[caseyy]

Why aren't the fossil fuel companies moving to renewables and nuclear themselves? Wouldn't it make better long-term business sense? They can then keep selling fossil fuels as long as they have a market to sell them in, but if the market dries up due to regulations — no worries.

I might have a naive view of this but a dual strategy would seem to make more business sense. I mean — every dollar invested in lobbying for fossil fuels seems to have a higher expected value of money if it was spent on expanding renewable and nuclear operations.

[tsimionescu]

For the simple fact that even if it's true that renewables are cheaper than oil, it's still a much higher investment to build a renewable plant and hire people who know how to work it than it is to continue existing operations with existing people.

Edit: In addition, if the environmentalits were to "win", that would turn essentially the entirety of these companies' existing capital into 0 value. So not lobbying to stop that is extremely dangerous.

[anon84873628]

>it's still a much higher investment to build a renewable plant and hire people who know how to work it than it is to continue existing operations with existing people.

But someone is still doing that investment and will eventually reap the returns, so it still seems short sighted for existing energy companies not to try and outcompete them.

>that would turn essentially the entirety of these companies' existing capital into 0 value.

Honestly, I'd be kind of happy if these companies invested in renewables (even with government subsidies) and were lobbying the government to buy back the fossil fuel infrastructure that isn't needed anymore...