California sues oil companies over fraudulent denying of global warming.

[sandorski]

I've never once seen any information from an oil company claiming that burning oil didn't cause pollution.

Cool. Look around more.

 

[HomerJS]

Are you suggesting that someone doesn't know about air pollution? Or that virtually every American family doesn't have a car? Or that most of them don't have air conditioning? Or that we don't just love to fly around the world in monster jets gobbling down fuel by the ton?

Trying to blame all of this on the oil company's is a joke. They didn't force us to use oil to build a first world nation, we begged them for it. We've known for decades that it was a bad idea, but none of us are willing to give up all of our nice stuff to help solve the problem.
Now California wants to pretend that those evil oil company's tricked us into thinking it was a safe and logical thing to do because it's an easy way to snag a few billion dollars. Maybe they'll use the money to finish the medium speed train that goes from nowhere to nowhere. I'm sure that will help solve the problem.

I'm saying that anyone who buys into the solution for energy problems is "drill baby drill" is completely ignorant.

 

[HomerJS]

I've never once seen any information from an oil company claiming that burning oil didn't cause pollution.

Get a load of this...

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/12/09/politics/big-oil-disinformation-record-profits-climate/index.html#:~:text=Big%20Oil%20companies%20have%20engaged%20in%20a%20%E2%80%9Clong-running,into%20climate%20disinformation%20from%20the%20fossil%20fuel%20industry.

 

[Perknose]

@Greenman Your concern for the billionaire oil barons is touching, while your username here is unintentionally hilarious.

TL;DR I'm simultaneously laughing and crying.

 

[Greenman]

@Greenman Your concern for the billionaire oil barons is touching, while your username here is unintentionally hilarious.

TL;DR I'm simultaneously laughing and crying.

As far as California goes, they're welcome to do whatever they want. My actual concern is what the suit will do to fuel prices should California win. Everyone seems to think that some rich guy will have to sell a few of his mansions to pay it off should California win, that absolutely won't be how it plays out. They might get fired and have to settle for 150' yacht instead of the 200' they really wanted, but that's about it. Any settlement will be rolled into the cost of doing business and added to the product price. That will be amortized over X number of years and us consumers will pay the bill as increased prices. It can't happen any other way.

Teaching them a lesson by forcing them to increase prices is a fools game. If they committed a crime then charge the perps and toss them in jail for ten years.

 

[brycejones]

As far as California goes, they're welcome to do whatever they want. My actual concern is what the suit will do to fuel prices should California win. Everyone seems to think that some rich guy will have to sell a few of his mansions to pay it off should California win, that absolutely won't be how it plays out. They might get fired and have to settle for 150' yacht instead of the 200' they really wanted, but that's about it. Any settlement will be rolled into the cost of doing business and added to the product price. That will be amortized over X number of years and us consumers will pay the bill as increased prices. It can't happen any other way.

Teaching them a lesson by forcing them to increase prices is a fools game. If they committed a crime then charge the perps and toss them in jail for ten years.

No company should ever face civil liability is certainly an interesting take….

 

[Moonbeam]

As far as California goes, they're welcome to do whatever they want. My actual concern is what the suit will do to fuel prices should California win. Everyone seems to think that some rich guy will have to sell a few of his mansions to pay it off should California win, that absolutely won't be how it plays out. They might get fired and have to settle for 150' yacht instead of the 200' they really wanted, but that's about it. Any settlement will be rolled into the cost of doing business and added to the product price. That will be amortized over X number of years and us consumers will pay the bill as increased prices. It can't happen any other way.

Teaching them a lesson by forcing them to increase prices is a fools game. If they committed a crime then charge the perps and toss them in jail for ten years.

This is not the way to frame the issue in my opinion. Allowing oil companies to profit by selling oil at a price that does not include it's true cost in damage to society allows those companies to put that money in their own pockets. They profit while future generations face extinction. I think people into whose pockets the money went should be forced to surrender it and used to help us get off fossil fuels. if prices rise how is that a penalty when the real cost is human extinction.

 

[Greenman]

This is not the way to frame the issue in my opinion. Allowing oil companies to profit by selling oil at a price that does not include it's true cost in damage to society allows those companies to put that money in their own pockets. They profit while future generations face extinction. I think people into whose pockets the money went should be forced to surrender it and used to help us get off fossil fuels. if prices rise how is that a penalty when the real cost is human extinction.

So tax the crap out of it. Rather than a one time payout that the state will blow on something stupid, it becomes a regular income stream that they can steer to their friends to work on zero emissions energy.

 

[desy]

It is so very complicated
Subsidies, high paying jobs, peak oil, integration into every thing made, let alone transportation. . . .

For sure oil companies used Heartland to confuse the public with denial, same as Tabaco companies did. However there is little benefit to that product, but we can't live without fossil fuels, at all, so I'm not sure how retroactively acting punishments furthers the position of the people in advancing alternatives. We still need these companies for decades to deliver what they have always delivered, oil. The Earths population before oil was about 1 Billion and there is no substitute for it, it is going to be incredibly hard going forward.

 

[igor_kavinski]

there is no substitute for it

Yes there is. Bicycles and horse/donkey carts. 100% environment friendly. Yes, deliveries will get slowed down by days, weeks or months but everything slowing down will bring back some sanity to the entire world that is currently going insane from the breakneck pace of progress.

 

[desy]

Yep the population of the world was 1 Billion or so when that was the deal. So yes a great die-off and it could be possible to go back to that time.

Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit? | Brookings

Why are fossil fuels so hard to quit, even though we know that using them damages the planet? Samantha Gross explains how we became reliant on fossil fuels, why it has proven so hard to change course, and why the politics of blame won’t solve our climate problem.

www.brookings.edu

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

What we need in my opinion is a methodology for keeping psychopaths and sociopaths out of positions of power.

Randomized selection for all elected positions should do it.

 

[Moonbeam]

So tax the crap out of it. Rather than a one time payout that the state will blow on something stupid, it becomes a regular income stream that they can steer to their friends to work on zero emissions energy.

As I have said, we are all prisoners of our assumed beliefs. If the real nature of all human beings who work government jobs is as you describe, your point of view would make perfect sense. What I believe you have not taken into consideration is that all government employees are not actually as you describe, but rather that you have been convinced over a lifetime of propaganda to see them that way. In our capitalist system the business interests of psychopaths does not fit well with sound government regulations and billions have been spent by them sowing discontent. All that is required in to play on our feelings of self-worthlessness to convince us that it is the existence of shitty self-serving government that makes us feel that way. In this way psychopaths turn us into tools for their benefit.

I believe that in fact as many good people work in government as anywhere else, that most of them are as basically decent as you are. I believe also, in fact, that your career as a small business owner in the construction sector would have never bee possible with government regulation preventing you from being eaten by larger corporations alive which means that you have been duped in the past to vote against your own self interests.

 

[Moonbeam]

Randomized selection for all elected positions should do it.

I don't know that I understand exactly what you mran by this but my very first thought is that I would not particularly want a random individual running the nuclear regulatory agency.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I don't know that I understand exactly what you mran by this but my very first thought is that I would not particularly want a random individual running the nuclear regulatory agency.

I mean, I bet he'd care about his decision making given the consequences. Moreso than the sociopath anyhow.

 

[woolfe9998]

You're mistaking commerce for burglary. Everyone with an IQ over 85 understands that burning billions of barrels of petroleum distillates isn't going to end well. It's been known for decades. The oil company's are no more to blame than the consumers, but that's only an aside to my point. We can fine the oil company's a trillion dollars, but that money isn't going to appear out of thin air, it's going to come from the proceeds of selling oil and it's byproducts. If that means fuel or heating oil have to sell for twenty bucks a gallon then that's what it will sell for.

I'm no fan of Exxon or Shell, but the idea that there won't be vast and unpleasant repercussions should California win is absurd. It would be far more sensible to add a three dollar a gallon federal tax to fuel and use that money to fund renewable energy sources and environmental clean up. The one absolutely certain fact is that if we want the oil company's to pay billions, they're going to charge us billions.

No. The oil compamies actively engaged in deception. You say "everyone with an IQ over 85 knows"? Well they sure have pretended not to. All those conservatives who have been denying climate change, or denying it's man made, were basing it on propaganda, much of which originated with these oil companies. All those deceptive charts and graphs on wattsup.com or whatever, they came from conservative think tanks who in turn received funding directly from companies like Exxon, etc. This has made it difficult for the two political parties to cooperate in addressing climate change, and in turn has helped maintain oil company profits.

There is an external cost to all of this pollution and it's about time the polluters started paying for it. If they raise gas prices, well there are alternatives now. There are fuel efficint hyrbids and EV's. Any increase in prices will only cause us to transition to these even more quickly, meaning they'll be out of business even sooner.

 

[thilanliyan]

Yes there is. Bicycles and horse/donkey carts. 100% environment friendly.

What about the methane emissions from the donkeys?! Checkmate!!

 

[Brainonska511]

Yes there is. Bicycles and horse/donkey carts. 100% environment friendly. Yes, deliveries will get slowed down by days, weeks or months but everything slowing down will bring back some sanity to the entire world that is currently going insane from the breakneck pace of progress.

Deliveries don't only have to be by truck. Cargo bikes make a lot of sense for last-mile delivery in the denser parts of cities, and you see that adoption in Europe. And local delivery trucks for other areas probably makes a lot of sense to move to electric vehicles. Switzerland (and the history of US freight rail, pre-interstates) shows how you can do many regional deliveries by freight train. We don't necessarily have to give up many modern conveniences - we just need to embrace a changing of the built environment (which will of course take time) instead of the sprawl that has basically been forced upon us by the crappy choices of our forefathers that have somewhat locked us into the automobile and trucks.

 

[Moonbeam]

Counter-Economics: The Real Reason Why Many On The Right Fear Clean Technologies & Energy Efficiency - CleanTechnica

It's pretty clear that mainstream Republicans used to sing a very different tune when it comes to alternative fuels and EVs.

cleantechnica.com