Cont: Global warming discussion V

[dann]

Sure it is, they all want what you got and are only low emitters because they can't afford it. This is reality.

No, it isn't.
This is reality:

A lot of us are worried about how our everyday actions affect the planet.
With a cursory internet search, we find all sorts of ways to reduce our impact.
Recycle, go vegan, switch out a light bulb, or drive an electric car.
If you can afford it.
Companies do it too.
They build LEED-certified buildings, install solar panels on the roof,
or enroll in carbon offset programs.
-Powered by wind and solar.
-While lowering the carbon emissions intensity.
-We aim to be net zero across all. For generations to come.

Let's call this the "Do Anything" approach.
The idea that if everyone takes these small steps anywhere at any time, it'll add up to healthier environments.
Here's the problem:
These small changes don't add up to stop climate change or biodiversity loss, air pollution, or any of the environmental crises we face.
If anything, the "Do Anything" approach distracts us from the bigger changes that we actually need to make.
The average person in the US emits about 16 tons of carbon per year, mostly through driving, household energy use, and food consumption.
Compared to the total global emissions, which are about 36 billion tons of carbon a year, our individual contribution is barely a fraction of a fraction of a percent.

Now, not everyone emits equally.
The richest 1% of the global population accounts for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50%.
-The wealthiest folks emit way above the average while people with lower incomes emit less.

You can make big changes in your life like installing solar panels to go off the grid but that's still a tiny, tiny percent of reduced global emissions. And let's not forget, the vast majority of us don't really have other options other than to drive a gas-guzzling car to work or buy food grown with chemicals and shipped from far away.
-The food system is responsible for 20% to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

There's a reason small individual lifestyle changes don't have an impact:
A single person going about their day has little control over the high-emission systems they rely on. These are complex systems, which include where our energy comes from, the options available for getting to work, agriculture and land use, industrial operations, transportation of goods, and construction.

-Our individual footprint is actually quite small compared to the structure of society and the decisions that, for example, fossil fuel companies make, which have 10,000 times more impact than us as individuals.

If the changes we need to make are so big, then why do we default to the "Do Anything" approach?
-Food can be grown close to home, reducing the family's carbon footprint.
-If everyone carpooled just one day a week, we could reduce our carbon footprint.
-[crosstalk] reduce your dietary carbon footprint and--
-Reduce your carbon footprint.
-Turn off those unused lights.

Why do we place so much attention on small individual and convenient actions anywhere at any time to combat climate change and reduce our impact on environments?
For one, it's easier. It doesn't require us to challenge our energy infrastructure where our reliance on fossil fuels accounts for two-thirds of carbon emissions, or to question how our economy works by encouraging endless pollution to maximize profits.

-Excellent intends to increase oil production in Texas and New Mexico.
-Chevron will be doing that as the year goes on. We need to drive up supplies.

For the wealthiest among us who use the most energy and also benefit the most from the economy, saying, "I'll just build an energy-efficient house," allows them to care about the climate crisis, but they don't have to question how they benefit from polluting processes to generate wealth and how they invest their money.
Same goes for companies.
With the "Do Anything" approach, the largest polluters get to claim they've contributed to climate initiatives while maintaining business as usual.
For example, from 2008 to 2018, Exxon invested $250 million to develop technologies that use algae to generate clean biofuels.
-That could one day power planes, propel ships, and fuel trucks.[/]

That's doing something. But meanwhile, during the same period, they actually spent about $100 million a day to find and develop new sources of oil and natural gas.
They spent about $42 million annually to lobby against climate initiatives.
-Did we aggressively fight against some of the science? Yes. We were looking out for our investments. We were looking out for our shareholders. There's nothing illegal about that.

And with several other fossil fuel giants, they spent $175 million annually to market themselves as climate heroes:
-It's one of the ways ExxonMobil is advancing climate solutions.

The "Do Anything" approach favors the politically convenient changes that keep the economy working the same way it always has.
Does "Every Little Thing" REALLY Stop Climate Change? (PBS Terra on YouTube, April 4, 2024)

The richest 1% of the global population accounts for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50%.

And yet your fantasy scenario blames poor people for what they might do if they weren't poor, which they obviously are, thus arguing against both putting and end to global warming and putting an end to poverty, as if poor people were somehow responsible for both the lies and the CO² emissions of ExonMobil.
But you can imagine that they somehow be if poverty was abolished because human nature is somehow responsible for the decisions made by companies like Exxon.

 

[dann]

A thread on X:

Let's pause & reflect a minute about what this shocking picture of
@GretaThunberg's arrest tells us about the current state of #climate politics.
A short thread on some key lessons we can take from this image
Dr. Aaron Thierry (X, April 7, 2024)

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Companies like ExxonMobil are merely providing what consumers demand.

Why are they so much. more demonized than the consumers?

 

[Aridas]

Companies like ExxonMobil are merely providing what consumers demand.

Why are they so much. more demonized than the consumers?

Because they're not merely providing what consumers demand.

Why should anyone be particularly kind to those who have actively worked to knowingly deceive the public in ways that are notably harmful to the public in the larger picture and greedy, even if there are some immediate benefits of note involved?

Companies like ExxonMobil really, really don't have clean hands, even if one doesn't include climate change things.

How pleased should people be when ExxonMobil does things like -

Oil Spills, Offshore drilling pollution, and Illegal water pollution

Exxon agreed to pay the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission $600,000 for dumping almost 2 billion gallons of chemical wastewater from their Baytown, Texas refinery. [32] A recent report on the Baytown refinery in Houston has revealed persistent accidental releases and failure to report problems and emissions.

In 1991, the EPA filed complaints against Exxon, British Petroleum, and the Alyeska Pipeline Service Corporation for dumping ballast water wastes at the Valdez Alaska tanker terminal. [33]

On January 1, 1990, 567,000 gallons of oil spilled from an Exxon pipeline into the Arthur Kill waterway between Staten Island and New Jersey. In February 1990 the City of New York sued Exxon for submitting false pipeline safety reports. Prior to the lawsuit Exxon admitted that its leak detection system had not worked properly for 12 years. A year later Exxon settled out of court, agreeing to spend $10 to $15 million on environmental improvements. [34]

Oil that leaked from Exxon's Paulsboro, New Jersey petroleum storage facility has contaminated groundwater and soil in southern New Jersey. [35]

Illegal Air Pollution

In February 1998, the Department of Justice filed a civil complaint accusing Exxon of nearly 200 Clean Air Act violations and demanding $4.7 million in fines. [36]

In October 1996 Exxon paid a civil penalty of $20,000 for violating the Clean Air Act at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana refinery. [37]

In 1993 Exxon paid $1 million in air pollution fines for its Bayway refinery in Linden, New Jersey. The penalties stem from Exxon bypassing air pollution control equipment. [38]

Hazardous Waste Violations

In August 1998, Exxon and Tosco agreed to pay $4.8 million in damages and for environmental restoration after discharging selenium, a carcinogen, into San Francisco Bay. [39]

In August 1998 Exxon was ordered to pay $35,000 to four plaintiffs as part of the Campbell Wells oilfield waste suit. The residents of Grand Bois, Louisiana sued Exxon and Campbell Wells alleging that the waste exceeded limits on toxins such as benzene, a known carcinogen. [40]

In October 1996, Exxon paid a civil penalty of $73,000 for violating the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and $116,000 for Clean Water Act violations at its Baton Rouge, Louisiana refinery. [41]

Exxon is a PRP for 41 hazardous waste Superfund sites in seventeen states.

In 1991, EPA fined Exxon $125,000 for discharging contaminated fluids from service stations into or directly above underground drinking water sources.

There's a lot more that could be poked at, but that's a start.

You could easily argue that ExxonMobil's not unique in the problems they cause, sure, but that's not really a defense. Portraying something as wicked is warranted when they really are demonstrably wicked.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Why should anyone be particularly kind to those who have actively worked to knowingly deceive the public in ways that are notably harmful to the public in the larger picture and greedy, even if there are some immediate benefits of note involved?

Indeed why should they? But they are rewarded with billions from people who just have to have stuff..

How do we shut them down?

 

[Aridas]

Indeed why should they? But they are rewarded with billions from people who just have to have stuff..

How do we shut them down?

Getting governments to speed the ongoing transition away from dependency on their products is probably the most realistic option to handle the bigger issues in play. That's a means to remove leverage and limit power, though, rather than outright shut them down.

 

[Stout]

No, it isn't.
This is reality:


The richest 1% of the global population accounts for more than twice the combined emissions of the poorest 50%.

And yet your fantasy scenario blames poor people for what they might do if they weren't poor, which they obviously are, thus arguing against both putting and end to global warming and putting an end to poverty, as if poor people were somehow responsible for both the lies and the CO² emissions of ExonMobil.
But you can imagine that they somehow be if poverty was abolished because human nature is somehow responsible for the decisions made by companies like Exxon.

You're missing the point, I'm not blaming the world's poor. All I'm saying is the world's poor, along with everyone else want's to live their best life possible and they don't really give a rip about the effects living that life will have on the climate. Sure, people say they're concerned about climate change but when push comes to shove, lifestyle is going to beat out climate concerns 99.9% of the time with both the global 1% ( which probably includes everyone posting on this thread) ant the poorest 50% should they have the opportunity to improve their lifestyle.

 

[Stout]

A thread on X:

Thunberg! I haven't run into her since she hijacked a climate change rally and made it about Palestine. Seems there are more important things that staving off this mass extinction.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

Getting governments to speed the ongoing transition away from dependency on their products is probably the most realistic option to handle the bigger issues in play. That's a means to remove leverage and limit power, though, rather than outright shut them down.

Who do you think governments are besides a bunch of people who want the same lifestyle everyone else does, and more spending power in most cases?

 

[Lukraak_Sisser]

Heck a few people trying to change things can matter I guess. Or at least make governments think.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68768598

 

[Aridas]

Who do you think governments are besides a bunch of people who want the same lifestyle everyone else does, and more spending power in most cases?

That depends a bit on the specific government and the larger forces driving the selection of which people and what policy.

 

[Myriad]

If you had watched the short video, you would know what should be changed, what would have an impact. What you think seems to be the advice is uninteresting. The advice is not what you think it is, and it is not deeply self-contradictory. That assessment is also based on ignorance. It's a strawman, as usual.

I watched the video, and it's as you said: a declaration of what, as you say, "should be changed." Passive voice. No active subject denoting any suggested or anticipated agent of change. No prescriptions or predictions of methods by which the members of the video's audience can cause or facilitate such change. Instead, the narrator assigns any and all actions any ordinary listener might take, from personal conservation to political participation in our democracies, to the "try anything" category which the narration derides as ineffectual.

Another word for something one thinks should be changed, absent any plan for making that change happen, is a wish. But we're not in a Disney movie. The Wishing Star isn't going to pop into cartoon life and make our wishes come true.

That's the glaring contradiction. X "should be changed" but anything you the listener might try to do to change it is just a useless distraction.

At best, the video comes across as an appeal to unnamed higher powers, presumably earthly potentates rather than spiritual overlords though I suppose it could be either. It gives me the impression that my own efforts are useless or even counterproductive, but if the CEOs of major industries or the key players in national politics happen to be listening, maybe they'll be convinced to mend their ways and change their course. I don't think that will happen, but like I said, feel free to let me know if it does.

In the meantime, I have no way (and you have not suggested any way) of changing the mix of energy used to produce and deliver food or the other products I consume. What I can do is choose, for my own consumption, foods that require less energy to produce and deliver. (They're easy to find because to a first and second approximation, they're the food items that are cheapest at the store.) And I can consume less of other products so that less energy is consumed in making them. If other people did that too, the energy-intensive production would decrease. If no one bought expensive imported raspberries or cut flower bouquets in the middle of winter, then no one would be emitting greenhouse gases flying them in.

But no, that would be "austerity." It would be "sacrifice." And now thanks to the video there's a new derogation for it: it would be "try anything." I'll add a derogation of my own: it would be something that would reduce some wealthy capitalist's profits. Could that be the real objection behind all this gaslighting?

 

[dann]

Companies like ExxonMobil are merely providing what consumers demand.

Why are they so much. more demonized than the consumers?

Because they're not merely providing what consumers demand.

Why should anyone be particularly kind to those who have actively worked to knowingly deceive the public in ways that are notably harmful to the public in the larger picture and greedy, even if there are some immediate benefits of note involved?

Companies like ExxonMobil really, really don't have clean hands, even if one doesn't include climate change things.

How pleased should people be when ExxonMobil does things like -



There's a lot more that could be poked at, but that's a start.

You could easily argue that ExxonMobil's not unique in the problems they cause, sure, but that's not really a defense. Portraying something as wicked is warranted when they really are demonstrably wicked.

Unfortunately, companies aren't 'demonized' as much as they should be. The whataboutism of Skeptical Greg's argument is absurd, and it's the one we always hear from companies: 'But we're only giving people what they want, what they demand!!!'
Meanwhile, they use billions on greensplaining what they are doing in order to make people think that they are selling what people demand: clean energy. But it's anything but clean.

It's the same tactics used when food companies add unhealthy ingredients to their products - look at year-long process of making companies get rid of hydrogenated oil, for instance - or when the same companies pretend to be 'animal friendly' to make people buy their stuff.

As if consumer groups had campaigned for food companies to use toxic trans fats in their products, as if smokers were the ones who persuaded tobacco companies that smoking is healthy, as if people had insisted that transport should be based on burning fossil fuels and that electricity created by burning fossil fuels is the best electricity.

And as if companies don't campaign to create the impression that they are ruled by consumer demands.
Skeptical Greg, don't turn yourself into a useful idiot for Big Oil. Don't spread their lies for them for free!
In August '23 I posted links to two YouTube videos about this:

I recommend that you take another look (or two) at the hearts and minds of people:

As the globe bakes under some of the longest, hottest heat waves in recorded history, reducing emissions to curb climate change is clearly an existential imperative. But climate change driven by human activity and the burning of fossil fuels has been in the news for more than 110 years. By the 1980’s, Congress was already seriously discussing the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. So what happened? Since then, the fossil fuel industry has set out to reshape the narrative surrounding climate change, global warming, and the consequences of burning fossil fuels. It's a decades-long, multi-billion dollar campaign to influence our politics, gaslight people to question scientific consensus, and maintain our addiction to fossil fuels.
Big Oil’s decades-long gaslighting campaign (MSNBC on YouTube, July 23, 2023 - 6:57 min.) (I assume MSNBC's pun on gaslighting is intended.)

The Troll Army of Big Oil (Climate Town on YouTube, Jan 3, 2023 - 22:14 min.)

What's in the hearts and minds of people is very likely to have been paid for by Big Oil, in particular when those people are Luddites, anti-Luddites and/or 'libertarians'.
The Luddites were actually a pretty progressive group. The modern use of the term has very little to do with what the Luddites stood for.

They are not just educational but also entertaining.

 

[dann]

Companies like ExxonMobil are merely providing what consumers demand.

Why are they so much. more demonized than the consumers?

You have been taken in by the oil industry's astroturfing. Companies like Exxon-Mobil are doing so much more than that!

A group of fossil-fuel energy companies gave a Smithsonian scientist a combined 1.2 million dollars in funding to publish papers asserting that the global-warming trends were a result of a natural warming cycle of the sun. (...) The report found that oil companies sent their own employees to stage protests against green initiatives. They created fake grassroots campaigns in support of oil as an American staple. They sent letters to Congress, posing as non-profit organizations opposed to clean energy bills. The list goes on and on.
Big Oil’s Decades-Long Gaslighting Campaign (MSNBC, July 22, 2023)

Who do you think funds the fossil-fuel promoting think tanks? Ordinary consumers of fossil fuel?

 

[Skeptical Greg]

The money comes from somewhere..


Show me anyone who isn't a consumer of fossil fuel. Not sure where the ordinary comes in.

You seem surprised that big companies spend a lot of money promoting themselves.

I would be surprised if they didn't.

 

[dann]

Yes, the money comes from somewhere.
Did anybody claim that it didn't?

Yes, everybody is a consumer of fossil fuels.
Nobody, except maybe Myriad, who seems to think that it is possible to avoid this as an individual consumer, isn't aware of this. It's how the world created by capitalism works.

No, I am not at all surprised that companies spend a lot of money promoting themselves, and I also don't seem to be surprised by it. At this point, I am also not surprised by your strawman. When I point out that big companies don't mind putting ingredients in food that clog up people's arteries, promoting tobacco that kills people even faster, and selling fossil fuels that render the planet uninhabitable, it wouldn't appear to anybody but you as if I'm surprised that it is so.

But over the years, I have actually been surprised by some of the tricks that captains of industry will use, the lies that they will tell about the products that kill and harm people, not just their consumers, as in the case of trans fats, but also in the case of tobacco and fossil fuels that harm everybody.

And since the alleged element of surprise seems to be so important to you, I should tell you that I am also not surprised by the fact that you double down on the false idea that the consumers who are lied to by big companies are to blame for the damage done to them by the lies of Big Oil, Big Tobacco and Big Food.

But thank you for the new opportunity to write about the impotence of consumer boycotts.
And I haven't even started talking about how some consumers just can't afford the usually more expensive and time consuming alternatives that such boycotts usually require. Or about how infrastructure often makes such alternatives practically impossible for consumers, but TurkeysGhost mentioned an example of the latter recently in post 533.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

I really do appreciate your position dann. I am just to cynical about human nature ( selfishness and greed) to effectively argue about these human induced problems, whether the humans are on the giving or the receiving end.

I'll just watch for a while.

 

[dann]

You live in a system that rewards selfishness, greed and hypocrisy at the expense of other people's well-being.
Not all systems are as tolerant of coroporations ruining the environment or exploiting other people as yours is:
Vietnamese Real Estate Tycoon Sentenced to Death in $12 Billion Fraud Case (NYT, April 11, 2024)

So don't blame human nature for stuff that really isn't nature's fault:
Rats display emphatic behavior independent of the opportunity for social interaction (Nature, Nov 21, 2019).
Rats avoid harming other rats. The finding may help us understand sociopaths. (NatGeo, Mar 5, 2020)
Societies that reward sociopathic behavior are a bad idea. They should be abolished.

Hi. In today's episode, we look at how corporations pretend to be eco-friendly while cutting corners and keeping quarterly profits their top priority.
00:00 - Intro
02:28 - Money, The Only Green That Motivates Corporations
08:34 - Oil Companies and Eco-related Marketing 18:37 - Socially Conscious Smoke Screens & Carbon Credits 29:47 - Big Biz’s Favorite Buzz Word: Recyclable 35:06 - An Embarrassing Assembly of “Good” Companies Actually Combating Climate Change39:28 - The Only Real Way to Force Our Corporate Overlords to Actually Do Anything
How Corporations Pretend To Be Eco-Friendly (Some More News on YouTube, May 10, 2023 - 45:27 min.)

Human altruistic nature is easily outtricked by corporations gaslighting them. This speaks well of human nature, but not so much of human common sense.
We're outsmarted by the lies of industry and its astroturfing army all the time, and every time it happens, some people prefer to blame human nature instead of the sociopathy of corporations.

 

[FatherLukeduke]

You live in a system that rewards selfishness, greed and hypocrisy at the expense of other people's well-being.
Not all systems are as tolerant of coroporations ruining the environment or exploiting other people as yours is:
Vietnamese Real Estate Tycoon Sentenced to Death in $12 Billion Fraud Case (NYT, April 11, 2024)

A system that doesn't "reward selfishness, greed and hypocrisy" yet allows someone who has already become a billionaire to take 92% control of a bank and drain it for years on end by bribing corrupt officials? Yeah, it got too blatant in the end - but you might want to question how such a great "system" allowed it in the first place.

Vietnam is a country that has gone on a huge economic rip in the past 20 years, but this isn't through through communist officials siting in back rooms planning 5 year quotas for rice production. It has fully embraced a market economy and all the "selfishness, greed" that comes with it. It has billionaires and millionaires aplenty, huge wealth inequality and plenty of corruption.

With that new wealth has come a huge increase in carbon emissions: from 1990 to 2020 their co2 output per head has gone up nearly 13 times! So, again, probably not the best example of how things could be done differently.

 

[Stout]

Yes, we've been familiar with astroturfing and greenwashing for decades and we all watched with awe as Greta Thunberg walked up to Drax, kicked it square in the crotch, then walked away smirking.

Vietnam, now there's a perfect example of a developing nation wanting what you got. Over the past 20 years, their emissions curve has gone damn near vertical.