[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.