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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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.
They lied for decades about the dangers of climate change.
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.
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.
Yes, I realize we are not talking about the US...
Last time they tried this the United States rent itself apart in its bloodiest war.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...
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.
( 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.
Playing devil's advocate, but what about all of the oil that is not burnt but turned into plastics and other products?
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
Not sure why the discrepancy.
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.
Realistic case: it will end up in the oceans as microplastics
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.
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.
it’s deeply offensive to those whose ancestors actually were slaves
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.
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.
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".
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
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.
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...
> 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.
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.
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.
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.