Pretty soon, everybody in the world is going to be suing oil companies:
The state of California has sued five of the largest oil and gas companies in the world, alleging that they engaged in a “decades-long campaign of deception” about climate change and the risks posed by fossil fuels that has forced the state to spend tens of billions of dollars to address environmental-related damages.
There's not much question that oil companies have been aware of climate change for a very long time. Here's a set of findings from Exxon Mobil going back nearly 50 years:
The Exxon scientists did good work! The red lines show actual levels through 2015 (temperature and CO2 concentrations), and they match the Exxon projections very closely. Exxon has known for a long time what the burning of fossil fuels was doing to the planet—and other industry groups have known even longer.
But I'm still uneasy about these lawsuits. Oil companies are obviously no heroes, but the real defenders of climate change denialism are much easier to find: us. All of us. Even now, when the evidence of climate change is unquestionable, we keep burning oil and gas and coal in prodigious quantities. And we aren't doing it because of oil company propaganda. We're doing it because we don't want to give up our cars and air conditioners and plastic bottles:
It's true that solar power has finally started to inch onto this chart, though it's still so small you can barely see it. And keep in mind that solar didn't start to take off until 2015. We were flatly not willing to use it if it meant any increase whatsoever in electricity prices. We only started to use it when the price of solar fell to a point that absolutely no sacrifice was necessary.
So sure, sue the oil companies. Why not. But don't think of them as the big villains in the climate change story. We're the villains. All the oil companies did was make a lot of money giving us what we desperately demanded from them.
When I mention to people that we installed solar panels, I am uniformly asked one question. “Will they pay for themselves?”
Huh? Why? Did my kitchen remodel pay for itself? My landscaping? No. But I feel at least as good not burning natural gas to heat my home as I do having new kitchen cabinets. And this is Seattle. My poor sister who lives in Georgia is simply mocked by her neighbors for having solar panels—until she shows them her electric bill.
Yes, when given the choice between an improvement to life and living low compared to others, we'll take the improvement.
That doesn't mean we chose to build cities/suburbs for automobiles instead of buses and trains.
That doesn't mean we chose the majority of home electricity to come from coal.
That doesn't mean we chose to offer single use utensils and cups instead of washables.
The ruling class did, and that includes the oil company execs who did their capitalist best to make a profit while killing the planet.
If individual action cannot solve climate change, then individual action is hardly the most worthy of blame.
You forgot to include all the people on a vendetta against HSR because they prefer to sit in traffic and wait in airport security queues, and be wadded up like an sardine in an airplane. I know, seems crazy, but they are out there. As for evil, you know we did use to have efficient, comfortable transit in American cities. The city of San Francisco keeps the PCC cars around so people can marvel at how nice mass transit could be. There are reasons that we have the crap transit vehicles that we have today and it surely isn't because the riders wanted them.
My mother served as a Navy nurse in WWII at the San Diego naval base. She could ride a trolley from San Diego to Los Angeles to take lessons at an Arthur Murray dance studio. She said it was very reliable, and actually not a whole lot slower that than attempting to drive a car even back then. And definitely cheaper than buying and driving a car - and getting gas in wartime.
They usually went in a gang of nurse and junior officers to take classes together. So a mobile social event heading out and returning (and a group discount on top of the military discount). As a result, she ALSO knew which male officers would reliably NOT step on her feet or try to feel her up. (Sorry - but remember the era.)
She was no fainting rose, either. I quickly found out as a kid that when she asked me to bring something from her purse it was a good idea to bring the purse to her. She always had at least a couple of very sharp scalpels in there. Some Oklahoma farm girls can be scary.
HSR is not about replacing air travel between SF and LA. It is about opening the Central Valley as bedroom communities.
You may be right. But, based on the evidence so far, HSR in California is about burning immense amounts of cash for a feel-good gesture that will never operate.
Or do you have new information?
The movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit had the destruction of the trolly system as a plot point. I think it went over most people’s heads.
Why no mention of nuclear power? It doesn't have the intermittency problem of solar and wind.
Agreed. More nuclear power. But, more solar and wind power too. One isn't better than the other. They are all good in their own way.
Of course solar and wind are part of the solution. As for "better," nuclear *is* better in terms of constancy. Both solar and wind have the problem of intermittancy. Nuclear doesn't. Solar and wind are *not* good in that way.
Nuclear power is stupidly expensive, laughably unable to compete in the market with any other energy source except diesel generators. You might as well generate power by burning cash, though nuke admittedly pollutes less than that.
Piling on here but besides cost overruns, check the amount of waste they produce. A 70s study estimated that if we built Nukes to supply all America's needs in 50 years, we would generate 100 RR freight cars of waste- DAILY. Efficiencies since the 70's have probably gotten better but still ??
Because AFAIK no US nuclear power plant has EVER been built on time or on budget. I'm out in WA now. The memory of WPPS ("Whoops!") is strong as is the stench of Hanford.
I keep reading about wonderful new super-safe, inexpensive SMR (small modular reactors) like NUSCALE. I recently saw another entrant to the field. Problem is that they are too late and too lame - they were touted to be far cheaper and safer than the big, old custom designed and built monster reactors.
They are already more costly than solar or wind on a per KwH basis and they already have shown the same record of both cost overruns, cutbacks in units planned to be built, and delays in build schedules. And until they get a reasonable number of units on line to PROVE their claims of safe operations and can get investors to fully fund build-outs AND insurance WITHOUT requiring all kinds of bailouts, government subsidies, or screwing utility customers like WHOOPS did - they can go take a long walk off a short pier.
When it comes to a lifestyle concomitant with power only intermittently available ... you first.
Because the climate doomists only want THEIR solution. For them (not all environmentalists) it is about a personal agenda, and that hurts loads of people.
https://www.mattball.org/2023/08/net-zero-in-practice-is-war-on-poor.html
What's a "climate doomist?" It that someone who acknowledges the reality of anthropogenic climate change and the existential threat it poses to human society?
Ten likes!! Plus two. We're long since past the point of throwing everything but the kitchen sink into the energy mix - the sink needs to go in too, also the bathtub.
Nobody is talking about the one thing that can freeze CO2 emissions for a few decades until the planet fully transitions to nearly 100% green/renewable energy.
Zero population growth. (Would halt a ~30% increase by end of century.)
If that's not included in a policy mix to restrain global warming, you can forget it. They're not serious about the issue.
Zero population growth is a good idea - in fact negative growth would be even better. But that would not freeze CO2 emissions unless the living standard of the great majority of people in the world is frozen at a level far below that in the first world countries.
Despite claims that non-fossil energy is now cheaper, countries such as China and Indonesia are increasing their electric generation capacities with fossil fuels, including coal. China's severely declining birthrate is not preventing it from doing this. The people of these countries want what the advanced countries have, and if the leaders do not aim to provide it they could be ousted.
Yes, I thought about the rest of the world catching up with cars and other energy using devices, but thought that it wouldn't be a huge issue. Only thing I can say about that is that I suspect/hope that newer energy-consuming devices would be even more efficient and not so much petroleum based (ecar vs internal combustion).
Thanks for mentioning it.
The rest of the world catching up to first world standards of living is a huge issue. Per capita CO2 emissions in first world countries are a multiple of those in the rest of the world. Over 80% of the world's population would have multiply their per capita CO2 emissions by at least 4 or 5 in order to catch up to even the poorer Western European countries. That's enormous. We have no choice but to decarbonize, and to spread the technology, so that the people of the third world can improve their living standards WITHOUT multiplying their CO2 emissions.
How do you plan to implement zero population growth? How do you enforce it without invading numerous countries and then committing human rights violations to keep them from having kids?
Pretty much every prosperous country has a birth rate below the replacement level. The fertility rate in the US dropped below that rate in the early 1970s. Our population would have probably leveled off around 250 million or so without the large increase in the immigration rate that began about the same time.
It seems that if you improve healthcare, improve childhood life expectancy, improve the standard of living, and improve education...particularly the education of girls, then the birthrate falls. No invasions are required.
I read once that $10B/yr would be enough to provide birth control to every woman in the world who wants it, but can't afford it. Maybe it would be $20B/yr now. Chickenfeed for the G7.
One of the big contributors to the demographic transition is pensions. It used to be that if you weren't going to work until you died, you needed children to support you in your old age, preferably several of them. If you have a pension, even a miserly one like social security, you can retire without having children to support you.
lawnorder wrote "pensions".
Meh. The much bigger factor is education. The best birth control in the world is letting girls go to school. A woman with basic literacy has options in life, and women with options rarely choose to have lots of children.
I'm not sure which is the bigger factor, and I've never encountered a study that seeks to rank the factors in the demographic transition. In the days of my youth I spent some time in West Africa, in a country where birth control was readily available and free. At that time, the infant mortality rate (deaths before fifth birthday) was quite close to 50%, which meant that some families could have four children that would all grow to adulthood and others could have four children none of which would make it to adulthood. There were no pensions for most of the population.
The upshot is that people had lots of children in the hope that at least one or two of them would survive to support their parents in their old age. In that situation, reducing the infant mortality rate and introducing pensions both reduce the incentive to have lots of children.
You may not have noticed but birthrates around the world have plummeted in the past couple three decades. The global fertility level is only 2.3, which is only slightly higher than 2.1 (replacement level). And its falling. Already, no member of the OECD is at replacement fertility levels. Frankly, the only countries with high fertility rates anymore are in Africa and a few odd sots in the Middle East.
"And we aren't doing it because of oil company propaganda. We're doing it because we don't want to give up our cars and air conditioners and plastic bottles:"
Come on, Kevin. You think the fuel fossil industry spent billions on both propoganda, coverup and lobbying because it didn't work? Does the public at large bear some responsibility? Of course. But the fact is, MANY people have pushed for climate action that would cause them to give some things up, while many more were tricked by the the companies and the politicians and think tanks and scientist they paid off. Even in spite of all that we've managed to make huge strides in green energy and other climate change mitigation technology and policy. Imagine what could have been accomplished without that countervailing force?
+1
This is a bullshit post. There's a huge difference between not doing something that is difficult to do, and not doing something that is easy to do. And also for blaming all of us for the deficiencies of some of us.
Requiring new housing to not use gas is easy to do when building regulations demand it. Putting solar on new housing is even more cost effective than retrofitting it onto existing houses. Many of us are in favor of these policies that would lower our costs, but we can't have them.
Using mass transit is an easy choice when it is available. Using a bike is easier when there are safe bike lanes. But apparently we can't have those whether or not we are in favor of them.
PV was cost effective back around 2005 or 2006 in California, and that's when I installed solar on my roof. Sure, I waited until absolutely no sacrifice was necessary, but one heck of a lot of people didn't; many of them waited until 2015.
NEM 3 ...
Yeah, it is.
One of Kevin's throwaway tricks he stole from economists - strategically pretending he believes in homo economicus. Like this:
When Kevin shows me where one can avoid those things - I'm not talking about not using AC (I don't) or driving a car (I don't own one, I rent one maybe 8-10 times a year). I'm talking about living an ordinary life where I can grocery shop without the AC blasting on trucked-in vegetables. Where is this just a matter of wants?
Don't tell me I could move to the sticks and grow my own food. A handful of people can (and do), but that doesn't scale to a planetful of oil burners.
Don't tell me climate change is because Joe Sixpack is greedy. There is no realistic choice for the average US citizen to help things at this point, and when there might have been, what was going on?
I seem to remember some propaganda from the experts...
Bottom line, Kevin is capable of better trolling than this. Must be having an off day.
We (collectively) have been more than willing to accept what they have been selling. We were not dragged kicking and screaming into it. The freedom of being able to get into one's car at a moment's notice and go virtually anywhere we wanted. Case in point, Kevin's own nighttime astrophotography jaunts.
Or being able to enjoy fresh or frozen anything any time of the year. It didn't take much convincing at all to accept that.
I can see where one wants to be able to point at a villain and say "Not me" but it takes two for a transaction, which means it is also "Me too."
Note that you can only talk about this in terms of individual choice. That's because it makes no sense when you scale it up to look at the fact that there is no alternative for that individual to choose. Children are acclimated to accept cars as normal before they're developed enough to understand cost/benefit analysis. And once they are old enough, you want to lean on puritanical arguments to shame people into agreement. That's... not a winning sales method, but it is emotionally satisfying to a certain sort of person.
You are correct that it takes two to transact.
So where are the large scale communities that can accept those opting out? There is none, so there's no realistic choice that doesn't involve dropping out of mainstream society. The "choice" reduces to utterly unrealistic nonsense.
If you want to wear a neoliberal hairshirt, whatever. But don't pretend it does any good - it wastes energy preening that could otherwise be pressure on something that would make a difference, all the while convincing others that environmentalists are annoying scolds.
This is letting the oil companies off too easily. Yes, we as people drank up the cheap energy but so what? All of the economic babble about developing economies, cheap housing and transport, etc means nothing if we don't pay attention to one of the most basic precepts of economics - paying attention to cost. Only if we know the cost can we determine the net benefits. And if costs are entirely externalized and not at all accounted for then of course the benefits look great!
The conversations around reducing consumption of petroleum were a) national security and b) reducing pollution. When it seemed like new (and ever more expensive) versions of gasoline reduced pollution, there was very little reason as individuals to worry about this.
But, it was a lie. It was a fraud. The companies knew of the externalized costs and hid them. How is this different from medicines with nasty side effects? Cars (or tires) that are unsafe? They made money hand over fist for decades because the real costs of oil were hidden - and they likely wouldn't have if they'd been honest about those externalized costs. So yeah, sue them to balance out the books.
Perhaps crippling damages will motivate these companies to aggressively pursue zero emissions goals instead of lobbying to dilute and roll back legislation to promote the transition to renewables.
They could be part of the solution instead of being the problem.
"We're doing it because we don't want to give up our cars and air conditioners and plastic bottles."
Fossil fuel companies are culpable in this. They have lobbied both directly and indirectly for nearly a century to make and keep America as dependent on the use of fossil fuels as possible. That absolutely involves influencing consumer preferences via various advertising and PR campaigns, not to mention negative campaigns against alternatives (when they weren't buying up competitors to kill them).
And they have some culpability in our sprawl and its consequences, too, because the "American dream" of "freedom" of transportation by having your own vehicle was absolutely sold by the fossil fuel companies working in tandem with auto companies, and without that you don't get suburbia.
So, yeah - I'm not wary of these lawsuits at all. Bring them the fuck on.
Hmm? I see great success in that chart! From 1972 to 2022, US energy consumption barely moved, from 22 billion MWh to 26. There were 207M Americans in 1972 and 335M today, so per capita consumption has gone from 106 MWh/person to 78, a drop of about 1/4. That's in a time when wealth has gone up a lot! Our energy usage has become quite a bit more efficient per person and a lot more efficient per dollar GDP. CO2e emissions per capita have also declined. The peak year for the US was 2005 at 6 Gtonnes, and it was down to 5 in 2022. That's only a little more than it was 50 years ago when the population was 60% its current size.
Excellent point. People often forget that efficiency is one of the most cost-effective weapons for for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and should be part of the general assault we need to make to reduce the damage that we will suffer due to climate change.
The cigarette companies are NOT to blame for deceiving us for so many decades about the dangers of smoking. WE are to blame! All the tobacco companies did was to sell us what WE demanded.
Bah, humbug. You can do better, Kevin.
Total number of my fellow progressives I know who have cut back on airline flights and car road trips: 0.
(They're out there - I just don't meet 'em.)
Plenty have the following schtick memorized: "Individual changes won't help - it's the corporations who have to change."
Yeah, and if you stop buying tickets, they won't fly empty planes. Look up "boycott."
We can do that while we pass laws.
Hi there! Now you've met one.
I've seriously throttled my flying in the last decade - going from being a private pilot (with old planes literally using unburned gas to cool the engine) to not joining my wife on trips and holding to the "big trip" once every 5 years. I went with an electric car that seriously limited my driving freedom. I've got photovoltaic and solar hot water. Its the one place I'm willing to be an early adopter of "tech."
Its kinda like the old bumper sticker "If the People Lead then the Leaders will follow" - individuals have to make the first steps, build markets, build communities, build business models.
"We're doing it because we don't want to give up our cars and air conditioners and plastic bottles."
Lets take that by pieces. I'm perfectly willing to drive an EV, but the EV I want (Avvenire Spiritus) isn't scheduled to go into production until next year. In the meantime, I drive low miles in a fifteen year old fuel efficient compact car.
Where I live air conditioning is not of much value and few dwellings have it (it would be nice to have for about three weeks in the average year). My car came with air conditioning and I seldom use it.
As far as plastic bottles are concerned, I would be perfectly willing to revert to the glass bottles of my youth, although given the amount of energy used in producing glass bottles and in moving them around they may or may not be a better choice from an environmental viewpoint.
I'm 95% in agreement with KD. Most of the people I know who claim to be worried about climate change aren't buying BEVs and installing solar, etc.
But, the problem is enormous and individual choices will only go so far without mandates. That's why California's move to 100% ZEV (BEV) new sales by 2030 is critical and why more stringent energy efficiency codes are going to matter.
I would add that we need to focus on is massively expanded public transportation -- and make as much of it free (at least for the first decade) as possible.
Additionally, we need to focus on encouraging tiny homes and ADUs, by way of tax incentives (up front and through property taxes) and reduced cost, simplified permitting.
Great insight.
We cant really blame any company for anything because after all, they are just meeting demand. Whatever the problem might be, its actually the customers that are to blame. As long as a customer buys a product, that absolves the company.
I love the last piece of insight...all the companies have done is make money off the situation. Thats all! Nothing more! Cant really blame someone if all they have done is make money off of something that is causing massive harm to the broad populace.
lol, great insight/spin!!
I don't burn plastic bottles. They don't contribute to global warming.
Fossil fuel companies are certainly guilty of many lies to slow down down adoption of CO2 emmission reducing policies, which "us" didn't do. So they are musch more guilty than "us".
Additional point, that was not mentioned yet, is the "our lie" attitude that the fossil fuel companies and the Republican party adopted towards "climate change hoax". That is: to be an elected Republican, you must lie about "climate change hoax". That was a big step on the way to the "truth doens't matter" attitude that they have reached by now.
An oldie but a goodie:
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/earth-the-climate-wars/
(alas, I only have a link to the first part of the series--but it deals with the history of our understanding of climate change)
Cliff note version (ok, not actually from Cliff Notes):
In 70's, some scientists feared global cooling, e.g. entering an ice age. The US government had a series of groups of scientists evaluate this--and found that CO2 levels in the atmosphere would lead to global warming. There was even an ad with Nanci and Newt telling people about global warming. But Regan didn't like the ramifications of dealing with global warming--and eventually found someone to dispute that claim.
There *was* actually a period of slight global cooling in the 50's and 60's that sparked some concern about the eventual return of an ice age, but what it turned out to be was an anomaly caused by the dramatic increase in S02 production as world economies rebuilt and manufacturing expanded following WW2, esp. the US. As you point out, when climate scientists actually started looking at the long term trends, however, they realized that the real problem was C02. Climate crisis deniers *still* use this to act like climate science isn't settled around AGW: "See? In the 70s, they thought there was going to be an ice age! Now they're saying it's global warming? Can't they get their stories straight? Buncha eggheads!"
False equivalencies and shit like this is exactly what the fossil fuel industry promoted for decades to make sure their money spigots never ran dry. All our fresh water spigots might. But not their money.
Managers of whore houses offer the world a product that "the market demands". Do we therefor think that their business is honorable? I don't.
Ditto for car makers selling stupid heavy SUVs, for oil companies not even exploring alternatives and so on.
I live in the SF Bay area. It is practically impossible for people with a job to live here without a car. I think the people who created these conditions (oil companies and car makers very much among them) are more to blame than individuals who just do as everybody else does.
Lawsuits in this country are often a tool of politics, I am perfectly fine to use them on oil companies. After all they all knew since the 1970s that their business had a limited life span. This alone should have spurred innovation if management had been responsible.
As a matter of fact, I do think that whorehouses are honorable businesses, as long as they don't cheat their customers.
Yes, we are all climate denialists to varying degrees. That doesn’t let big energy off the hook for being our enablers. Big oil made a lot of money selling us fossil fuel we couldn’t resist similar to how the Sacklers made a lot of money selling us OxyContin.
I don’t blame the oil companies either. All of humanity is to blame, but we’re still far from having people be willing to sacrifice. I doubt we ever will. We’ll adapt and move and migrate, but we’ll still have a fossil fuel economy until oil / gas becomes truly scarce.
This is kind of a crap post, not usual for you, Kevin.
The chart ends in 2020. It also doesn't include wind. The overall picture has changed since 2020.
This is from eia.gov:
Utility-scale solar capacity didn’t start ramping up in the United States until 2010. As the cost of solar panels dropped substantially and state and federal policies introduced generous tax incentives, solar capacity boomed. As of January 2023, 73.5 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar capacity was operating in the United States, about 6% of the U.S. total.
Just over half of the new U.S. generating capacity expected in 2023 is solar power. If all of the planned capacity comes online this year as expected, it will be the most U.S. solar capacity added in a single year and the first year that more than half of U.S. capacity additions are solar.
Prior to 2000, U.S. wind capacity was negligible. Similar to solar power, tax incentives, lower turbine construction costs, and new renewable energy targets helped fuel the growth of U.S. wind capacity. As of January 2023, 141.3 GW of wind capacity was operating in the United States, about 12% of the U.S. total. Developers plan to add another 7.1 GW in 2023.
link: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=55719
Note these installations predate the inflation reduction act so I expect upcoming growth numbers to be substantially higher.
And of course this 'new generating capacity' is really new generating capacity, because nobody who was at all serious would lie about how many kWh they have available in storage, right? They wouldnt try something sleazy when asked about the amount of storage available by quoting a figure in GW and hoping questioner would take this as something to do with amounts, right?
One needs to be cautious about capacity factors. If the solar and wind numbers being quoted are peak output, they need to be divided by at least four to get average output. As Scent of Violets implies, it is more informative to give total energy actually generated by each means of generation.
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