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Comment by FridayoLeary | Hacker News Reader

>"Shell will adjust its policy so that it will also emit less CO2 in real-time."

Yes, they will just dust off their magic wands and wave them round a bit and poof! No more CO2! Because up until now they have just been ignoring all the calls for climate change.

I'm incredibly cynical about this. Not because of the naive sounding statement, nor because i care too much about Shells bottom line. It's simply because this will most probably affect not Shell, but drivers at the petrol stations.

Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it. Especially when it's extremely necessary.

But wait! The litigant actually says this!

>but the company will not be able to continue pumping as much oil and gas as they do now.

Imagine this. You need some wooden shelves, you go to IKEA and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling so much wooden furniture, so no more shelves for you. I'm not sure people would accept that. I'm very, very cynical about this ruling.

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> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it

No, it's not unreasonable. And it's far less unreasonable to demand damages for the harm they've done through lying about what they know and the damage it causes.

Companies like Shell have been saying that they can perform CO2 capture and sequestration to reduce emissions. But they haven't actually done it. It's time for them to perhaps try that.

We have a clear path to making Shell's products completer unnecessary while maintaining current lifestyles, we no longer need fossil fuels. Even extremely conservative, fossil fuel-friendly, and renewables-hostile groups like the International Energy Agency have now published pathways that show that fossil fuels are not necessary.

It's time to move on, and Shell can either adapt their workforce and knowledge to a disrupted economy, via offshore wind turbines or underground sequestration of CO2, or they can die out. We don't have many other options as a society.

> Shell can either adapt their workforce and knowledge to a disrupted economy

While this may sound "unreasonable" or "bad for profits" to many, the Finnish Neste does exactly this[1]. Pooring all their investments in not just "lowering carbon emissions" but becoming carbon-negative really fast.

[1] https://www.neste.com/about-neste/who-we-are/strategy/transf... - their own story, but many news outlets have their story from a more neutral point and all agree that Neste is going full-renewable very fast. (disclaimer: I own stocks in Neste)

Scientists have been talking about the need to draw down carbon emissions for DECADES. Four decades, in fact. We had a report just 3 years ago that gave us a very clear timeline for the need to draw down.

If companies have failed to respond to that, they have only themselves to blame at this point. When we've asked, and asked, and asked and made clear the necessary timeline, at some point, we have to put force behind that.

If governments had put that force behind it earlier, then that force could have come with a gentler timeline. But at this point, we don't have time for that. We have to rip off the bandaid. And the longer we wait, the worse that rip is going to be.

I get it. Humans are selfish and greedy. But we’ve also exceeded our carbon budget as a species, so here we are. The state could always nationalize Shell and dismantle its production capacity. This outcome seems pretty tame compared to what could’ve (and still might be) mandated. We have the technology to rapidly decarbonize, how fast we move is a choice.

The longer we wait, the more severe the consequences awaiting businesses who emit vast quantities of CO2 in the course of business. Some will adapt, some will receive a legislated or legal ruling death sentence. It is what it is.

>But we’ve also exceeded our carbon budget as a species

So what do you suggest. From yesterday, every truck, ship factory etc should stop working because our carbon limit has been exceeded. I mean, if you think orders such as these are the way forward, that is very going to happen. Haling global fossil production= halving global energy consumption= half of all industry shutting down. I think my sums are right.

Institute a carbon tax that increases at a linear rate and use the revenue to subsidize clean electrical generation and storage mechanisms (battery and pumped storage), EV subsidies, EV charging infra (both for light and heavy vehicles), and invest in ammonia production from renewables for marine applications. Air travel should be disincentivized whenever possible with a similar tax until cleaner alternatives are developed. Support robust building energy efficiency improvement measures (heat pumps, insulation, and similar). Require carbon neutral or negative concrete production. Rapidly scale up polysilicon production to meet solar PV manufacturing needs (we need ~600GW of solar PV produced and installed annually to meet climate targets, a 4x increase from current production capacity).

There will be some petroleum consumption remaining, and in the short term we’ll need to tax that at a rate that pays for the removal of the resulting carbon using air source carbon capture (Climeworks and similar). I believe the current cost of that is $600 per ton of CO2 based on Climeworks’ letter to Stripe notifying they completed their initial removal objective they were contracted for.

With all that said, the planetary climate doesn’t really consider GDP as a worthwhile metric, so perhaps we should revisit it as well (compared to having a functioning, stable ecosystem to exist in).

> if you think orders such as these are the way forward, that is very literally going to happen.

No, that's hyperbole. Rulings like this will cause damage, disruption, harm, etc. but nowhere near the amount of damage, disruption, harm, etc. as a 'business as usual'. The former is a short-term blow to the economy, which will rebound by transitioning to renewables (and perhaps even be stronger). The latter is less immediate, but will flood coastal cities, cause droughts and famines, and lead to mass migration, civil unrest and international conflict. We've arguably seen this already, with historic droughts in Syria contributing to its civil war, the resulting migrants causing a political crisis in Europe, culminating in the UK leaving the EU.

The short-term pain of having to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is far better than the alternative (at least, for those who plan to live another few decades and/or care about others). Still, it does not have to happen overnight.

>No, that's hyperbole

Agreed. I think I came across slightly hyperbolic. The use of the word literally was a poor choice and i edited it out. I would like to point that i did caveat my comment with an "if you follow that through" but maybe that wasn't enough. Though i still don't necessarily agree with the rest of your comment.

I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!

Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here?

What is more, Shell already planned to divert investments from fossil fuel to renewables.

The court ordered them to do this earlier and in larger numbers.

That would be like IKEA telling you "we don't have those shelves. See, were already working on selling less wooden furniture over the coming ten years, but the court ordered us to this now. So we now already have these awesome cardboard shelves for you. And next year we'll have plastic and metal ones too".

I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. I think it would be wiser to work with Shell to see if their timeline can be compressed, their investments expanded etc. rather then throwing out unreasonable demands.

> I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line.

If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business.

Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end. Shell has known this for over 60 years now; they acknowledge that themselves!

Requiring the change that apparently a corporate moloch is not able to make themselves is neither unreasonable nor overnight. As I point out elsewhere in this thread: competition manages fine to pivot to renewable fuels (diesel, ethanol, kerozine etc) and beyond that, in far less time, as can be seen in action with e.g. Neste Oyi

>Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end

If that is true Shell should die naturally. Images of stranded fish, flopping and gasping for breath springs to mind. This court order indicates otherwise. I'm under no illusions that orders like this won't hurt me in a real way. And i am not a fan at all of EV's in their current format. Despite (what i perceive) propaganda (NOT a negative connotation, mind you) to the contrary, i don't think they are mature enough to replace ICE.

Slightly off topic but i'm a huge fan of those electric scooters and bikes. I think they are the way forward, not some huge EV. They should definitely be made legal, anyway everyone uses them. I just have a depressing feeling that they shall be slaughtered, hamstrung and/ or castrated on the altar of pedestrian safety.

>If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business.

There are 1.4 Billion cars in the world. They are obviously focused on the demand. [0]

https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-advice/how-many-cars-are-th...

They were poisoning planet for decades, so now we have to pay them to find other business.

>Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn.

Playing devil's advocate, but what about all of the oil that is not burnt but turned into plastics and other products?

It's a very tiny percentage of oil that gets used in this way.

about 3/4 is used as fuel (gas/diesel/jet) with the rest building your roads and the plastic life we all enjoy.

This source puts it at 86% as fuel:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...

Not sure why the discrepancy.

Roughly 15% of petroleum goes into chemical feedstocks.

Not all of that is plastics. I suspect natural-gas-fired ammonia synthesis (Haber-Bosch process) is a major fraction.

But it's not a tiny percentage.

Best case: It will end up burnt as trash.

Realistic case: it will end up in the oceans as microplastics

Nonetheless, have the plaintiffs proved that Shell is responsible for plastic that is burned or thrown in the ocean, as opposed to those that burn, dispose or produce plastics? Have they proven that there is NO legitimate and lawful use of oil?

This is most likely a vacuous decision of one trigger happy judge with an ax to grind. The idea that global climate change is "tort" is absurd, the phenomenon is a defining feature of the Anthropocene.

Best case is likely putting it back in the ground. Burning it results in a release of it's stored carbon to the atmosphere.

Still not a perfect solution, since many plastics will leach harmful substances into the ground without robust containment measures, but of the outcomes realistically available to us, plastic ending up in properly-run landfills is probably the best case.

> I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!

I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal because of some vague law (ie. because of a tort or "the right to life and the right to family life"). In your comment the [item] was something most people would find objectionable (slaves), but you can very well substitute this for other stuff you enjoy, eg. beef, coffee, chocolate, etc.

>I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal

They lied for decades about the dangers of climate change.

Firstly, I think there’s a pretty clear difference between enslavement, which is a practice that intentionally deprives human beings of their rights, often violently and often en masse, and beef, coffee, and chocolate, which are food products that are enjoyed by consumers around the world.

Secondly, neither slavery nor the use of CO2-generating industrial processes were suddenly found to be objectionable overnight. Both have been the subject of intense attention across the globe and over decades. Nobody at Shell is surprised that carbon dioxide is a problem. They have made the choice to continue to invest in and defend their business model for many years.

>Firstly, I think there’s a pretty clear difference between enslavement, which is a practice that intentionally deprives human beings of their rights, often violently and often en masse, and beef, coffee, and chocolate, which are food products that are enjoyed by consumers around the world.

But which one is fossil fuels closer to? I think it's clear that fossil fuels is closer to beef, coffee, and chocolate than slavery.

>Secondly, neither slavery nor the use of CO2-generating industrial processes were suddenly found to be objectionable overnight. Both have been the subject of intense attention across the globe and over decades. Nobody at Shell is surprised that carbon dioxide is a problem. They have made the choice to continue to invest in and defend their business model for many years.

Should beef, coffee, and chocolate producers also watch their back? They all have issues as well. eg. beef: cow farts, deforestation for pastures/soy production, negative health effects of red meat.

Beef, at least, contributes in an outsized way (per kilogram, say) to climate change-related disasters and water shortages. While there are many causes of these harmful effects, it makes sense to address the biggest ones, including banning them.

Most e.coli outbreaks in the US found in spinach or romaine lettuce were actually caused by farm runoff issues.

Don't be daft. His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

> Burning fossil fuels is bad.

Why is it bad? Becuase the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers and we build solutions to adapt to an ever-changing world. We don't make progress by stifling productivity.

> Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term.

No, they don't NEED to do that. Well, not until the government mandates it anyway. And that's the problem. Perhaps they will leave the business, but they shouldn't until renewable energy becomes more economical than producing fossil fuels. In the meantime, it makes more sense to move production to developing countries so they have the same opportunity we had here to benefit from cheap energy.

To add to this... the government killed the alternative which was nuclear. If the government were serious about ending CO2 emissions they should start building a massive number of nuclear. Hitting Shell like this is a disaster of policy.

>His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

Thanks for that! I do try and pick my comparisons and words carefully. I sometimes fail miserably but i'm glad you picked up on it.

There's an argument for storing carbon as finished wood products.

But that was not even a tangential side point of mine. To my mind it was just a pertinent comparison. I'll bear in mind what you said but i'm slightly disappointed.

I agree that it is tangential. Perhaps one of the safer topics to discuss in this whole debacle.

> trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

What the hell? Trees grow using CO2 from the air, and then release that same carbon back when the wood is burned or rots in a forest somewhere. Conserving trees does nothing for climate except for a very small amount of carbon sequestered by tropical forests in their soil.

Meanwhile, oil is 100% carbon that has not been in atmosphere since Jurasic times. If you like Jurasic climates, I guess that's perfectly fine.

> the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers

Sorry, this is one of the worst takes on climate I've ever seen on HN, and the bar here is very low...

Take time to actually study the problem and you will come to the same conclusion: it can only be solved with government intervention. The most efficient government intervention would be a carbon tax set at the estimated social cost of carbon, but that (being a tax) is also extremely politically unpopular.

So we are left with less efficient policies, like outright bans, court orders, expensive subsidies, and emissions caps.

The problem is that this is one company in the EU. It won't change how America, Russia, the middle east, or anyone else produces fossil fuels. Shell will desiccate from this action. And people will declare victory. But EU member states will simply import more fossil fuels from elsewhere. And the environment will not be helped.

I agree that we need to cut CO2 emissions. But we need global solutions to these problems. Not one-off court victories in small municipalities with liberal trade policies.

Or they implement carbon fixing, and the EU implements tariffs on non-carbon-neutral petro such that the environment is helped...

Great ideas. Sadly not the direction being taken by the EU.

Did you hear that? All the other oil companies just cheered! What a great day when a huge competitor is taken down by the very government it supports.

( sarcasm intended )

The other opportunity was to find a way to work with Shell to change the world. They are a huge power. Not make room for the others listed above to fill the void.

>I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!

Last time they tried this the United States rent itself apart in its bloodiest war.

They just reinvented slavery with prison labor of blacks under Jim Crow laws (and plea bargain scammery) that are still used in the worlds largest concentration camps ever:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

It's a mischaracterization to say that Jim Crow made emancipation pointless. It may have been an attempt to reduce its practical importance, but it didn't come close to reversing it in the vast majority of cases.

Surprisingly, there's a connection to the topic at hand if you look at the parallel of prohibition and economic situations resulting from highly regulated markets.

Better than the alternative.

>> Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here?

Shell doesn't burn fossil fuels. As you note they produce them (or pump them out of the ground and refine them). Telling Shell to produces less in one country means the people buying those fuels will simply get them from somewhere else, probably at higher price.

can you not compare the brutal practice of slavery (and accompanying rape and torture) to fossil fuels?

it’s deeply offensive to those whose ancestors actually were slaves

Is the issue that the comparison is bad and/or doesn't add much value - or just that we should generally avoid discussing that topic unless directly related?

in general imo one shouldn’t make comparisons to:

1. nazis/holocaust 2. slavery

etc…

as it devalues the actual event you’re comparing it to. i get that it’s just meant to make a point but even over using the comparison in everyday speech devalues it

it’s fine talking about those issues in general.

Not sure why people don't get it. It leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.

> Burning fossil fuels is bad.

I would say that like many things in life, it's a tradeoff. There're costs and benefits to using these things. Talking about one side but not the other doesn't make sense.

Quick personal example - I lived through energy shortages as a kid in the Soviet Union. Situations where there was no heat in the winter and/or no fuel for cars and public transport.

From pure fossil fuel consumption standpoint, these were great times, as we weren't using any. From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times.

At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't move towards primarily nuclear in the long term - we should but we need to talk about this in a mature way.

> From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times.

Unchecked, climate change will ALSO lead to terrible times for humans. Just because it's not immediately impactful, does not make it ignorable.

From that perspective, it's arguable that our options are "Some amount of near-term lowering of quality of life" or "A large amount of long-term, in the future, loss of quality of life." Continuing to burn the levels of fossil fuels we currently do is borrowing against a debt that may be literally impossible to repay.

I think you're saying essentially the same thing as the last paragraph of my post, so not sure why there's an argument.

But sure, there's a long run place we want to get to. Today, we're not at that place and we're depending on fossil fuels. So why are we vilifying them and the companies that provide them? Sounds like we should simply work on replacements, like nuclear.

> At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this.

You could extend this argument "Slavery is bad", "Genocide is bad", "War is bad" etc. are all statements of "privilege".

Completely ignoring climate change, particulate pollution from fossil fuels has killed a terrible amount of people and will continue to do so for some time. Currently its around 13,000 per year in the US.

How many people would have died if they didn't have affordable access to power, heat, and transportation from fossil fuels? Particulate emissions are a risk but tighter emissions standards have done a lot to mitigate that problem.

It could be argued that CO2 emitting fuels have propelled most world advancement we account to pulling countries into prosperity.

It is necessary for any trade of goods with other countries for instance. Think ships for a minute, huge fuel consumers. Without them you wouldn't even have the computer you are reading this on.

The course is to change culture so it collectively seeks alternative fuels not damn the corporation that has done the very thing we have asked them to do.

Isn't there a difference between tradeoff's in the 1800's and 2021?

The benefits of fossil fuels is not the issue, the cost is. If today we in fact have alternative's that do not inflict such a terrible cost on human life, is it incorrect to say the choice is "bad".

The WHO estimates 7 million people a year are dying from air pollution. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_1

Most people equate reducing fossil fuels with buying an electric car or public transport. They are woefully oblivous to the impact on food production, bulk transport and shelter & heating impacts.

The court ruling is mature, we need more decisions like that across the world.

We also need to keep pushing and monitoring schemes like European Union Emission Trading Scheme and Chinese National Carbon Trading Scheme.

The goal is for global carbon emissions to peak in 2030 and be gone by 2050.

Hopefully USA will follow too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_national_carbon_tradin...

The problem is that this ruling was unequivocally outside the rule of law in my estimate. You want to stop climate change? Great! Pass some laws via the legislature, enforce them via fines and jail through action initiated by the executive branch under the oversight of an impartial judicial system. Exactly which law could not be enacted by a judge under this precedent/newly found tort? Why are we foisting our collective guilt as a society onto a single hate-able company as if ordinary people making quotidian decisions lack fault, agency, and responsibility?

Yes, I realize we are not talking about the US...

> Especially when it's extremely necessary.

Your assumption is flawed.

> you go to IKEA and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling so much wooden furniture, so no more shelves for you

They’d either tell me they’re not selling wooden shelves anymore and offer me an alternative or lose my business to someone who does. This is happening to car makers.

> I'm not sure people would accept that. I'm very, very cynical about this ruling.

Change takes a bit of time to get used to, especially if it’s abrupt. Necessary (i. e. without an alternative) things going away or becoming more expensive is unpopular (and some people just irrationally rage at any new responsibility affecting them), but subsidies a free market & regulation are quite efficient at creating those.

I'm sorry, but comparing this issue to IKEA shelving makes me incredibly cynical towards your comment.

A closer analogy might be if IKEA were painting their shelving with cheap, toxic substances, and ordered to stop that and to use non-harmful substances which may be more expensive.

The regulation may cause IKEA's costs to increase, in which case I would expect IKEA to innovate to overcome this regulation.

People love burning regulations, but maybe, just maybe, some are actually a "good thing".

Shell can innovate big or go home.

Internally there was a battle in Shell between execs arguing that the company needed to double down on its green investments and the old school faction arguing that they should double down on traditional (i.e. oil/gas/lubricants/plastics/etc.) investments.

From what I heard the former group kind of lost. Shell is still making green investments - just way fewer.

You might argue that I'm being a hopeless optimist and selfishly ignoring the needs of drivers here but I'm hoping the outcome of this lawsuit will add some power to the "green" faction (already responsible for the world's biggest wind farm) in future arguments about upcoming investment decisions.

Affecting drivers at the petrol station is exactly what needs to happen. Pricing in externalities is how free markets deal with the effects of behavior.

If prices increase, demand will fall, and the price will fall, and a new equilibrium will be arrived at.

I'd like to recommend taking a look at The Undercover Economist. It can be had for cheap.

https://www.amazon.com/Undercover-Economist-Tim-Harford/dp/0...

Either most of your car journeys are to IKEA or your statement is an example of the Weak Man fallacy.

Sure, some people with disabilities who live outside of the delivery radius of an ikea will need to drive there. Is that the majority of car use? No.

So if you are a judge when you decide if there is a law breaking you also first check who is the criminal and let him free is is someone important?

In this case I think the judges did the right thing, people can demand the government to create a new law where some special companies can get exceptions for the damages they cause.

I am wondering if there are ways to reduce pollution, I am thinking at those gases that are just burned because is not profitable to use them... I imagine some rich dudes deciding if they should

A invest in better tech to reduce CO2

B use money from A to buy some bigger yachts so they can go to some private islands to enjoy some crazy parties.

We can start cleaning up or local air and waters and if we really care we can stop importing products that are made with dirty resources... we need to start somewhere and we can find a way to help the poor if needed (maybe we figureout how to get the money the giants owe the society by avoiding taxes)

Isn't it just a new way to tax them? They have to figure out new lines of business that eliminate CO2—or just push billions into carbon offsets?

> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it.

It's not saying that. The primary thing the court order does is move up the timeline from Shell's own stated goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 45% by 2035. It moves the deadline to 2030 and makes it legally binding instead of pinky-swear.

> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it. Especially when it's extremely necessary.

Something something war of northern aggression, grumble southern way of life, indignant dispossession of rightful property, incoherent state's rights...

This kind of supply destruction is going to be very bullish for oil prices and oil company stocks in countries not looking to handicap their own companies.

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