[terminalshort]

Oil companies haven't done a damn thing. We are the cause of global warming. Every time we pump gas into our car, buy anything that came from far away, or use any technology dependent on oil. Blaming oil companies is childish garbage people do to avoid recognizing their personal share of the responsibility.

[Maarten88]

You know the carbon footprint concept was literally created by BP marketing, to place the blame for climate change on society, and distract from all the evil stuff they did to promote more fossil fuel consumption and sabotage climate science.

The Climate Town channel on Youtube has lots of video's on this, such as this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1J9LOqiXdpE

[terminalshort]

The blame is 100% on society, so BP is correct to place it there. If we wanted to reduce our CO2 output to near zero we could do that easily. But it turns out that we would rather have all of our modern conveniences, so this is 100% our fault. Blaming it on oil companies is like a murderer blaming Smith and Wesson.

[anon7000]

You’re sadly making this a simpler issue than it actually is. There are countless industries that have used immoral tactics to make more money. That includes tobacco companies (lying about health benefits & consequences to smoking), gambling companies (misleading people about how much money they can expect to make), and, of course, oil companies (lying about how harmful gas is to the environment).

Using gas is not actually necessary to have all our modern conveniences. In fact, it is fucking stupid to rely on continuous resource extraction, deleting our fuel supply to create energy, when we can get it continuously for free from the environment with a minor up-front investment.

It is not 100% our fault. This is only like blaming it on Smith & Wesson if Smith & Wesson had created “pacifist guns” that allegedly solved societal violence, or if Smith & Wesson spent huge amounts of money trying to convince people that guns are not actually dangerous objects.

[msy]

Blaming oil companies for the extremely well documented history of suppression of research and action into the impact of climate change is not childish.

[terminalshort]

It is childish to think that anything would have been different if this research was released.

[msy]

Exactly. I mean look what happened when we worked out CFCs were destroying the ozone layer through rigorous scientific research and public disclosure.

[webnrrd2k]

Yes, and cigarettes, asbestos, lead in gasoline, and a few others, too. Clearly there is a place for education and coordinated action among the common people.

[ericd]

Those were a lot easier to swap out. Oil is the foundation of modern society, CFCs were far from.