[ChurchillsLlama]

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.

[bognition]

> 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]

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]

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?

[ChurchillsLlama]

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.

[acdha]

Say they’d gone to Nixon like they were considering, or Carter a little later. The U.S. might have ended up like France with a massive nuclear investment _and_ stronger investment in renewable and efficiency wins - the solar panels Reagan removed from the White House weren’t anywhere near modern standard but there was a ton of interest in lowering pollution which was derailed in the name of increased profit margins during the 80s.

No, it wouldn’t change everything but you don’t need carbon emissions to be 100% to be useful. Every bit you reduce buys time to work on the harder parts of the economy.

[The5thElephant]

Punishing major corporations at scale might help prevent the next multi-generational fuckup, and help pay for the energy and changes moving forward.

I'm not really sure what it is you are trying to defend here? I understand arguing that you can't guarantee a different approach would have led to better results, but in this situation it seems fairly clear that corporations being open and honest would be superior.

[pedrosanta]

The 'there weren't cost-effective alternatives at that time' as an excuse for at the very least inaction (morally condemnable) and at most criminal litigation-worthy propaganda, lies and damages, I find it, in all due respect, quite poor.

[ChurchillsLlama]

As an excuse on the part of the oil companies, I completely agree. But that point was directed at the supply/demand situation from the perspective of the world's consumers and not from the oil companies. So any effects emissions have had on the environment can't be placed squarely on the shoulders of the oil companies but the market (world population) as a whole.

[The5thElephant]

How do you think you come around to having cost-effective alternatives? You need people actively working on them, and for that you need an incentive.

[keybored]

Oh no, well if there aren’t cost-effective alternatives for the corporation to slot into the profit opportunity then that’s that. Can’t blame the poor corporations who just wanted to make money, their God-given right after all.

[silverquiet]

It wasn't cost effective to save ourselves; Kurt Vonnegut was prophetic.

[TheAceOfHearts]

Epistemic uncertainty: I wasn't alive back then and haven't done a deep dive on the historical evidence to form a strong view on the claim.

However, Sabine Hossenfelder recently made a post about that [0]. My understanding is that there was still a lot of uncertainty in the scientific community during the 80s, although around the 90s there was a movement by oil companies to downplay the impact of climate change.

With that being said, whether or not oil companies were aware back then doesn't mean they cannot still be held accountable in the present. And we definitely have evidence of oil companies engaging in bad faith since the turn of the millennium to obfuscate our understanding of climate science.

[0] https://x.com/skdh/status/1810915186443722844

[dehrmann]

I doubt it would have changed much. An Inconvenient Truth came out almost 20 years ago, and traditional ICE cars (excluding hybrids) still have 80% market share. It's fairly well-known at this point that going vegetarian (or vegan) cuts individual CO2 emissions dramatically, but people aren't signing up for it.

People aren't willing to sacrifice their lifestyle for the environment.

[acdha]

At least some of that inaction is due to the billions of dollars spent encouraging it. For example, ICE SUVs are common because they’re subsidized by the government. If there wasn’t a huge mass of climate denial funding it into a political litmus test, removing those subsidies would mean that the median vehicle on the road burns half as much gas.

[aziaziazi]

More chance to build better habits with next generation than trying to convience gran’pa doing differently…

In France we (edu and ecology ministers iirc) tried to have only vegetarian meal one day per week in public schools. Agriculture ministers got very angry as well as a bunch of noisy parents. Legislator choose to abandon the project.

[Ekaros]

There is lot of choices individuals could make. Forgo EVs, only walk or bike. Instead of living in large spaces, move to something much smaller like capsules. Forgo electronics and internet in general.

[vasco]

I don't disagree but I've always found that argument a bit disingenuous. Have you ever seen an oil well getting drilled in a movie or on TV? Or just seen oil? Or seen and smelled the gas that goes into cars?

Is anyone able to say with a straightface that they didn't know oil that oil is bad for the environment? I get that the oil companies have more blame than other people, but this argument of "the global population was fooled, nobody knew it was bad so we kept using oil, and those mean people at the oil company kept the information from us"... Everyone knows. The same way everyone knows most weird smelling chemicals aren't great for the environment either, but if we have a stained tshirt we'll use them.

We're all complicit, and while I agree some are more to blame than others, it's not necessary to pretend the rest of us are innocent.

[mbrumlow]

Looks like you got too close to the truth.

[bortlicenseplat]

oil literally comes from the environment, how is it inherently bad for the environment?

we should ban lava too, have you seen the environmental damage it can do?

[jogjayr]

> we should ban lava too

Have we not already? That seems like an oversight...

[zug_zug]

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.

[amelius]

The problem is that there isn't a direct connection to negative externalities. If there are now 20 hurricanes instead of 10, who is responsible for those extra 10?

[dmix]

And that's literally what they are claiming, that oil companies are causing hurricanes to hit Puerto Rico

> In the complaint, Puerto Rico says it expects to pay billions of dollars in the future to cope with catastrophes made worse by climate change — including storms like Hurricane Maria, which killed thousands of people in 2017 and triggered monthslong power outages.

[mbrumlow]

Why not the beef or farming industry? Or China? Isolating oil companies alone seems silly. Even more so because the entire world, including Puerto Rico also be benefits from the fruit of the last 100+ years od oil production.

On top of all that, climate change was going to happen. The idea that our climate was ever static and unchanging is silly, and only a child’s view is the history of the world would suggest otherwise. Did the early inhabitants of Austin Texas sue whatever they thought caused their premium glacier front property to drop in value over the last billions of years they receded?

The fact is that humanity is hooked on oil. IRS not going away. Not at least without billions of people suffering and dying. Oil has brought clean water across the world. It has allowed a technology boon by the way of its by products coating the majority of wires made, preventing horrific house fires from the days of paper wrapped wires.

Oil and its byproducts are engrained into humanity and its economical efficiency has been a blessing to humanity and every single last person on this planet has benefited.

[dmix]

The answers pretty simple, it's a wealthy party they have political control over and which they can attempt to extract money from, and if they lose, which is likely, they can double down on victimhood.

[nilamo]

You're right, it's hard. So let's not even bother trying, right?

[amelius]

Your words, not mine. If we keep thinking there is a simple fix, then nothing will change either.

[ToucanLoucan]

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]

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]

> 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?

[s1artibartfast]

Thats what Im asking about.

Is that a 20B check the federal government paid them? Is that 20B of tax deductions from carry forward losses that every company in the US gets? Is that 20B of carbon taxes that some analyst thinks would be fair, but there is no law requiring them to pay?

The IMF says things like this[1]:

>This includes $3 billion in explicit subsidies and $754 billion in implicit subsidies, which are costs like negative health impacts and environmental degradation that are borne by society at large rather than producers (i.e., negative externalities).

This link [2] goes a little more into what the "direct subsidies" are:

Intangible Drilling Costs Deduction - Not sure why this is a subsidy. Most business costs are tax deductible for other industries.

Clean Coal Investment and Nonconventional Fuels Tax Credits - These are incentives to decarbonize. I agree that they are subsidies in the traditional sense, but not subsidies to increase carbon production. Something like a 30% tax credit for money spent on upgrades that sequester >75% of the carbon emissions seems like a good thing.

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-proposals-to-red...

https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-fossil-fuel-subs...

[silverquiet]

No one will ever accuse me of being an optimist, but I'm beginning to have a hard time seeing how this doesn't end with human extinction, and I wonder how that balances on the spreadsheet. It's quite depressing.

[burningChrome]

Humans evolved from some of the most inhospitable climates and continue to live in such environments to this day. Humans will do what we've always done - adapt and overcome.

I mean how many people thought you could build a bunch of casino's in the middle of a desert and think people would move there and it would grow into almost 3M people?

[keybored]

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]

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]

> 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.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

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.

[keybored]

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?

[dtjb]

Seems like this could be one of the mechanisms to encourage that transition.

One persons stunt is another's advocacy.

[ChurchillsLlama]

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.

[mc32]

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?

[andylynch]

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]

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.