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Comment by cmehdy | Hacker News Reader

I know they really need to ensure that they can buy their fourth house, but this sort of stuff is revealing just how much disconnect there is between those who push for oil and the coming generation:

“What’s our message going forward?” Mr. Ness said. “What’s going to stick with those young people and make them support oil and gas?”

Nothing, old man. Nothing. We'd need at least one covid per year to stay in line with the Paris agreements emissions-wise, and that would only curb the damage to a minimal amount. We're driving into a wall the size of a mountain, and we can't bother to decrease our ACCELERATION, let alone to actually SLOW DOWN.

Younger generations are increasingly voicing how tired they are of the apathy about this issue - or sometimes, like in this case, downright evil approach to energy needs and climate change.

If you want "those young people" to support your ass, use your lobbying powers to turn to nuclear for controllable energy and renewables for the rest. But that means no fourth house for you, huge investments upfront, and actually morals..

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As a former young man, and current middle aged man, my perspectice is this: Those old men were young people once, not long ago. You might not compromise your values, but in reality, you probably will. And your peers definitely will. A few generations will grow up and suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth or something. And you'll get old one day too, desperately holding onto the thing that lets you retire. Again maybe not you, but your peers will.

That said, it's not that you shouldnt keep trying, it's just interesting how it happens. We should break the cycle of blame, and make a lateral move to create the future we want on a new path.

It makes me think, "Render unto Ceasar".

Exactly this. Young people have plenty of outrage to go around, and they think they can change the world. Most of them don't do anything about it, though; they just get outraged, virtue signal on social media, change meaningless behaviors (but make sure everyone knows they did), and carry on exactly as their parents did.

Things in the world move slowly, and after a decade or two of caring (or at least aggressively claiming to care), young people turn into old, cynical, jaded realists.

I vote. I make small, pragmatic changes to how I interact with the world. I see what happens over the course of many decades and how slowly things move. In the end I'm glad I won't be around to see how terrible it's going to be in 100 years. Good luck.

On the other hand, there’s the suffragettes, the Civil Rights movement, the Velvet Revolution, etc. If less people made excuses and instead joined the youth, change might happen.

The end of your message is so much worse than whatever you imagine young people to be doing. "Good luck", really? Condescending much?

Also you're pretty damn wrong about those young people: they're way more active than you think. But you seem to be quite aware that it's going to be terrible in a few decades yet you're happy simply making small changes and seeing "what happens over the course of many decades". Wilful ignorance much?

The cognitive dissonance in your words is strong, and instead of actually looking inwards you're content thinking that the people who are barely out of their teenage years should bear the blame for being born with a smartphone in their pockets (thanks to which generations again?).

I sure am glad that they aren't learning from your attitude as they work towards being in a position to be directors or politicians or CEOs. You or I might not be there to see the worst of it, but I'd take their attitude over yours any day of the week.

edit to the person pointing out the word "decades": I replied to a message on their own terms. I'm fully aware that things are unravelling right now, but I don't even need to shift the point and start another debate in order to prove them logically wrong.

> in a few decades

decades?

Decade = 10 years.

I know what a decade is, however I believe that it will be bad in less time than decades, plural.

Ah. Sorry. In that case, agreed.

The young people may be the most passionate, but the ethos that puts saying the right thing ahead of doing the right thing, is a broader societal indictment that seems to have skyrocketed in the last decade, and it’s not tied to one generation.

Maybe it was social media. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way it’s shockingly counterproductive.

Uh not quite. History is full of examples where generations turned the world on its head over the course of a couple years (for good or bad... mostly worse, I concede)

I'm a "former young man" too. There is no age to be acting well or badly with regards to this debate, and there isn't even an absolute metric for how well or badly one does when it comes to the issue.

But I know I don't need to change to a new smartphone every year, likewise for my laptop.

I know the next time I get a smartphone (in years), I'll be much more likely to accept something of lesser polish for something which allows me to replace parts easily.

I know that my beef consumption is not an essential part of my life in the sense that I'd die without it, it's an accessory of pure hedonism, and I still don't entirely avoid eating a good steak every once in a while but I put mental efforts into curbing such consumption.

I keep in mind very strongly the strategy I want to adopt regarding the place I live in and the places I could work at, such that at equal levels of satisfaction I don't pigeon-hole myself into a place where a car would be an absolute necessity. Each person's strategy can change, but things to take into account include access to public transportation, remote work even partially, only partly using a car along the way if really necessary, and so on.

I'm keenly aware of the amount of plastic packaging around me and whenever I can I will prefer avoiding such products. Likewise for anything that can be refilled: do you really need to buy the same container for your detergent over and over again? Why not refill it if you can? etc.

I keep in mind all those issues when the time comes to vote, and in my own way strive to encourage this sort of awareness in the people supposed to represent me.

The list is entirely dependent on each person, but you can only start to make that list and to think constructively if you acknowledge the problem and leave aside nihilism and apathy.

I don't want kids, but that doesn't prevent me from having the awareness that the things I do (or don't do) can and will hurt other people's kids. Using my age as an excuse to not give a crap is disingenuous. Using the observation that others aren't pulling their weight either is disingenuous. I can't force others to do something but I can change what I do.

This post misses the point of what it’s replying to. Parent comment admitted that individuals can live responsibly, but that the bigger problem is a cycle where each generation protects its own lifestyle and blames the older people for what they’ll one day do themselves.

And you're missing the fact that what the current generations in power are doing is not sustainable in the sense that regardless of what young generations do right now, they DEFINITELY won't be having the lifestyle that we're having today.

It doesn't matter what their kids end up blaming on them afterwards, we won't be there to see it. The defeatist attitudes about the now are cop-outs though, because WE are living in the now.

Doubtful that individual action will be enough. It didn't stop littering or racism. There must be collective action.

There is zero chance that future cell phones will be easier to repair.

That depends on what you mean by "cell phones": all of them? Some of them? Because Fairphone[0] is 7 years old and is proving you wrong, showing that AFTER the advent of smartphones a company emerged to drive things in the other direction. And they could very well be only one amongst many as people change their attitudes.

That, by the way, is how you act at your own level.

[0] https://www.fairphone.com/en/

Uh, there is exactly 1 Fairphone out of an entire market of un-repairable, sold already obsolete, throwaway models.

While cute, it’s just a token gesture

You're telling me there is "zero chances that future cell phone swill be easier to repair", I just proved you wrong. If you don't want to put your money where your mouth is (or if your mouth isn't there anyway) that's an entirely different debate about your pessimism. And cute is a subjective word that has no place there.

No, I’m just putting your statements into context: a 0. market share product makes for nice Wired covers, but not much more unless you use it as a feasibility study to lobby for governmental regulations.

But I’m a bit fatigued by grandiose hot takes, let’s just leave it here

> I know that my beef consumption is not an essential part of my life in the sense that I'd die without it, it's an accessory of pure hedonism, and I still don't entirely avoid eating a good steak every once in a while but I put mental efforts into curbing such consumption.

Also because, let’s be honest... you can’t really find proper a proper stake in any supermarket let alone do it justice without the right kitchen equipment. It’s better to let a professional do their work than to attempt a sad re-enactment with cheap, mass produced ingredients

While true these barons escape the consequences they knowingly inflict. To stop the cycle soft education like schooling is not enough. The hard education of prison time is necessary.

And even if somehow they can prove ignorance it should not relieve responsibility. They certainly have the resources and time to investigate the outcome of their industry.

I propose that regulators and executives be required to test randomly and be required to hold their weekly briefings in the most polluted areas under their supervision. And on these live broadcast they must drink from the most polluted (yet rated 'drinkable') water.

The true illusion is that there be true barons: they are us, in our multiple guises of investors and pensioners and account-holders and wage slaves. Some tower over others (the Gates and Bezos of the world) but in truth they’re just an outsized outlier. As long as we engage in the artefice that we are beholden to evildoers who lord it over us, we will never be free.

Yeah, let's distribute the blame into a billion tiny pieces so nobody has to feel bad.

I mean sure, BP dumped 210 million gallons of crude oil into the gulf of mexico, but it's the people using plastic straws who are the real problem here.

It IS distributed into a billion tiny pieces.

Do you know if your computer is using oil from BP? Do you know if your car is running on gasoline from BP?

The manufactorers of plastic straw aren't responsible for the disposal of them that's a job of the individual societies, which all consist of taxpayers who are voting their politicians into power.

The disconnect is the idea that BP is evil while we are innocent bystanders. BP and the other oil companies are a net benefit to society and 80% of what you consider modern living is based on some sort of oil based derivative.

These companies have significant influence over government. This has lead to public transit being gutted and most people being forced to own a car. Car companies invented the concept of "jay walking" to banish people from public streets.

People in our current oligarchical capitalist society have little choice but to engage with it. It's not a moral decision that most people can make. Individuals and corporations are compelled to ignore negative externalities.

We could have public transit and cycling, use reusable glass containers, have more locally based economies, and also have better, more fulfilling lives than now. But we don't. And we are bringing cataclysmic damage to our planet and ourselves in the process.

There is not a single piece of scientific base for any cataclysmic damage, on the contrary fossil fuel have made the world safer for those who use it.

You use the words "illusion" and "being free", so I feel comfortable putting the issue into terms where those words also have similar connotations:

I commit a crime if I buy heroin instead of acknowledging my issues and getting therapy, and that's absolutely a problem I need to curb. I'm not even really happier with it, but I don't find enough support, better education about myself and the world, to get better. I'd be happier without, but I don't know that yet and I'm strictly convinced I can't live without it!

But if I'm the guy who moves a literal ton of heroin across the border, and I have 5-10 orders of magnitude more money than the other schmuck, AND I use a mere fraction of my benefits to lobby all around and get PR firms to make other people turn away from addressing their issues and more towards my product.. well, how to put it.. I'm a tiny bit responsible, you know?

Thinking that this is just an illusion is magic thinking: sure, everyone could magically address their problems today and the crime rates would drop! Suicides would drop! How wonderful.

But how about we look at the actual world and offer insights/education/support to that first person, while making sure we keep the other one heavily in check or prevent harmful activity much more actively?

That's better education for the former and stricter regulations of all sorts for the latter. We all have a role to play in this. This article simply talks about the pushers who rightfully deserve to be exposed, that's all.

Let's please stop entertaining false dichotomies. It's not all on the voter to magically be wiser, and it's not all on the big company to stop trying to do what it's built to do (drive profits). It's on both.

> Let’s stop entertaining false dichotomies

Agreed. That’s the spirit of what I meant. I sincerely thank you for synthesising it thusly.

These 'outliers' have an outsized effect on government which is more representative of our ideal choices.

You can't stop systemic problems like these by blaming the little guys living in food deserts making minimum wage. They have few choices to significantly change things when greener options are out of reach. Yet lobbies bought and paid for at the direction of these barons do.

As someone else who isn't young: we'll figure out other things but climate change thing is a much bigger problem. It's fundamentally unlike how we fixed CFCs/ozone, lead levels, DDT, or anything else in human history. We should all endeavor to fix it even if it requires bribing oil executives for a generation so we can involve something that is a closer to a French revolution outcome for the class that is causing this problem. It's an existential issue for the young.

An oilman's constituents are his shareholders, so this is really an issue for Congress.

If businesses are not required to account for externalities (such as environmental impact) then they generally will not do so.

If the petroleum industry couldn't make political donations (and wasn't very aggressive about doing so), I would agree with you more strongly.

Boomers are a special generation, though. They grew up in a great expansionary period but did not have to experience the insecurity and horrors of WW2 firsthand. I personally believe their morals were corrupted by the easy band-aid of universal growth and profits, since they came to rely on it, and expect it will continue forever (hence the "you'll get old and corrupt too" mentality).

You’re probably just noticing how rigged the system is and declaring defeat without ever trying.

Do your civic duties!!! First off, learn how your local, state, and federal governments work. You’re not powerless if you go to their public hearings-be polite and well informed, write your representatives, and do anything and everything else you can do. It’s actually quite a lot. Right now much of these meetings and representatives hear from only the most limited view sets. The world actually still has most of its power in democracies and democratic republican governments.

If we threw money at this problem we could definitely find and implement ways to get ourselves off oil and counter or mitigate what’s already happened. But that won’t happen without the political will to do it.

There will of course always be ill informed youths because there will always be ill informed people. Don’t be one of them. Look for ways to make the world better yourself and ignore or fight (better) the bullies.

> A few generations will grow up and suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth or something.

I'm sorry, but the reason people are so critical of today's older generation isn't because of bad things they've done in the past. It's because they not only continue to do the damage, but also refuse to listen to any evidence to the contrary.

I'd be far more sympathetic if the dialog was more "Yea, I'm stuck in an industry doing damage, I didn't know it was that bad when I started." Instead it's "How DARE you tell me coal is bad for the environment!?! It's my god given right to burn as much coal as I can get my hands on!"

Perhaps it will happen in the future that I regret what I've participated in. IDK. However, I hope I've at least have the humility to know when I've screwed things up so I don't fight against forward progress.

The older generation isn't the bad guy for past mistakes. They're the bad guy because they are actively preventing future progress.

The article is literally about the select few people who are doing what you say, and have the financial resources to mount public misinformation campaigns. That’s not what the “older generation” is doing, it’s what these specific guys are doing.

You got a source for that? Voting intentions strongly suggest that it is the “older generation” that is doing, and if not doing actively supporting, the destruction of the biosphere.

The executives at Exxon knew about global warming fifty years ago and buried it. They funded research that muddied the waters. They funded propaganda. They funded lobbyists. They even started wars.

The older generation is the bad guy, and it wasn't for their mistakes. This was intentional. Not all of them are complicit, of course, but now that the chickens are coming home to roost we're getting lecturing points from people like the person you're replying to about bismuth in our phones or other such flim flam.

The reality is that our generation has something equivalent: Surveillance capitalism. And you know what? Plenty of people from Google and Facebook have stepped forward and demanded regulations. Where were the same people from Exxon Mobile in the 70s?

Ethics and morals matter. The truth matters. And people with enough means are still pushing for more at the expense of others.

Ehm I think the lecturer, by their own account must be a Gen X. As an GenX myself I can confirm this attitude - everything’s wrong, everyone has a price - is typical of our hatch. For some reason, maybe TINA, the social traumas of the ‘80s we unwittingly absorbed, or the repression during the NoGlobal protests (Genova G8), turned us into these Grungy, navel-grazing, it-won’t-matter-anyway beat-downs.

We are the last generation that grew up expecting education to fulfill our mission, only to realize it was just a way to keep us off the unemployment stats, while the market just wants good janitors.

suddenly, you're the bad guy because, oh I dunno, all your cell phones and tablets used up all the bismuth

Hipster devs are writing code that makes the data centre industry emit as much CO2 as aviation, and they know it too, they just don’t care. They’re already setting themselves up to be the next generations bad guys and they don’t even know it.

So, they know it, or they don't know it? Confused.

They know they’re writing code that is massively inefficient but they don’t yet know they’re the next generations bad guys.

Just say no to JavaScript kids.

I'd argue it's VC money/public market shareholders licking their lips at thrse hipsters that trump responsibility. Yep, take a look at that screen, now turn it off. Reflection can scare ya.

> You might not compromise your values, but in reality, you probably will.

Well, I'm almost 60 and it hasn't happened yet.

It is not just industry leaders that oppose change. I also suspect that the apathy of the old is far over stated, and can be tackled if the conversation changed.

A large number of people are going to be apathetic since they simply have other priorities in life. Perhaps they have a family to support or maybe they are more interested in social issues than environmental ones. This does not imply that they do not care.

Then you have people who's livelihoods depend upon the petrochemical industry, either directly or indirectly. Very few of these people have the means or ability to drive change and many of them can only see themselves as the victims of change.

One of the issues with the messaging of environmentalists are the dire warnings at the expense of envisioning a cleaner future, making people feel more like victims than a part of the solution. The few who do talk about a cleaner future need to be more assertive about how we will benefit from it and how we can make a smooth transition, so that people won't feel as though it is an endless stream of compromise nor will they feel as though they will lose their role in society.

Environmentalists should also be highlighting past successes as a means of encouraging future action. We live in a world that is much more aware of our impact on the environment. We have cleaner air and water to thank for past efforts, while some industries are more sustainable for it. We used to fish until stocks ran out, clear cut with no or limited replanting, contaminate our waterways with the pesticides and through the dumping of industrial waste, and pollute our air with much more hazardous gasses and particulates than we do today. None of that would have changed without if people didn't initiate the change. We need to emphasize that the economy did not collapse for that change.

Creating change is only an us verses them issue if we choose to frame the issue in those terms. It is only about young verses old or rich verses poor if we choose to frame it in those terms. We need to get away from those framings in part because the prejudice turns off potential supporters and in part because it makes us blind to the needs that must be addressed while finding the solution.

Most people don't care about climate change. They may say they do but the majority wouldn't do anything if it meant a sacrifice, even a very small one. 68% wouldn't pay even $10 per month [1]. Imagine how few would pay $25, $100, or live in a smaller house.

The people running big companies aren't "nice guys" and that's true in all sectors. But the oil and gas cos are just selling people what they want. If they are evil for selling it then so are the customers for buying it.

[1] https://www.cato.org/blog/68-americans-wouldnt-pay-10-month-...

I'm not convinced this poll is much indication of anything; it's just asking about a weird carbon tax scheme.

> Suppose a proposal was on the ballot next year to add a monthly fee to consumers' monthly electricity bill to combat climate change. If this proposal passes, it would cost your household $____ every month. Would you vote in favor of this monthly fee to combat climate change, or would you vote against this monthly fee?

  $1/month:    57% favor
  $10/month:   28% favor
  $20/month:   30% favor
  $40/month:   23% favor
  $75/month:   15% favor
  $100/month:  16% favor

A more useful question would be: "Would you oppose climate change regulations that had the effect of increasing your energy bills $10/month?"

It's a dumb proposition to begin with. Why am I paying extra just so that these companies can implement these changes without dinging profits?

Energy should be a loss-leader for society. It should lose money every year, and then we pay whatever is necessary for them to break even and continue operating. This goes for healthcare, housing, transportation, and education, too. If you want to "innovate" gainfully, pick up a paintbrush. We shouldn't be subsidizing the profits of mature sectors, especially if they're not actually doing anything new and simply doubling down on the behaviors that are leading us to ruin.

Let's just say that I find that survey less than convincing. The wording of the question almost certainly calls to mind bills with tacked-on “convenience” fees that serve to enrich companies more than provide convenience to the consumer. What does “pay $10 extra a month to combat climate change” even mean?

You'd probably get a different response to “Would you switch to an energy company that uses 100% {solar/nuclear/etc.} if it costed ${5/10/etc.} more per month than your current bill”.

However, unlike those companies I personally don't have a decent PR budget to shift your perspective in your daily life. I only have my words and my own actions.

I get my information from websites and articles and journals and classes and so on. How much of that was subtly[0] (or not-so-subtly[1]) altered by the investments of the gigantic entities behind energy consortia?

People don't care about climate change because their worldview leads to a conclusion that it isn't that big of a deal, that things are overblown, that people are fear-mongering, etc. It certainly isn't helped by the PR against serious thinking regarding climate issues, such that we have this absurd thing where Exxon is more keenly aware of the issues of climate change decades[2] before the average voter is.

So they aren't "nice guys" indeed. But I'm sorry: they're way worse than that - and they actually know it.

Unlike the average person who might not fully grasp where we're at and what one can do or might be disheartened by the fact that they are but one amongst many, we have people who have been keenly aware of what's to come but can't even begin to contemplate slowing down the growth of their bank accounts for the long-term viability of the ecosystem we live in.

The difference between "most people" and those guys is that "most people" would know better than to fuck things up as actively for their kids if they actually were aware of the situation, and if the effect of the "not so nice guys" PR could be to some extent lifted.

And the way things have been going, we'll definitely need to continue making the information available and attractive to most people so that we can reach a turning point and force those "not-so-nice guys" to seriously pivot instead of continue posturing.

[0] https://below2c.org/2019/11/oil-sector-propaganda-invades-th... and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504622.2019.1...

[1] https://www.zmescience.com/science/richard-berman-green-radi...

[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

How many suburban 17 year olds are saying, no thanks, I'll continue to take the bus and not get my driver's license?

Quite many outside USA, I would say.

A lot, actually. The rate of people with driver's licenses in the US has been steadily decreasing since 1983.

This is a false dichotomy. You could very well get your drivers license and have the ability to drive a car but not own one, for example. Reducing your consumption doesn't mean accepting something that prevents you from functioning at all.

Everyone can improve things their own way, and oil isn't just there to power your damn car. Take a look around your place and tell me how much plastic is used around you. What about those plans to extend your house if you have one? What about perhaps investing that same money into increasing energy efficiency for your living space? The whole "think of those poor people who can't drive to work" thing is an absolutely false dichotomy.

If you don't actually chip off the unnecessary bits of your energy and materials consumption in your life by your own choice, you will NOT have the choice over what gets chipped off. If you're 17 right now, this will very much affect you and your kids even by the time you reach the age of those execs.

It is no longer necessary to use oil to power automobiles. You can have your car and reduce fossil fuel use at the same time.

Not really. Personal cars are just not a sustainable solution. Personal electric cars are less worse, but still are large machines toxic batteries and still require massively more energy than is necessary for the task of moving their comparatively small human occupants. They have a large embedded carbon and ecological cost.

We need better density and better transit so they aren't necessary for the vast majority of people. Besides, cars are miserable in cities. Cities with extensive metro systems such as Paris or New York are far more livable than ones like Los Angeles or Seattle.

These kinds of small changes are meaningless and do nothing beyond assuaging one's own guilt and virtue signaling. This kind of system failure cannot be fixed by "voting with your wallet;" nobody actually pays the cost of fossil fuel usage directly, and so people will continue to make money at the expense of society as a whole.

The kind of changes required here are well beyond any individual's ability to enact directly. The nature of capitalism and resource exploitation needs to be fundamentally and seriously reevaluated.

This is the world we are leaving to our children. Complaining about kids not using the bus, or implying that it's somehow hypocritical to do so, is just victim blaming.

> Nothing, old man. Nothing.

Actually rolling blackouts is enough to support at least some natural gas power generation.

During a heat wave last weekend my power cut out and I started shopping for natural gas generators. At the rate that electricity prices have been increasing lately, it's not even insane to think about running off of the generator full time.

The PGE guide for net metering actually makes a point that it wouldn’t be economical to run a generator and make money off net metering, but I did the math and it’s actually a decent amount cheaper to do so.

.. what is wrong with your electricity market? What numbers did you conclude?

That's true. In the absence of nuclear that's going to be the case. That is, until you can't afford to buy the gas anyway.

It would have been more to-the-point and sincere of them to discuss ways to mess with people so that they encourage further consumption of energy sources that are running out on the scale of our current civilization.

Not for me, I'll take nuclear over natural gas any day.

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