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Comment by hodder | Hacker News Reader

Criminal prosecution of shareholders of oil companies? You do realize this basically includes every human with pension, mutual fund or ETF holdings right? The notion is unfounded. Shareholders are not breaking any laws.

It is up to the government to set the rules and allow the market to play within them. Expropriation of oilfields would imply the government pick winners and losers and would be a devastating blow to property rights. If you advocate change, you should focus on advocating (fair) change in the regulatory framework.

Why not simply let the market decide which carbon emissions are of the most marginal value to society. You do this through cap and trade or carbon taxes, not from picking winners and losers.

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I do believe that if there are internal company reports that their activities are causing global warming and the board decides to go with business as usual, it's a criminal activity [1].

It's indeed a blow against property rights, that's why I'm saying it's a measure of a total war economy, which is something reserved for the most dire circumstances. The reason for expropriation is that it's not enough to have a single or a couple measures against global warming, we need all of them. We need as much carbon to stay in the ground as possible [2].

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/28/shell-kn... [2] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30709211

There is no law against "causing global warming", and it's not caused by one oil company.

Carbon tax doesn't address energy sustainability, or force people to stop polluting. They just have to pay to pollute, or switch to non-Co2 pollution. Co2 isn't the only form of pollution. Pumping it into the ground like we do with nuclear waste isn't a sustainable solution either.

Seizing oil fields and carbon tariffs would wreck havoc on innocent people, since getting food and being able to survive is entirely dependent on the global economy in all developed nations.

We could power all of the US with solar with 0.5% of the land we have. Solar is already feasible with the will, and improving.

There's a difference between "the board" (which is supposed to provide oversight) and "shareholders" (who may not even know they're shareholders).

If causing global warming is a crime, then wouldn’t causing global cooling also have to be a crime? There is a logical quagmire in this thought process.

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