good enough in the 70s and 80s to start transitioning then? Would the public have accepted a nuclear transition? For that matter, are there climate models predicting deaths on the order of 1 billion? Do they even make such predictions?
  - triceratops 2y ago
    > That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either That's what we're calling sociopathic behavior. Not drilling oil and gas.
    - goatlover 2y ago
      I'd call the socipathic behavior trading a billion lives for a trillion dollars, but that's just something the parent came up with. What's the actual tradeoff, what sort of transition could have happened by now, to what extent was the rest of the scientific community aware of greenhouse gases, would a lot more nuclear power plants being built have been seen as better by the public?
      - triceratops 2y ago
        > trading a billion lives for a trillion dollars Which they did by covering up the problem. > what sort of transition could have happened by now More renewables and batteries, more electric vehicles, more public transit, high-speed rail, cheaper and safer nuclear.
        goatlover 2y ago
        They did? I missed the part where a billion people are dead. Last I checked, the population is still going up. I asked if there were any climate models making such a prediction.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  Well that's an interesting hypothetical but what they actually did was more like reducing GDP by a trillion and murder a billion people. You appear to be justifying the deaths due to it making financial sense overall, when it didn't. A small group profited at the expense of everyone else, even if you ignore the deaths.
- sofixa 2y ago
  > You or I would do the same. Just because you lack morals you shouldn't assume everyone else does too.
- ben_w 2y ago
  With that dichotomy, I'd set the dollars on fire — unless someone convinced me that doing so would kill even more people. Money is a tool for organising labour and resources, I don't see it as a goal in itself, only a means to other ends.
- triceratops 2y ago
  I would not do the same. But realistically, if I were Exxon's CEO in that situation, I'd rapidly be replaced with someone who would make that choice.
Bluestrike2 2y ago
Or that they just weren't very good business people. Their understanding of climate change back then was good enough to have a damned decent roadmap for how things were going to play out over the next fifty years. They were capable of projecting what was going to happen, the likely regulatory changes that wold be needed to mitigate climate change, and how that would affect them. One would expect the average CEO would literally kill for a roadmap of the future. They had it, and more. Exxon, ARCO, and others even made early R&D investments that helped pioneer terrestrial solar power, not to mention their extensive R&D capabilities more broadly. Sticking with the metaphor, they had the map and some of the most important tools for the journey ahead. Fifty years were long enough even a financial moron could have developed a long-term transition plan that avoided stranded assets and massive losses. And they--and their people--weren't financial morons. Hell, much of their capital equipment and facilities investments had expected lifespans of a similar length. They had everything needed to create the mother of all soft landings. Hell, they could have engineered an outcome where they came out well ahead. Being able to rebrand yourself as the company that chose to sacrifice itself to save the world buys you a hell of a lot of goodwill you can leverage for subsidies in Washington. We’d have paid them for it and thanked them for the privilege. It couldn’t have been that much harder than convincing an entire political party that the problem didn’t exist. Oil companies convincing the public they were shitty companies that needed to be reborn? If they focused on the dying part of rebirth, that wouldn’t have been a very difficult sell even back then. Only someone who failed upwards could have been gifted a hand like that and still manage to choose the worst possible path for both the world and their own company. All they managed to do was delay the transition and make it more expensive for their company and the world.
- immibis 2y ago
  > Being able to rebrand yourself as the company that chose to sacrifice itself to save the world buys you a hell of a lot of goodwill you can leverage for subsidies in Washington. We’d have paid them for it and thanked them for the privilege. This seems to be incorrect. Given my estimation of the current political climate, if you sacrifice yourself to save the world, you will be dead and then someone else will destroy the world anyway while you're not there to stop them. When was the last time the government paid someone to save the world?
reaperman 2y ago
Climate change due to industrial emissions of CO2 has been known and published in mainstream news articles since at least 110 years ago.[0][1] It's been known and discussed in public by professional scientists for over 140 years[2]. The great inaugural Nobel Prize winner, Arrhenius, wrote a paper on the topic in 1896[3] which cited Fourier's publication from 1827[4]. More generally, global greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known for at least 185 years[4], a decade before the last founding father of the United States died. ---------- 0: The Rodney and Otamatea Times (Aug 1912) https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-century-ago.html https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen... 1: Popular Mechanics (Mar 1912): https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=PA341 https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=... 2: Nature (1882): https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 3: Journal of Science (Apr 1896) https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 4: M ́emoire sur les Temp ́eratures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Plan ́etaires, M ́emoires d l’Acad ́emie Royale des Sciences de l’Institute de France VII 570-604 (1827): https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pd... (English Translation)

immibis 2y ago

[flagged]

christophilus 2y ago
Would you? If you knew your actions would kill a billion people, you’d still do it for $1T?
- immibis 2y ago
  Recent political events have proven that if I wouldn't, someone else would do it anyway, and then I'd have the disadvantage of not being them. The world is significantly more atomized than I'd like; you can either play the game that everyone else is playing, or forfeit by default.
Evil_Saint 2y ago
No. No I wouldn't.
NegativeLatency 2y ago
Can’t tell if this is satire but I most certainly would not, and I would hope that society would hold someone responsible for doing that.
artistic_regard 2y ago
[flagged]
goatlover 2y ago
Only if you're a sociopath. But I also don't buy the framing that oil companies are murdering people when they're providing the energy society needs. Fossil fuels have largely powered the modern world. That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either. But there's tradeoffs and nuance to all this. Was solar and battery technology good enough in the 70s and 80s to start transitioning then? Would the public have accepted a nuclear transition? For that matter, are there climate models predicting deaths on the order of 1 billion? Do they even make such predictions?
- triceratops 2y ago
  > That doesn't excuse covering up the science and the need to transition either That's what we're calling sociopathic behavior. Not drilling oil and gas.
  - goatlover 2y ago
    I'd call the socipathic behavior trading a billion lives for a trillion dollars, but that's just something the parent came up with. What's the actual tradeoff, what sort of transition could have happened by now, to what extent was the rest of the scientific community aware of greenhouse gases, would a lot more nuclear power plants being built have been seen as better by the public?
    - triceratops 2y ago
      > trading a billion lives for a trillion dollars Which they did by covering up the problem. > what sort of transition could have happened by now More renewables and batteries, more electric vehicles, more public transit, high-speed rail, cheaper and safer nuclear.
      - goatlover 2y ago
        They did? I missed the part where a billion people are dead. Last I checked, the population is still going up. I asked if there were any climate models making such a prediction.
ZeroGravitas 2y ago
Well that's an interesting hypothetical but what they actually did was more like reducing GDP by a trillion and murder a billion people. You appear to be justifying the deaths due to it making financial sense overall, when it didn't. A small group profited at the expense of everyone else, even if you ignore the deaths.
sofixa 2y ago
> You or I would do the same. Just because you lack morals you shouldn't assume everyone else does too.
ben_w 2y ago
With that dichotomy, I'd set the dollars on fire — unless someone convinced me that doing so would kill even more people. Money is a tool for organising labour and resources, I don't see it as a goal in itself, only a means to other ends.
triceratops 2y ago
I would not do the same. But realistically, if I were Exxon's CEO in that situation, I'd rapidly be replaced with someone who would make that choice.

Bluestrike2 2y ago

Or that they just weren't very good business people. Their understanding of climate change back then was good enough to have a damned decent roadmap for how things were going to play out over the next fifty years. They were capable of projecting what was going to happen, the likely regulatory changes that wold be needed to mitigate climate change, and how that would affect them. One would expect the average CEO would literally kill for a roadmap of the future. They had it, and more. Exxon, ARCO, and others even made early R&D investments that helped pioneer terrestrial solar power, not to mention their extensive R&D capabilities more broadly. Sticking with the metaphor, they had the map and some of the most important tools for the journey ahead. Fifty years were long enough even a financial moron could have developed a long-term transition plan that avoided stranded assets and massive losses. And they--and their people--weren't financial morons. Hell, much of their capital equipment and facilities investments had expected lifespans of a similar length. They had everything needed to create the mother of all soft landings. Hell, they could have engineered an outcome where they came out well ahead. Being able to rebrand yourself as the company that chose to sacrifice itself to save the world buys you a hell of a lot of goodwill you can leverage for subsidies in Washington. We’d have paid them for it and thanked them for the privilege. It couldn’t have been that much harder than convincing an entire political party that the problem didn’t exist. Oil companies convincing the public they were shitty companies that needed to be reborn? If they focused on the dying part of rebirth, that wouldn’t have been a very difficult sell even back then. Only someone who failed upwards could have been gifted a hand like that and still manage to choose the worst possible path for both the world and their own company. All they managed to do was delay the transition and make it more expensive for their company and the world.

immibis 2y ago
> Being able to rebrand yourself as the company that chose to sacrifice itself to save the world buys you a hell of a lot of goodwill you can leverage for subsidies in Washington. We’d have paid them for it and thanked them for the privilege. This seems to be incorrect. Given my estimation of the current political climate, if you sacrifice yourself to save the world, you will be dead and then someone else will destroy the world anyway while you're not there to stop them. When was the last time the government paid someone to save the world?

reaperman 2y ago

Climate change due to industrial emissions of CO2 has been known and published in mainstream news articles since at least 110 years ago.[0][1] It's been known and discussed in public by professional scientists for over 140 years[2]. The great inaugural Nobel Prize winner, Arrhenius, wrote a paper on the topic in 1896[3] which cited Fourier's publication from 1827[4]. More generally, global greenhouse effect of CO2 has been known for at least 185 years[4], a decade before the last founding father of the United States died. ---------- 0: The Rodney and Otamatea Times (Aug 1912) https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-century-ago.html https://www.livescience.com/63334-coal-affecting-climate-cen... 1: Popular Mechanics (Mar 1912): https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=PA341 https://books.google.com/books?id=Tt4DAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA341&lpg=... 2: Nature (1882): https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 https://www.nature.com/articles/027127c0 3: Journal of Science (Apr 1896) https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 https://doi.org/10.1080/14786449608620846 4: M ́emoire sur les Temp ́eratures du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Plan ́etaires, M ́emoires d l’Acad ́emie Royale des Sciences de l’Institute de France VII 570-604 (1827): https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pdf https://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/papers/Fourier1827Trans.pd... (English Translation)