Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

I also wish there was an easy way to buy and shut down oil producers. There are 8.3 million millionaires in the US, so they control 8.3T.

Chevron is worth 180B. If the millionaires banded together to control 50.1% of Chevron, they could oust the board, permanently destroy all of its oil production and distribution capabilities, and convert its oil fields into a permanently undrillable status.

Then, they could sell off the remaining assets (except the mineral rights), and only lose most of their money. Heck, the resulting shuttered corporation would probably be eligible for carbon credits.

Even better, instead of buying the oil reserves, they could buy out the corporations that own patents and factories for things like fracking equipment and critical car components.

Anti-trust would probably get in the way, but the global airbag industry has revenue in the single-digit billions. A band of 100,000 millionaires could easily acquire them all and charge $80,000 extra (per car) for bags headed to gas powered vehicles.

Millionaires/billionaires wouldn’t act against their own interest or class interests. There is one way to achieve what you are dreaming of: democratic control of industry.

8.3M is the top 2-3% of the population. It’s a very diverse group of people. I imagine many would chip in 10-100K if it meant crashing global CO2 emissions.

Also, on its own, the money it would save in flood or fire insurance would make it a rational investment for a big chunk of them.

the other way is communism

Great first order impact. Now consider second order. Exxon and Co buy distressed assets at depressed prices and resume production with an even better margin.

Two words: Private equity.

You can’t buy what’s not for sale.

Alternatively, they could transfer the oil assets to a separate company, and take that private.

Or another one:

People find out there's a great business plan for creating oil companies so they can be sold to environmental groups

That's the exact situation right now except they aren't shutting it down.

Shutting down petroleum overnight would completely shutter the economy and starve/kill millions of people.

The status quo will starve/kill billions in a few decades and make 10% of the earth’s land mass uninhabitable:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/23/magazine/clim...

The least destructive time to take action is right now.

This is such ridiculous alarmism. This is one of the worst case predictions and is unlikely to occur.

Most likely you'll see gradual migrations over the next 100 or so years away from coastal areas, probably not too much larger than typical migrant and infrastructure turnover.

Please stop relying on journalism to make your decisions regarding climate change. It's pure dogma by completely ascientific liberal arts majors.

If you read the IPCC reports yourself (they're huge but you can read the introductory summaries) they're much less certain about the future. Meanwhile alarmism has a real cost now, if you foolishly allow it to influence policy.

And on the subject of habitability, why is it that media rarely, if ever, runs stories regarding the increase in arable land that comes with thawing permafrost? How much habitable land will be gained from climate change?

And just to emphasize the short sightedness of "banning" fossil fuels as you originally proposed, good luck getting food and medical equipment (and pretty much anything else) to the hundreds of millions of people living in cities without diesel for trucks.

I didn’t propose banning anything. At most, my plan would crank up the cost of gas or reduce the rate at which new cars entered the market.

Also, the “ridiculous alarmism” over the migrations and positive emission loops is already playing out. It was 100F in parts of the Arctic circle earlier this month, and the permafrost fires from last year survived the winter. 100’s of millions will he starving by the end of this year due to crop failures (COVID will more than double that due to economic disruptions).

The IPCC has always been very conservative with their projections. So far, their predictions have been wildly optimistic.

fair enough but is this really the least destructive action you could take?

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