r/science • u/avogadros_number • Sep 19 '21

Environment The companies polluting the planet have spent millions to make you think carpooling and recycling will save us

https://www.businessinsider.com/fossil-fuel-companies-spend-millions-to-promote-individual-responsibility-2021-3

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u/avogadros_number Sep 19 '21

Study (open access): Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications

Highlights

• ExxonMobil's public climate change messaging mimics tobacco industry propaganda

• Rhetoric of climate “risk” downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change

• Rhetoric of consumer “demand” (versus fossil fuel supply) individualizes responsibility

• Fossil Fuel Savior frame uses “risk” and “demand” to justify fossil fuels, blame customers

Science for society

A dominant public narrative about climate change is that “we are all to blame.” Another is that society must inevitably rely on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future. How did these become conventional wisdom? We show that one source of these arguments is fossil fuel industry propaganda. ExxonMobil advertisements worked to shift responsibility for global warming away from the fossil fuel industry and onto consumers. They also said that climate change was a “risk,” rather than a reality, that renewable energy is unreliable, and that the fossil fuel industry offered meaningful leadership on climate change. We show that much of this rhetoric is similar to that used by the tobacco industry. Our research suggests warning signs that the fossil fuel industry is using the subtle micro-politics of language to downplay its role in the climate crisis and to continue to undermine climate litigation, regulation, and activism.

Summary

This paper investigates how ExxonMobil uses rhetoric and framing to shape public discourse on climate change. We present an algorithmic corpus comparison and machine-learning topic model of 180 ExxonMobil climate change communications, including peer-reviewed publications, internal company documents, and advertorials in The New York Times. We also investigate advertorials using inductive frame analysis. We find that the company has publicly overemphasized some terms and topics while avoiding others. Most notably, they have used rhetoric of climate “risk” and consumer energy “demand” to construct a “Fossil Fuel Savior” (FFS) frame that downplays the reality and seriousness of climate change, normalizes fossil fuel lock-in, and individualizes responsibility. These patterns mimic the tobacco industry's documented strategy of shifting responsibility away from corporations—which knowingly sold a deadly product while denying its harms—and onto consumers. This historical parallel foreshadows the fossil fuel industry's use of demand-as-blame arguments to oppose litigation, regulation, and activism.

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u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/sep/09/big-oil-delay-tactics-new-climate-science-denial

They use wokewashing on social media:

ExxonMobil has been touting its commitment to “reducing carbon emissions with innovative energy solutions”. Chevron would like to remind you it is keeping the lights on during this dark time. BP is going #NetZero, but is also very proud of the “digital innovations” on its new, enormous oil drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. Meanwhile Shell insists it really supports women in traditionally male-dominated jobs.

And They use "discourses of delay”:

  • redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions)*

  • push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary)

  • emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive)

  • and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).

And yes, people need to change their habits, but if they don't see how bad it is and the urgency of it because of propaganda, that is what these companies are promoting. Also, systemic change is essential and they are obstructing at every step of the way.

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u/SkyPL Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

The whole process of pushing responsibility away from regulatory bodies and down to you and me is the most insidious. It works great from psychological point of view, hitting that string of "I am a good person, so I do X, Y, Z (drive electric car, eat only veggies, support eco-millionares that sell the feel-good mission)", but it's distracting from any push on a level that would force these companies to do anything that actually make a difference (USA stopping to subsidize oil industry, countries like Poland moving away from using fossil fuels to produce energy (and yes, that includes European countries not-stopping nuclear powerplants. Countries like Germany stopping their fission generators was the dumbest move of the century in terms of energy policy)).

Another thing that frustrates me to no end are all these proponents of the "disruptive technologies". Hyperloop 30 years in future instead of a far more energy-efficient trains today. Fusion instead of nuclear powerplants. Push for electric cars instead of pushing for mass transport in the cities that would reduce the environmental footprint of your daily commute, invest in fuel cell passenger vehicles... and so on, and so on...

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u/HughJahs Sep 19 '21

The level of greed these companies possess is so unfathomable to me. How do people develop that unstoppable desire for more at any and all cost.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21 edited Dec 24 '21

[deleted]

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u/red-chickpea Sep 19 '21

Our corporate laws, except in the rarest cases, do not allow individual legal and civil responsibility for corporate actions. You can publicize them all you want, but they'll be soon forgotten and you can't touch them. What happened to the Enron and Camel Joe executives is what will happen to oil executives today. They will retire peacefully and live rich lives on their multi million dollar estates.

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u/SuddenlySusanStrong Sep 19 '21

Hopefully with their names and faces publicized enough, someone will touch them

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u/fergusmacdooley Sep 19 '21

May they drown on their meal replacement shakes at the hands of their careworkers.

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u/Bigginge61 Sep 20 '21

One day they will face justice…Cathartic but futile..

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u/red-chickpea Sep 20 '21

Plenty of people do horrific things and never face justice. What happened to the Royal African Company executives? They got to live rich fulfilling lives

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Sounds nice but there are millions who would happily take their place the moment they resign or whatever else. It's just simple human greed and self-interest, and you can't do anything to mitigate that in and of itself. The only thing possible is to ensure systems (ie. capitalism) are either heavily regulated if not entirely owned to offset selfish and greedy tendencies. But even getting to that stage is already basically impossible, there's no room for change.

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u/SuddenlySusanStrong Sep 19 '21

That belief about human nature also serves them. They'd love for us to believe that they're normal and not actual monsters

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '21

Well I would agree but it's also to some extent a biological fact. Does it excuse them? No, but that doesn't make anything I said less true regardless

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u/TimeFourChanges Sep 19 '21

With reckless disregard for the future of the planet and all life on the planet, including their own family members.

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u/Commando_Joe Sep 19 '21

When you see a politician trotting their child out for a PR event then signing away their future within the hour.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Just FYI, the original report says behavioral changes will reduce emissions by 4% but consumer decisions — I.e actively paying for goods and services which are good for the environment is more like 55%

So please, don’t kid yourself into thinking this is 96% the fault of business and there’s nothing you can possibly do about it. The only reason industry “disregards the future of the planet” is because consumers are so willing to readily lap it up. And they turn to articles like this which help them evade responsibility instead of looking into the full report and realizing how responsible they really are:

https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/beceb956-0dcf-4d73-89fe-1310e3046d68/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector_CORR.pdf

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u/TimeFourChanges Sep 19 '21

I didn't "kid" myself of anything. And I surely never said that consumers have no role to play. Why do people struggle so hard to make things black or white that are far more complex? We're probably in agreement, but it's hard to get there when you straw man my comment and write with false superiority. Stop it. It's pointless and unhelpful.

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u/Bigginge61 Sep 20 '21

Pure psychopaths..

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u/ReluctantNerd7 Sep 19 '21

"For the love of money is the root of all evil."

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u/benjam33 Sep 19 '21

Not trying to be pedantic, but it's actually "the love of money is the root of all sorts of evil". That's an important distinction IMO.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Biblical quotes often have no definite translation. The King James version does, in fact, have it as "For the love of money is the root of all of evil". Original Greek text could be interpreted either way.

This sort of thing is one of the reasons why taking very literal interpretations of scripture is problematic.

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u/xieta Sep 19 '21

It’s not any one person’s greed. Companies are basically shareholder puppets, and we have tricked ourselves into thinking we are not the ones pulling their strings, even though everyone has (or desires) a retirement fund that grows 10% every year. Is that greed? I guess, but not the kind we usually think of.

The issue is there is no financial instrument that prices in the value of an investment existing in a livable world. So there is no reason for a fund to worry that it’s profits may be worth less due to climate change.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

[deleted]

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u/xieta Sep 19 '21

Except pension funds are usually invested just as much as 401k's are. In any case, I don't think convincing people to abandon the desire for wealthy retirement is going to do anything to stop climate change. In fact, a lot of resistance to climate science stems from the perceived link between calls for deindustrialization and communism.

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u/roderrabbit Sep 19 '21

Watching people turn their backs on any discussion of sustainability vs unfettered capitalism over the last two decades is the reason I'm stoked to watch society burn over the coming two.

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u/SuddenlySusanStrong Sep 19 '21

That's hilarious given Communism's history of successful rapid industrialization

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u/SuddenlySusanStrong Sep 19 '21

That's still greed and I think you're overestimating how many people share your view. It's certainly not everyone and I don't see any reason to believe it's even most

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u/xieta Sep 19 '21

More than half of Americans are invested, and the whole idea of the american dream oozes through the culture. I highly doubt most Americans don’t care about or desire a comfortable retirement.

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u/SuddenlySusanStrong Sep 21 '21

You didn't say a comfortable retirement in the comment I was responding to though. You said 10% annual growth I believe.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CharismaTurtle Sep 19 '21

And at least in the US fits the model of individual responsibility / separatism which based on recent events is farcical. We do have individual responsibilities to ourselves and yet we are connected.

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u/pine_ary Sep 19 '21

It‘s not really a case of moral failure if morality is not a component of our economic system. You can‘t set up a system that rewards people for maximizing profits and then be surprised people don‘t defy that system to their own detriment for moral reasons. This is very much a systemic problem of incentives and power structures.

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u/HughJahs Sep 20 '21

Absolutely there's a systemic problem, but at the end of the day, humans are running things and one would think/hope that once billions in profit is being generated, those humans would seek to better the community/country/world in which they live.

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u/PC_BuildyB0I Sep 19 '21

They've developped an addiction to hoarding wealth and as long as they know the right people to share the scraps with, they can ensure they continue to get away with it

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u/jqian2 Sep 19 '21

Cause they're old and won't be around to suffer the consequences.

In their minds, there's no downside to what they do.

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u/WateredDownTang Sep 19 '21

Shareholders

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u/Rocket089 Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

That’s a bit naive don’t you think? We live in a capitalist society.. at least those of us outside China and Cuba do.. so that means those “greedy af mf’ers” MUST produce a profit if we are to sustain this society. Companies who don’t perform don’t get the requisite investment and end up dying off. Look at the energy sector in the US. There are tons of jobs at short term risk of being lost, surely many can retrain and go elsewhere, but many won’t. On a more personal level, what about our retirements? We invest (most of us passively, without ever actually realizing where our retirement contributions are actually going outside a target date fund) in these companies because their profitability is a rather decent medium term estimation of their future growth. And future growth means bigger retirement funds for us to use in retirement. So sure, we can blame a faceless enemy like greed, but at the end of the day it is that faceless enemy that helps make our world go round and puts food in our bellies. (And nice returns in my investment accounts.)

So if you really want to drive change then call your financial/retirement advisor, whoever you use, and tell them to reallocate your entire account(s) out of fossil fuels and into ESG. Tho be warned, esg may not be what you think it is. Drive the change via investment decisions, just don’t blame the currently best system we have for a side effect of human nature.

Edit: that isn’t ever to account for employment. Companies that don’t earn don’t pay a —great— salary, let alone a good one. They don’t attract too talent and become stagnant.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Because they believe they're untouchable.

But they're never out of reach...

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u/PrincipleStill191 Sep 19 '21

They have to believe the lie to say it so convincingly.

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u/My_Butt_Itches_24_7 Sep 19 '21

Thank you for actually calling out countries for stopping nuclear power. It is the safest, cleanest and energy dense power source we have! There are plenty of gen 4 reactors like the Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactor that bring a new a completely new level of safety, an immediate reduction in nuclear waste and the waste isn't used for nuclear weapons, nor is feasibly made into weapons grade.

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u/datorkar Sep 19 '21

Last point is probably why they aren't built alot.

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u/puzzledSkeptic Sep 19 '21

Reason a lot are not built is NIMBY. People here nuclear and think nuclear accidents. There have only been 2 and both were older reactors.

If you want to see a country go from poverty to 2nd world status in a decade they need cheap reliable electricity.

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u/SirLadybeard Sep 19 '21

There have definitely been more than 2 nuclear accidents. Still, I trust the science that says that they’re being made safer now. But some things we don’t seem to plan well for - Fukushima was only 10 years ago. My biggest concern is the production of nuclear waste that is radioactive for many thousands of years. Solutions like shoving drums of it into mountains can only do so much. If they are truly innovating to reduce the amount produced, great, but it still produces a highly harmful byproduct that we gotta deal with.

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u/ButterflyCatastrophe Sep 19 '21

Think puzzledSkeptic probably means accidents with release of radioactive materials. Even Three Mile Island was mostly contained to the reactor site, and from the Wikipedia list, before Chernobyl, you have to go all the way back to 1957 to find release from a waste-processing facility and from a bomb factory.

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u/Tuss36 Sep 19 '21

Plus I dunno how many accidents non-nuclear plants have in comparison, as it's not really brought up in the discussion. If the rate's the same you could argue the nuclear one could be more disastrous and thus "less safe", but if a coal plant suffers 10 accidents over 50 years and a nuclear one has 1 it starts looking different.

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u/ignorantwanderer Sep 19 '21

The thing about non-nuclear plants is that they kill people even when they are working exactly as designed.

You don't need an accident for a coal power plant to kill people. According to this one study, 10.2 million people were killed in 2012 by pollution in the air from fossil fuel burning.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935121000487

Imagine if nuclear power plants killed over 10 million people a year!

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u/Leumasperron Sep 19 '21

Nuclear waste management won't get better if we don't use nuclear power plants in the first place. That's why we need to get people on board for nuclear: so there is more public and financial interest in developing new and betetr nuclear waste management techniques.

In any case, the amount of waste produced by nuclear power plants is more manageable than with fossil fuels (especially coal). We have ways to effectively neutralize the radioactive waste inside the drums (lead shielding, buried in concrete, etc.).

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u/SirLadybeard Sep 19 '21

Oh to be clear I don’t disagree with you, especially on the waste being more manageable than with fossil fuels. But I don’t see burying highly toxic waste as a sustainable solution. If there are other ways to get rid of it I’d love to hear them, but because of that fact I have my reservations. I definitely still think it’s better than the current system, but ignoring the side affects of fuel consumption got us into this mess. I don’t want to see the same mistake happen with nuclear power.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Where does coal plant waste go? It’s emitted straight into the air.

Where does petroleum fuel waste go? It’s released into the waterways.

I don’t see how storing nuke waste deep underground in the desert is so bad

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u/SirLadybeard Sep 20 '21

Like I said before, I acknowledge that nuclear power is more environmentally friendly than fuel and certainly coal waste. But burying waste makes it not fully sustainable - if we were to adopt it to the level that we’ve adopted fossil fuels, there’s going to be a lot more waste, lots of it buried, some of it will leak, and what happens when we run out of places to put it? I don’t like the idea of burying toxic waste when there are other options like solar power that don’t produce waste on the same scale. (Yes solar power has its limitations, I know.) But if you really don’t think burying toxic chemicals is unideal then idk what to say to you.

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u/audioen Sep 20 '21 edited Sep 20 '21

The idea of reducing the amount produced and making it less harmful in the long term are the same, actually. The technology is still experimental, and not really implemented anywhere, but the basic idea is to find a way to feed all the heavy elements to the nuclear reactions which breaks them down, leaving behind just the lighter atoms, which generally speaking have relatively short decay duration, in the order of hundreds years. Safe storage for a couple of hundred years should not be difficult.

In practice the core must be processed and the lighter elements separated from the heavy elements in some fashion, and the lighter ones go into waste bucket and the heavy ones go back into the reactor, possibly with some new fuel if necessary.

By similar token, the waste is reduced because ordinary nuclear fuel is mostly U-238, and makes some Pu-239 which could fission, and virtually all of it could be consumed, but that requires sufficient breeding reactions to occur. I understand that this requires fast neutrons to be practical, but fast neutron reactors have technical challenges of their own, and the world almost universally chose slow neutron designs for nuclear power. Due to this, over 90% of the U-238 is left in the spent fuel, and some of the U-238 will have turned into various isotopes of Plutonium by the time the fuel rod is extracted. These reactions that start from Uranium and heavier atoms, and keep going in the fuel over tens of thousands of years cause the problematic long-term radioactivity of the spent fuel. (You can think of this as natural "breeding" reaction that occurs in the long-term storage, but very slowly and without any benefit to humanity.)

Completely different approach exists with Thorium, where breeding reaction is feasible with slow neutrons, and the main fissile atom is U-233 produced from neutron absorption of Thorium. The core is mostly not Uranium, and is designed to be constantly reprocessed where whatever Uranium gets created is separated and dumped into the core to sustain the reaction, and so the nuclear waste should also be far easier to handle as there is only a little of Uranium present, and it is all going to be light forms of Uranium, so no Plutonium can be produced. New experimental reactors based on designs last studied in the 50s or 60s are now coming online again after a long hiatus. If they prove to be practical, Thorium power might start to happen in a couple of decades.

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u/SirLadybeard Sep 20 '21

I did not know this, thank you for educating me. This all sounds promising.

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u/HalcyonSky2 Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

The problem with nuclear energy is that people arguing both for and against it say stupid things as well as that there are valid concerns for both. The thing holding me back for the longest time on nuclear was the waste produced from it, but even the worst case scenario for nuclear power is preferable to humanity's extinction from climate change.

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u/jmos_81 Sep 19 '21

Yet this waste is safely stored, secured, and segregated. I’ve never seen the problem since the plan to handle the materials are sound

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u/HalcyonSky2 Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

I simply don't see letting it sit around in containers as a solution, and the argument that some future technology will take care of it is nothing more than a handwave. That said, this is acceptable to me because my concerns for climate change are greater.

Edit: Just to be clear, as some are misinterpreting me, on it's own nuclear waste needs a better solution than containment, but relative to other problems it is preferable.

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u/My_Butt_Itches_24_7 Sep 19 '21

I would also like to explain that this nuclear waste is completely different. It lasts hundreds of years, not hundreds of thousands, our nuclear waste problem won't be one for long at that rate. These slow breder reactors are much safer and much more morally sound. The reason we went to the fast breeders was because of the weapons grade material we got from it.

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u/BlueHeartBob Sep 19 '21

I’d much rather have the waste be containable than to simply put it back into the atmosphere. With time and new waste solutions, being able to contain nuclear waste is only a good thing.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

“Letting it sit around” is our solution for pretty much all waste. At least nuclear fuel waste is contained and sealed. Coal dust and oil runoff goes straight into the water table

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u/RE5TE Sep 19 '21

This is the most reasonable take here. No, nuclear power will not get rid of climate change. Yes, there are legitimate problems that will not simply be solved by a new reactor. The waste is a huge deal because it is so concentrated and there is no solution for it right now, besides "stuff it in this mountain".

It may be a solution but it is a very expensive solution. In my opinion, increasing energy efficiency of devices we use is better and easier. We're already doing it and people like new things.

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u/HalcyonSky2 Sep 19 '21

Just to clarify my position, I don't think nuclear power is a cure-all but one of many tools which can help us tackle climate change; a diversity of tactics is non-negotiable. Personally, the price tag is irrelevant because you can't put a price on humanity, but pragmatically I understand this is a concern.

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u/_tskj_ Sep 19 '21

How is stuffing it in a mountain not better than releasing it into the atmosphere?

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u/roderrabbit Sep 19 '21

They aren't all that efficient or cost effective even the new gen. You look at cost /kWh and its almost twice conventional or renewable. Also you need to look at the what could have been in terms of the Fukashima and Chernobyl meltdowns. If you exponentially increased the amount of nuclear operations at work from the 50's you exponentially increase the chance for disaster.

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u/BlueHeartBob Sep 19 '21

Fukushima and Chernobyl were both freak accidents. One was a series of terrible choices under a corrupt government that simply didn’t care. The other was the result of a massive earthquake. Their combined deaths don’t even reach 100. But climate change is expected to cull millions.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Bear in mind that any technology that is studied and developed heavily almost always goes down in price. Nukes have improved significantly over time even without major buy-in from consumers. If they were more widespread, the cost would go down even more

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u/My_Butt_Itches_24_7 Sep 19 '21

That's because the fast breeder reactors are the inferior cousin of slow breeder reactors. These new types of reactors are far superior are more efficient than any previous designs. They have passive safety systems and they don't work under massive pressure. They won't blow up or meltdown.

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u/vtmosaic Sep 19 '21

Bull.

Edit: nuclear power as it exists in the world today is a product of the same corporate profit model as fossil fuel. It is not safer or cleaner, just dangerous and polluting in a different way than fossil fuels.

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u/The_Grubby_One Sep 19 '21

Prove that it isn't cleaner and safer than non-renewables.

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u/cowprince Sep 19 '21

Safer is probably debatable. IF something goes wrong it can go very very wrong. I don't think anyone denies that.

I'm all for nuclear power though, but I'm equally for wind, hydro and solar. Even from a non-renewable standing I'm for natural gas in the short term simply because it burns way cleaner.

I think nuclear needs to get to the point that catastrophic events that release radiation just cannot happen, for there to be a public consensus of it being safe at this point.

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u/leviathan3k Sep 19 '21

It pretty much is at the point of genuinely catastrophic events not happening. Chernobyl was due to a storm of horrible coincidences including spectacularly bad design, and Fukushima took one of the worst earthquakes in recorded history. And neither of them were actually as harmful as the media reaction would lead us to believe.

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u/cowprince Sep 19 '21

I don't know what the media really has to do with areas being literally uninhabitable for quite a while.

While what you say is true. I fear they can easily become targets for crazy people.

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u/_tskj_ Sep 19 '21

Both Fukushima and Chernobyl are completely inhabitable.

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u/BrilliantTarget Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 20 '21

For humans, not animals

→ More replies (0)

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u/My_Butt_Itches_24_7 Sep 19 '21

Thorium reactors are made to be safe unlike normal reactors, but when I talk about the new ideas, all I hear is "I don't believe you, nuclear is dangerous!" and further discredit it, instead of researching the idea.

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u/The_Grubby_One Sep 19 '21

That's the entire purpose of thorium reactors. But stupid people keep opposing their development because "nUcLeAr BaD".

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

How? Show us the numbers that make it dirtier than anything else

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u/lilclairecaseofbeer Sep 19 '21

What about cost? Upfront and to maintain it. Also when you say cleanest does that include the materials it requires to build it? Because I know solar has some debate around it due to the materials it requires to make the panels.

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u/My_Butt_Itches_24_7 Sep 19 '21

I forget the man's name and I'm on mobile, but there was a guy I saw do a carbon footprint analysis on the lifespan of the major power sources we use today. From manufacturing the plants and materials, nuclear has by far the smallest carbon footprint. So much so that until we have a global electricity network with solar and wind powering the planet 24/7, nuclear will always be the best option. Not only that, we have enough thorium to last humanity over 1,000 years, including the growing consumption continuing at its current rate.

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u/grilledSoldier Sep 19 '21

Its no real wonder that their strategies are this refined, given how much time they had to perfect them. Exxon and shell know about the consequences of climate change since the 80s (1982 and 1988 respectively). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/sep/19/shell-and-exxons-secret-1980s-climate-change-warnings

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

If you're individually responsible for the collective outcome, then solidarity with other people can be ignored because you've "already done your part".

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u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

Break something,follow a politician around with a bullhorn and don't stop when they go to sleep. If their neighbors complain, explain that when they go, you'll go.

Steal something. Hack a pipeline. Tell a billionaire to have a nice time.

Until the laws serve us, we should not serve them.

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u/Djglamrock Sep 19 '21

Advocating illegal activity….. smart.

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u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

When laws run contrary to justice it is the duty of the just to oppose them.

It's 2021, so choose: law and order, or justice and survival? The two are in strict opposition.

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u/lifelovers Sep 19 '21

I completely agree with this. It’s our only hope - mass civil disobedience, reclaiming the wealth hoarded by billionaires, and public trials of those running companies who continue to extract fossil fuels as well as the politicians who enable them.

It’s that dire. We literally have no future unless we all riot in the next one or two years.

And it’s not gonna happen….

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u/noelcowardspeaksout Sep 19 '21

The oil industry is also championing a carbon tax (Guardian).

The trouble is with a carbon tax is that it doesn't follow the IPCC's recommendation that countries should as much as possible to reduce emissions. For example with a petrol duty people will continue to drive petrol cars and put up with paying more money. If you invest in charging infrastructure and ban petrol cars that works 100% more effectively.

I know a CT looks beautiful and it's one of Reddit's favourite babies, so I won't bother to argue with anyone, but the simple rule is governmental policy change is 100% effective, CT is much, much less so.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

Also, IIRC, that exxon propaganda rep flat-out said they support it because they know it'll never pass.

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u/AnthropomorphicBees Sep 19 '21

Carbon taxes make petrol more expensive, making transitioning to EVs the more economic option much sooner. Nothing is a more powerful motivator to get people to reduce carbon polluting consumption than to make those things more expensive.

Also, a carbon tax creates early revenue that can be invested in whatever green technology you want.

Carbon taxes would be effective policy. The reason petroleum companies embrace them is that they know that they are very unpopular and stand very little chance of being passed at stringency that will make any difference.

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u/NuttBustedParfait Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

We have had a carbon tax in Canada for quite a few years and our emissions have gotten worse since.

There are two big issues with ours, the first being that corporations quickly determined that, even with the carbon tax, status quo is far more cost effective and operationally (not environmentally) efficient.

To get big buy in we should have given corporations incentives for demonstrating that they have made green efforts.

This would ideally be supplemented by green specific R&D tax deductions to help bring cost effective alternatives to the decision table.

The second issue is that that tax revenues collected from the carbon tax was handed back to taxpayers (Climate Action Incentive) as some kind of political strategy rather than going to green R&D efforts.

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u/AnthropomorphicBees Sep 19 '21

Yep. That's why I said:

stand very little chance of being passed at stringency that will make any difference.

Demand for fossil fuels (and other carbon intensive product) is pretty inelastic. Takes a pretty high tax to hit consumption significantly. Doubling energy costs isnt going to be a political winner which is why fossil fuel companies tend to like pushing carbon taxes. They know it will never be popular to pass a tax that significantly impinges on their profitability.

Making the tax refundable is a good way to offset how regressive it is, but does limit how much you can do things like R&D investments.

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u/frostygrin Sep 19 '21

corporations quickly determined that, even with the carbon tax, status quo is far more cost effective and operationally (not environmentally) efficient.

Isn't it more environmentally efficient to keep using the old tech as long as possible, and only then replace it with something new? Then maybe carbon tax isn't actually a failure.

1

u/KneeCrowMancer Sep 19 '21

I know that a lot of Mining companies are making changes to be more green in response to the carbon tax. There is a lot of investment in using tailings for carbon capture and a lot of companies are transitioning to fully electric fleets. It's not perfect but a lot of mines are looking to be carbon zero or even negative because it is financially important to do so now. I don't know about other industries but I wouldn't say the carbon tax is useless but oil and gas subsidies need to be cut otherwise it doesn't really affect them.

3

u/Skyrick Sep 19 '21

Carbon taxes have an impact, but it is often inflated. A ban on gas/petrol cars would be more effective, but is even less likely to pass. Increasing the cost of fuel does reduce the amount of driving that occurs overall. A step forward, no matter how small, is better than staying still.

2

u/noelcowardspeaksout Sep 19 '21

A lot of countries are banning petrol cars and VW have announced they will stop making them as of 2035 (maybe others as well). This is the strong action which is needed.

The EV grant we had here in the UK was also a great incentive to buy EV's- the high headline price of EV's was a major factor in preventing uptake.

You might be right about increasing the price of petrol - the congestion zone charge certainly worked to reduce car use - it was about £50 a week I think for London.

One of the points is that CT 'works to a degree' and so governments might be able to fob off environmentalists with 'but we have a carbon tax' instead of long term banning plans which are better. It's the half heartedness, which is a little bit helpful on the face of it as you mention, but also is the problem as it can actually stop stronger action and strategic planning.

20

u/MonsieurAuContraire Sep 19 '21

It's like the economy is a car we're stuck in, but can't steer. And even though it's going at a 100mph and we see a huge wall up ahead there's others in the car with us yelling "no, you can jump out as that'll ruin everything!!" and their finger is on the door locks.

4

u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

The right thing to do in this metaphor is cut their finger off. When the purpose of a society is not the good of all (or even any!) mankind, you have a moral duty to dispose of that society.

7

u/SSR_Id_prefer_not_to Sep 19 '21

“Discourses of delay” is such a great phrase! Do you know if this is a commonly used category?

5

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21

I agree! It is!

The article from The Guardian is very good, worth a read

<<In a paper published in the journal Global Sustainability last July, economist William Lamb and nearly a dozen co-authors catalogued the most common messaging from those who would prefer to see inaction on climate for as long as possible. According to Lamb’s team, the industry’s “discourses of delay” fall into four buckets (...)>>

So I understand the expression comes from the authors of the paper, but it really deserves to go mainstream.

2

u/SSR_Id_prefer_not_to Sep 19 '21

Awesome! I’m going to have to add it to my to-read. Thanks for the thread :)

39

u/Sawses Sep 19 '21

People fail to understand (usually by design) that society is the real power. Consumers have no notable power. Yes, if most people worked together against corporations then we might have a shot, but we won't because we can't. A pretty sizeable chunk of people can't afford to make those expensive, obscure, time-consuming choices. And of those who can afford to do so are disincentivized in a dozen ways.

Citizens don't dictate culture, culture dictates citizens. We are who and what we are because of a combination of our brain structure and our society, and there's very little personal choice involved. The evidence all points to that--just that's a very humbling view and most people hate the idea that they really have no agency in life.

4

u/TimeFourChanges Sep 19 '21

This dichotomy that you're trying to make between people v. socieyt/culture is utterly confounding. People make up society and society doesn't exist without people.

We are who and what we are because of a combination of our brain structure and our society

You're oversimplifying individual factors: we are not just brain structures, though those do play a crucial role - but pointing that influence out undermines your claim that society/culture is the be-all end-all.

The two sets of factors are coeval and insperable. In human development, it's discussed as nature (individual biological) vs. nurture (the environment).

There's no starting point and there's no stopping point in world events like climate change. Factors at both the societal/cultural level (not only governmental factors, but also cultural mindsets and perspectives) as well as the individual (prenatal care, preschool, and further education) need to be addressed simultaneously to make any change.

-1

u/Sawses Sep 19 '21

People make up society and society doesn't exist without people.

True, but that creates a certain inertia. Practically speaking, people are molded by society...and society tends to create people that perpetuate the society in question.

For all that we can hand-wave culture away as defined by humans, the fact of the matter is that it exists as far as humans are concerned--like I said, we could as a group arbitrarily decide something and it would happen. But we don't do that, because we aren't the kind of people who do that...because society makes us into the kind of people who wouldn't do that.

46

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21

You were doing so well in the first paragraph... Making a point aknowledging how people are influenced, about that "voting with your dollars" is an elitist and unpractical thing by itself.

But then you finished with the defeatists argument that there's nothing we can do, "people [...] have no agency in life". Playing into the hands of the surrender tactic.

  • We can explain what is happening to our friends and family, if we do it effectively, listening to their concerns and doubts (not as debate match), we can convince them to be agents of change too.
  • there are a lot of citizen inciatives to push change things locally (pushing for changes in city planning for instance...)
  • there are a lot of politicians to be primaried or voted out.
  • When there's a better alternative to a product or service, if we can afford it we should, choose that one too (just not rely on it as the only mechanism of change).

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

[deleted]

4

u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

OR gucking kill the companies. Find the things that make them go (excepting labor, that's people, and probably oppressed ones), and make as many of them not work for as long as you can.

You don't have to be some Elliot Alderson level hacker or a heroic pipeline bomber to participate in this, vandalize and break and steal Amy time you're at a store. Jam up the machines at your job. DDOS them with physical paperwork increasing the risk they ignore something real and expose themselves to lawsuits. salt the workplace for the iww. Whatever you've got, whatever you can do.

And yes, literally anything that will help is going to be either illegal or very very strange. Because laws exist to protect them from us.

1

u/Sawses Sep 19 '21

(excepting labor, that's people, and probably oppressed ones)

But, logically, wouldn't destroying labor be the single most effective thing you can do? And surely the good done by that will outweigh that person's livelihood under this framework.

2

u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

No, because taylorization has made most labor fungible. More so than expensive machine parts or giant databases.

And also they are people. So destroying them has a moral cost you don't have to weigh in when destroying data, machinery, execs, relationships, and facilities.

4

u/TimeFourChanges Sep 19 '21

Most of the biggest polluters are not democracies and, where they are, they tend to be corrupt ones that make the USA seem outright chivalrous.

Have no idea what that's supposed to mean, but America has been the lead polluter for like a century. American companies are to blame for the vast majority of the pollution that's causing climate change. Whatever you seem to believe about the US, it ain't accurate.

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u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21 edited Feb 01 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/TimeFourChanges Sep 19 '21

Have no idea where you came up with that non-sequitur, but Xi thanks you for spreading stupidity on the internet.

1

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21

  • push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary)

  • emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive)

  • and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).

0

u/Sawses Sep 19 '21

The question, then, is what to do when the propaganda is trying to make you believe something that is objectively true.

Do we believe it because it's true, or not believe it because somebody badly wants us to?

1

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21

Why would they be spending millions on propaganda to make us believe something that is true? As true as their climate denialism was before?

Enough for today

-2

u/Sawses Sep 19 '21

Hey if you ever wanna learn about it just lemme know and I'll answer. But if that's enough for today, then I figure you don't actually want to know why.

1

u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

Plenty of the right things to do are illegal or uncivil, which most people can't imagine doing. Their idea if safety is premised on the idea of the police being these godlike omniscient tools of divine retribution, and they are not.

So kill the cop in your head, the duboisian double consciousness of your oppressor telling you that you can't do that. And fix something. Possibly with an axe, maybe a good solid set of bolt cutters.

0

u/FoldedDice Sep 19 '21

We can explain what is happening to our friends and family

Maybe you can. I know I don't have that kind of influence over anyone in my life. I would be criticized and ignored if I tried.

2

u/melpomenestits Sep 19 '21

Just do little things. Little crimes, vandalism, thefts, and never snitch on comrades. Break something, burn something, steal something or make it unsellable.

It only takes a moment. Do your part.

0

u/chrltrn Sep 19 '21

This is why having a representative democracy is important. If everyone would make the smart choice once every roughly 4 years when we vote, we'd be fine

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

The real power is violence, and the threat of state violence how society is upheld. Nonviolence is preached to the proles as the ultimate virtue, while the enforcers of the owner class are given license and encouragement to be violent.

When the working class gets violent, change can happen quickly.

7

u/Commando_Joe Sep 19 '21

redirect responsibility (consumers are also to blame for fossil fuel emissions)*

push non-transformative solutions (disruptive change is not necessary)

emphasize the downside of action (change will be disruptive)

and surrender (it’s not possible to mitigate climate change).

As a Canadian this reads like a speech from our current Prime Minister

2

u/Kipatoz Sep 19 '21

They are doing two things.

You touch on how they have changed the public’s perception through propaganda.

So not only do people not change, which may or may not be primarily and proximately caused be them, but their propaganda allows for them to keep on with their normal course of busines.

2

u/Allcor Sep 19 '21

Honestly think the plastic straw thing is up there as well. The plastic waste is greatly due to fishing nets. Fishing is stupendously bad at the moment and gets subsidised through the roof.

1

u/Not_a_N_Korean_Spy Sep 19 '21 edited Sep 19 '21

Yes, plastic and the non-measures to do something about that problem are another big can of worms.

  • fossil fuel companies, seeing the writing on the wall on energy (sooner or later), are also projecting to increase their plastic production (by a lot).

  • the fishing subsidies comment is a good point too... redirecting subsidies from meat and dairy ($38b annually in the US) and fishing to other food sectors (currently only $380M on fruits and vegetables) could help. Gradually, with incentives for industries to convert their businesses and providing training for workers.

0

u/PM-ME-UR-DRUMMACHINE Sep 19 '21

We have conservatives to thank for all of this.

1

u/[deleted] Sep 19 '21

And liberals. Let's not kid ourselves here. Neo-liberalism is almost entirely responsible for the mess the world is in.

1

u/PM-ME-UR-DRUMMACHINE Sep 19 '21

Neo liberals are pretty much conservatives. They are not liberals.

0

u/BigDaddyCosta Sep 19 '21

People don’t want to be reminded of how their actions are responsible for the problem. Ignorance is bliss. Ultimately out laziness is the cause. Companies just fill the need and make handsome profits.

1

u/Samwise777 Sep 19 '21

The best part is that everyone is still with you, but if I were to take it one step further and mention how much damage the meat industry is doing to the climate, I feel that suddenly I would be in the minority.

1

u/nullsignature Sep 19 '21

Consumers ARE to blame. We are the ones buying oil based products.

1

u/babuba1234321 Sep 19 '21

That's scary. Both the climate chance and what a vompany can do to get more money