Evil lobbyists accidentally creating a cleaner world is something I can live with.
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the decent (not even good, but way better than the shit world we live in now)
I was working on an island in Uganda and we drove past a solar energy array. Me and the other foreigners were like “oh cool, that’s really nice” and the local collaborators we were with explained that it was the result of $100M in foreign funding and would have cost about $500k if it used local firms. And that it displaced a local firm that was trying to do solar stuff. Instead they flew in people from outside the country and continent even to install and perform routine maintenance. The local collaborator said it produces the electricity of a small diesel generator. This is just an anecdote and I was never able to check the numbers, but it’s an example of how we can do harm by trying to do good. Bullshit projects and funding can harm good projects.
So please let horrible be the enemy of minimally effective. And don’t pretend that horrible is good and minimally effective is perfect.
Who said anything about a cleaner world? To get the money they only have to promise a cleaner world. Or do something that the government thinks will result in a cleaner world.
"So you're telling me that instead of selling my cars for scrap, I can grind them up, dump them in the ocean and you'll give me way more money?"
It’s not just an opportunity cost of what we could do with $100 investment in climate change remediation vs $50 investment and $50 lobbyist. I think it’s that the $50 lobbyist don’t really result in $50 investment in climate change, but $50 investment in things that lead to more lobbying.
For example they actually think recycling plastic is better than incinerating it (it's not - incineration uses less energy in total because you need to pump less oil from the ground and produces less pollution because you don't need to work so hard to clean and separate the plastic).
My point is this: if a business is going to invest substantial sums on what is effectively legalised bribery, then you can bet their motives are not for the betterment of humanity.
This “capitalism at all costs” approach is what got us into our current state. What we really need is governments to step up and impose sensible regulations without having businesses whispering in their ear. Which I know is an unpopular opinion to voice among the libertarians on here but we’re all entitled to our own opinion.
Honestly, I wouldn’t trust that solution further than I can throw it. I absolutely want effective climate solutions people can pursue out of greed. Then I can believe in them! Not because I like greed but because I trust it. Do you see what I mean?
Examples of this are carbon offsetting instead of reducing the carbon they use, recycling campaigns instead of actually using less environmentally harmful packaging. The “right thing” here is always more expensive.
This is a trend we’ve already seen for decades. Why should it suddenly be different now?
I’m not saying politicians can be trusted either but at least politicians goals aren’t contradictory to environmental concerns, unlike greed vs environmentally sympathetic products that generally cost more to produce.
And here lies the problem: companies can’t be trusted to do the right thing for the environment because it costs more for them to do so. And if there is one thing we should have learned by now it’s that most companies will gladly take shortcuts if it raises their profits and/or share value.
Asking readers of HN to trust businesses to do the right thing is like repeatedly approaching a barking dog after getting bitten multiple times thinking “this time I’m positive the dog won’t bite me”. At some point you have to set boundaries otherwise they’ll continue to misbehave knowing they can always get away with it.
You can do that in a lot of ways, however, but our way is to use their investments to build green energy plants, ride them to a profit and then sell them. Which creates a better world, but it’s very much intentionally. The increasing climate awareness, especially among the generation of wealthy 60+ year olds who want to leave their grandchildren a better world is simply a good business case. It’s much easier to sell that group of people a green investment in 2023 than it was in 1993, in fact it’s hard to sell them an investment that is not green. That last part is why you see the corporate world turning eco-friendly. But I think it’s wrong to say that’s it’s accidental, because it comes after five decades of climate science and politics turning the hearts and minds of society, and now that they’ve been successful, and there is a lot of money to be made off green energy, the corporate interest follows.
I’m not a fan of the way lobbying impacts our democracies, but it’s primary function isn’t to be evil (at least not in general terms), no, it’s primary function is to influence society in a way that allows businesses to make money. If society wants cheap gas in their cars, or if big sugar/tobacco wants to keep their massive market shares then lobbying does evil, but if the best way to make money is to generate a profitable green energy market, then lobbying will likely do good. At least as far as capitalism is concerned. You can think about that what you will, I would personally prefer if my own government had not sold off much of our energy sector as a citizen, but I both work and invest in the sector so it also benefits me immensely as an individual.
That being said. By 2030 we’ll have build more than ten thousand solar plants of different sizes, and while we couldn’t have done that without climate science and climate NGOs (and corporate lobbyists) creating a political climate to drive green energy forward, climate science and climate NGOs couldn’t have build those plants without private money. So while it’s fine to have ideals, it’s the realism and the compromises that actually change the world.
Its primary function is to maximize returns. That’s not necessarily evil, but amoral.
Evil in the sense you’re using it is not real, but if it is, then pushing for a local advantage by externalizing costs onto others seems pretty bad to me.
My issue is that lobbying is inefficient and bad overall as it increases the costs spread across the system and focuses the benefits in a specific area. Usually to a net negative. For example, spend $1M in lobbying to earn $2M in benefits at a cost of $100M to the system (see US agricultural subsidies on sugar, corn, etc that help a very small section of an industry at great expense).
Again, not evil in the sense of eating babies or gas chambers or whatnot, but banal and causing harm. There’s not much true evil in the short term and even Nazis (the most evil I can think of) would be perceived very differently had they won (see the opinion on Ghengis Khan).