3 ms·
Is it just money that motivates these people? Is that all? At this point, they must just want to watch civilization collapse for short-term gains.
by chiffre01 1y ago
Is it just money that motivates these people? Is that all? At this point, they must just want to watch civilization collapse for short-term gains.
- dralley 1y agoThere are plenty of "legacy" environmental organizations that view any form of construction, including construction of renewable energy, as worthy of being opposed. They aren't all interested in the bigger picture of advancing renewable energy to slow climate change.
- griffzhowl 1y agoMaybe, but this study is about specific, named organisations with documented personnel or financial ties to fossil fuel companies. Not sure how your comment is relevant to them
- shermantanktop 1y agoIf the waters are a bit muddier now, that’s the relevance. Flooding the zone with confusion and whataboutism is the tactic of choice these days.
- krferriter 1y agoEven if you don't care about climate change, spending money to stop all development of wind energy technology and its deployment into the national energy mix is very very dumb. There are a lot of people who just hate certain things and make it their life mission to inflict damage onto it no matter what. It's not a rational thought process.
- matthewdgreen 1y agoThere are literally millions of people in this country who would like to watch civilization collapse, and aren't even smart enough to get paid for it.
- missinglugnut 1y agoYou haven't identified a group, a motive, a psychological mechanism, described the method, or explained the intention in any depth. In other words, this is a cynical lament about how other people suck that's not descriptive enough to be useful or falsifiable. I believe in acknowledging harsh realities for the sake of dealing with them, but there's just no substance here to even acknowledge. Nobody benefits from this sort of thinking.
- drekipus 1y agoUsually because indentifying groups, motives, psychological mechanisms, methods, or intentions, usually gets labelled as anti-business, anti-red, anti-blue, antisemitic, racist, or other such "bad things" that we're getting conditioned not to do.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoThere are accelerationists, who think that society is so flawed that it has to collapse so that something better can be built, as an example.
- jalapenos 1y agoNo, they think the risks of collapse are well worth the chance of improvement, because they view what we already have as so poor. They don't actually want a collapse.
- mindslight 1y agoThey're called Trumpists. They claim to have some lofty constructive values. But whenever one tries to discuss the destructive actions of their hollow cult leader with an appeal to any of those values, they fall back to whataboutism. The smarter ones change to a different topic with cookie cutter talking points about that value. The dumber ones usually just complain about an arbitrary female democrat. The only conclusion that fits is that they want to see their country and their fellow citizens get hurt, while feeling morally justified about it. The psychological mechanism seems to be [social] media psychosis. It's been slowly festering through decades of reactionary talk radio, but really went into overdrive when the attention-surveillance industry went to town promoting the dumbest least common denominator memetic reactions to outrage bait. signed, a libertarian who actually believes in a strong natural right to free speech, the right to keep and bear arms, fiscal responsibility, individualism, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and many more unenumerated personal liberties.
- dev_l1x_be 1y agoThe same reason why they almost the same people behind anti-nuclear initiatives. Maintain the status quo.
- jfengel 1y agoAs I understand it, at least some of these groups are nominally pro-nuclear. They are aware that nuclear plants have a very long lead time, while wind (and solar) can be installed quickly. So they can advocate for nuclear as a way of fending off other non-fossil-fuel energy sources, without actually replacing any fossil fuels with nuclear.
- dev_l1x_be 1y agoSMR changes that game.
- Zigurd 1y agoEven under ideal conditions, nuclear is much more expensive than solar and wind. And when was the last time there were ideal conditions?
- bryanlarsen 1y ago20-30 years ago nuclear was a quicker path towards decarbonization than solar was. So pushing solar over nuclear made sense for those hoping to delay decarbonization. Now solar is a quicker way to decarbonize, so similar efforts are anti-solar, pro-nuclear.
- danans 1y ago> Is it just money that motivates these people? For fossil-fuel companies, it's about control and extending the world's dependency on their products as far into the future as possible. The others are on their dole to one degree or another, when you consider that many of the edges in the graph in the article represent not only relationships, but also flows of money.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoWhy don’t they invest in other sectors though vs doubling down? Tobacco companies, famously unscrupulous, did just this, saw the writing on the wall and now make their money off zyn and vapes vs trying to swim upstream selling traditional tobacco products. Seems to me an oil company has enough resources where they can out invest most any green vc outright and dominate the marketshare if they were so inclined. This is playing out like the hubris film companies had towards digital sensors. Seems they don’t teach history in MBA programs I guess.
- Zigurd 1y agoEasier said than done. Legacy social media is dying, and Meta has plenty of resources to create products in and monetize other product sectors. And yet... If what you know is how to pull oil out of the ground, and build multi billion dollar rigs to do it, that's your sector.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoIt isn’t like the tobacco companies knew any different. They just opted to buy Juul which they could do with their massive cash reserves. Their own efforts (blu?) failed. As the saying goes, those who can’t do, buy.
- XorNot 1y agoMeta posted increased revenues last year. Social media isn't growing like it used to, but that doesn't mean there's not plenty of blood left in the stone. Plus you'll never find a better multiplier then software and consumer spending.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoWhat I don’t get about all these evil scrooge types that run out world, is why wouldn’t they want to make money off things like wind and actual climate salves? Seems to me the coming climate crises is going to cost a ton of money and lead to destruction of entire national economies. Meanwhile they could have been raising all boats and made even more money and had even more things to invest in. Is oil really that profitable to ignore the havoc it wreaks and will wreak on virtually every other industry, including itself when there is less money moving around to spend on oil and oil products? I just don’t get it how being so objectively shortsighted is actually the corrupt greedy money position instead of ensuring the world as we know it doesn’t collapse and that the money printing machine doesn’t fall apart. But what do I know I guess.
- Teever 1y agoIts because they're in a death cult purity spiral.[0] They suffer from cognitive dissonance so a part of them understands this stuff but another part of them identifies so strongly with their peer group and profession that this second part wins out. It's really unfortunate that such glaring cognitive defects appear to have doomed the human race smothering itself to death on this planet instead of reaching out to the stars. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThe oil industry sees some of the most advanced applications of engineering on earth. One would think this is a sector used to disruption and investing in emerging technoligies with potential for profit because that is how they’ve been optimizing the oil industry this entire time. I guess somehow a line is drawn in the sand with oil vs not oil but I don’t know why. It seems hard to imagine that these massive corporations are structured such that the influence of engineers and consultants are eschewed for the feelings of a few of uninformed people. Seems unbelievable to put that amount of money behind such obstinate thinking.
- tovej 1y ago
- kmeisthax 1y ago[dead]
- lovich 1y agoIf you haven’t heard the term you should look up accelerationists. There’s several competing flavors of it like the ones who think “the good” communist revolution will happen after society collapses vs the ones who want democracy to fall apart because they think monarchical societies are morally superior, but they all have the same line of thinking that “the collapse” is coming any day now and they want to accelerate when they say occurs
- ggm 1y agoOrganised communism is almost completely defunct and afaik the 4th international likewise. At this point accelerationist left views would be as fringe as sovereign citizens and certainly not allied to the coal oil and nuclear industries. The former RCP members who joined the tory party in the UK, people like Dominic Cummings are interesting of course. And Steve Bannon is fond of posturing as a Maoist in style if not in substance. His oilskin coat is a performance Mao jacket.
- m463 1y agoI've listened to plenty of smart people who have what seems contrary viewpoints that seem to be reasonable after explanation. for example: 1) more expensive energy of any kind is extremely harmful to society EDIT: more expensive energy reduces prosperity for everyone. Renewable energy can and should be competitive and cost effective. 2) automatic filing of taxes is more harmful long-term than individuals filing taxes manually EDIT: automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever. 3) government funding of internet/broadband/etc is harmful EDIT: picking winners is more harmful that makeing good public policies. it's just hard to reason though the details, though it is worth the effort. My point is that there could be valid viewpoints that are not self-serving/greed-based.
- ggm 1y agoPlease summarise these reasons. Frankly, I'm sceptical. I suspect it's a different philosophy not counterfactual outcomes. Some people dislike socialised tax and regulation.
- AnthonyMouse 1y agoDon't the people who dislike socialized tax and regulation have reasons though? Part of it is that there is more than one opponent. So for example: > automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever. There are presumably real people with this concern, and it's not completely ridiculous. But then there should be ways to mitigate it. Let's compromise by requiring tax withholding to show up on bank statements. Instead of your bank statement just showing that you got a +$1100 deposit from your employer, it's required to show the full +$1800 they paid you and then separate the -$700 in transfers to the state and federal governments for the various tax withholdings. That should satisfy the people concerned about making taxes invisible because then you're actually giving them what they want. But then there are the other opponents, and that compromise is obviously not going to satisfy the politicians taking bribes from the TurboTax company. But it's still useful to distinguish them, because you may not need both. You only need 51 votes, not 100. If you started with 45, maybe that sort of compromise can get you 6 more.
- aaron695 1y ago[dead]
- marcus_holmes 1y agoI did hear an argument on Mastodon that made some kind of sense: currently the US dollar is the reserve currency of the world, not least because oil is bought with USD. Reduce the world's dependency on oil, and you reduce the world's dependency on USD. If the USA loses the benefit of the rest of the world needing USD to buy oil, that changes the US economy in bad ways. Hence the USA opposing renewable energy as much as it can. I'm not saying it's true - I have no idea. But it's at least a rational reason for opposing renewables, which otherwise seems to be very irrational.
- jalapenos 1y agoSo if offshore windmills aren't built then civilization will collapse... University student?
- thinkingemote 1y agoThe uncomfortable truth is that they most likely have the same loves, passions, interests and motivations as us. They are not some alien other, they are us. But that is uncomfortable. We like certainty more. We prefer an easily identified enemy. The difference (in many things) is not the motivation but the beliefs about what to do about it. Political opponents are more similar than different. By understanding the other you can reach them and effectively change them. If you are puzzled by a group of people the issue is not that group - it is the puzzlement! However one effective political tactic is to outgroup and other an opponent. It strengthens your sense of belonging to the right group. The danger is that it is inward facing and lowers inclusiveness. Empathy generally weakens ones own political passions but brings more peace. Restricting empathy increases enthusiasm and energy and action. Moreover, there are academic studies and popular schools of thought that say empathy is dangerous, that people should be entitled to their rage and emotions and that people shouldn't be forced to understand. That empathy itself is a tool of power.