California sues 5 major oil co's for campaign of deception about climate change | Hacker News Reader

California sues 5 major oil co's for campaign of deception about climate change

latimes.com

60 pointsourmandave29 comments

See also:

Exxon Knew about Climate Change almost 40 years ago: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-...

Oregon County Sues BP, Chevron, Shell, Exxon for $51B Climate Damages:https://carboncredits.com/oregon-county-sues-oil-companies-s...

Regardless of these suits, expect fossil fuel companies to make hundreds of billions of dollars with promises of mitigating climate change! [1]

[1] The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change...

Gotta pay for those underfunded public employee pensions somehow.

The problem is sitting in everyone's driveway, where everyone is gonna tell you it's gonna stay and they ain't going back to taking the friggin bus. Not superior, I live in the country, even more locked into it.

But the day is coming that we can't afford the gas for em, one by one it'll become too expensive, and with each day worth less and less, until one day you'll have to pay someone with a horse and cart to pull your pile of useless toxic steel and fibreglass away, and she'll judge the hell out of you as she takes your money.

The auto industry is undergoing an electrification process that is now rapidly accelerating. Within the next couple decades, oil and gas won't be needed as fuel except for air and maybe sea travel.

California's grid can't support more electric cars

That's ok, the car production capacity is limited too. The grid and charging capacity will improve as more demand appears. In the past the oil supply couldn't support our current number of cars either.

Turns out, when there's demand, we're pretty good at expansion infrastructure. In an emergency it could be a great project for the market too, like the highway expansion.

From CAISO

   Current capacity 43,777 MW
   Current demand   29,361 MW
   Difference       14,315 MW

That enough to charge 2.8 million cars at 5kw.

And EV drivers know you spend almost none of your car's time charging. We maybe charge once a week, almost always at work.

Do you have any stats on that? It's certainly not true for me. I commute an hour to work each way.

It’s not time but distance that matters with EVs. If you’re in a parking lot for half an hour and you go three miles, your car will basically only go down three miles of range (electronics and climate take very little power and you’ll get some regen).

If you’re going sixty miles each way, no matter how you commute (aside from maybe a bus), it’s going to be a disaster from a fuel and environment perspective regardless of drivetrain.

If one were willing to run some numbers.

Californians drive 340 billion miles a year. If that were all EV's then they would consume 85 billion kwh/year.

Solar insolation is about 2000 hours a year.

So you would need 42.5 GW of solar. With say 30 million cars that would be 1500W per car.

Check, average car drives 35 miles a day. So needs 8.75 kwh. 6 hours of sunlight so you'd need 1460 watts or solar.

That's $1500 worth of solar per car.

Set and match. Totally totally doable.

I’m not so sure about that. Do you have a source?

In any case, the grid can improve in capacity as more electric cars are sold in the state.

Then they should upgrade their grid? What’s your point?

Carts before horses and such.

I think the electrification thing is completely awesome but I think individual car ownership will and should end. I believe car companies are similar to fossil fuels in this way, they marketed the importance of a bad idea to the masses. They made cars sexy and oversold their utility as a way of improving life and maybe they do improve life, but it comes at an environmentally degrading cost. Noise pollution alone is bad enough…

Personally I think the tyre dust thing will be another global ecological crisis. I am not saying the tyre dust issue “is” caused by electrics, it’s not, but tyre dust is a huge and hard to solve problem and tyres are toxic things.

Plastics just fall off cars too, roads themselves are ecologically bad. If you ride along the side of a highway on a bike you will see amazing amount of plastic rubbish. Even the highways are lined with plastic materials and object that disintegrate. Fencing, astroturf etc All of which ends up disintegrating and everywhere.

Each day that passes I’m happier I’ve always been and always will be an avid walker and cyclist. Yes I own a car but I use it very sparingly and thoughtfully.

Let's see how that works out for the idea that we can handle what's coming without massive changes to our lifestyles.

Don’t be hyperbolic. Cars aren’t the major cause, are being replaced by electrics anyway, and will always be around. Gas prices and regulations will make fossil fuel cars too expensive and undesirable for all but a few enthusiasts who will have a negligible overall carbon footprint.

Context. Passenger road transport accounts for 11% of all global emissions.

https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-from-transport

> For decades, California was one of the leading oil producers in the country, with a bustling industry that was a pillar in the state economy. The state is now the nation’s seventh-largest oil producer, according to federal data.[1]

California is cannibalizing itself.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-oil-gas-california-lawsui...

Or is it protecting itself from a cancer that would destroy it if left unchecked?

Morality aside, "cannibalizing itself" is what all successful corporations are forced to do at some point, lest they go the way of Kodak. I guess it's the same for California.

Also California letting the Wells Fargo exec walk away without a prison sentence.

please pay 400 trillion dollars.

If they don't successfully win this case for a total sum equal or greater to the amount of money these companies raked in during their decades-long misinformation campaigns, Capitalism As It Is Practiced will declare it "worth it". Oil companies will only meaningfully pivot if the people calling the shots at the companies recalculate risk/reward.

If California does win then it's a meaningless exercise unless any fines are directed toward publicly owned industrial fossil fuel extraction scale capital investment in effective carbon capture and renewable infrastructure.

Those that profited from creating a global problem need to put those profits directly towards meaningful remediation.

Mhm. So this will end up being outrage theater.

If this is reasonable, maybe they should also sue Google for using a leaf icon to signify a route that uses a tiny bit less gasoline. It's a huge exaggeration of how green it is to drive like this, and there are no leaves for walking, bicycling, or taking public transit.

That's because walking and bicycling emits CO2.

Are these two in the same realm, like, at all?

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