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Comment by bad_user | Hacker News Reader

I understand this is cringe, but:

> one of the many entities directly responsible for destroying our planet

Do any of you believe this narative?

Honest question: isn't the destruction of the planet due to the 8 billion people that have to be fed, clothed, housed, entertained? Aren't fossil fuels directly responsible for the industrial revolution and people not starving anymore?

I get that "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms, but isn't the elephant in the room the 8 billion people that still need to be fed, clothed, housed, and entertained?

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> I get that "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms

That's a huge understatement. They have actively sabotaged green initiatives all along. They have stopped green policies, and green policies is and has always been the ONLY way forward, you can't put shit like this on individuals.

Sometimes I think, that green policies are not stopped by Big Oil but undermined. You see, in many countries green policies are tied with rejection of nuclear power plants, which is much more effective and sustainable than all solar & wind sources.

When I've lived in Russia, I've donated to Green Peace and WWF, because they helps a lot to save Nature Reserves, oppose predatory laws which allows to exploit Protected Areas without any ecological control, they sued factories which dump industrial waste into soil and water without any treatment, etc.

Now I'm living in Europe and I don't want to give money to Green Peace, because their agenda is not about nature reserves and industrial waste treatment, but, first, anti-nuclear-plant and then anti-travel, antu-car-ownership, etc.

> because their agenda is not about nature reserves and factory waste treatment, but, first, anti-nuclear-plant and then anti-travel, antu-car-ownership, etc.

All of these things are indeed stupid imo, typical EU green party style navel gazing. The one I kind of agree with is anti-car-ownership, but it’s an extremely poor treatment of the symptom, where the decease is poor (and in many cases irreversible) city planning and public services. Excessive car ownership in urban areas is a solved problem in many parts of the world (where a car is less convenient than alternatives for personal travel for small families/households). It’s not rocket science.

And one more: I don't know about which parts of the world you are speaking of.

I've relocated to the Netherlands half a year ago, and I'm living in Amstelveen, it is Amsterdam's satellite town.

It is "well known" that the Netherlands is very car-less-friendly country.

But no, it is not in reality. Especially if you could not ride bicycle, as my wife. There is 2 shops with limited selection of basic food in walking distance from our apartments (and it is apartments in multi-store building, not some cottage in the middle of the fields), and it's it. You need something other? You need to take tram, which costs at leas 1.8 euro one way (2.9 euro to the Amsterdam itself) and maybe shop you need will be near the one of the stops of this tram (if you are lucky). You need IKEA, really big supermarket, something like this? Good luck to get there without taxi.

It is very frustrating. I didn't own car previously, but I'm thinking about it now.

Problem is, there is no good way for long way travel but airplane or car. Flights become ridiculous expensive (thanks to green movent too), and if you don't own car...

It becomes middle ages again: you live all you life in one city, you eat only local food ("we don't need oranges all year around" from other comment in this thread), you wash with cold water (to conserve energy), you wear thick, warm clothes even indoor at winter (same). Yes, you have antibiotics and, may be, good dentist, if you could afford it. Thank you.

I'm joking about middle ages, but as they say every joke contains some part of joke...

> It’s not rocket science.

But it's unpopular and expensive. Here in the UK, we have the minister for transport [0] jumping on the bandwagon of "walkable cities are a ploy for the government to control which shops you go to". In France, there were literal riots when fuel taxes were set to be raised.

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/mark-harper-government...

How is nuclear power much more sustainable than solar and wind energy?

It takes much less space (including storage for waste of current generation power plants, and we could close fuel cycle if we spent a tiny fraction of money used to whitewash oil companies to this research) that all fields of wind generators and solar panels. Also, modern nuclear station has resource much larger than modern wind generators, which is made of glass and resin. Nuclear power plant don't take space needed to graze cattle and seed crops, don't kill soil with vibration as wind turbines, don't change local micro climate as solar panels deployed on square kilometers. "Only" problem with nuclear plant is possible terrorist attack (modern control systems should exclude manual control and Chernobyl scenario).

Yes, uranium is theoretically finite, but only now known reserves is enough for something like 100'000 years on current level of power production of whole planet (not current power production of existing nuclear power plants, but total power production as-if it is made only by nuclear plants). And it is not all reserves for sure, and in 100'000 years, I hope, fusion power plants will be reality

As I understood it, we only have access to a few decades worth of high-grade uranium. After that we’re left with low-grade uranium which is hard to mine and refine - which incidentally you need fossil fuels to do (the mining part)

With regard to space needed: imagine if every existing building had roof top solar panels. We’d get quite far. I think we have the space for a few wind turbines to get us the final few kWh.

What do you think we should do with nuclear waste?

And how do you feel about giving every country in the world access to technology that also lets them develop nuclear weapons? Or should a select group of countries be environmentally conscious and the rest use fossil fuels? Renewables can be given to every country without risk.

This article has some interesting insights with regards to nuclear vs renewable energy: https://energypost.eu/renewable-energy-versus-nuclear-dispel...

Lol nice euphemism "delayed some reforms".

As of today I'll argue that no true reform has been done, externalities of burning fossil fuel are absolutely not taken into account.

And it's been delayed by something like half a century ? (cf https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994)

Fossil fuels have enabled great things. Fossil fuel companies also directly interfere with policy and regulation that will enable people to have a similar quality of life while using considerably more non-emitting power. That's horrible.

> I get that "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms, but

This sentence fragment greatly understates the impact they have had. It is clear that you consider it to be a narrative and are deliberately deflecting attention elsewhere. Both are valid statements, it is not a binary situation. It is not one over the other, and deliberately polarising situations does not help anyone. It only serves to further hinder the situation.

> I get that "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms, but isn't the elephant in the room the 8 billion people that still need to be fed, clothed, housed, and entertained?

Imagine how much progress would have been made had Shell et al. not buried research for decades showing the harms of fossil fuels and aggressively lobbied against alternative forms of energy.

This is like saying its not Comcast's fault that your neighborhood still only has 50mbps after decades and millions in grants because people still need Internet access.

I have a 1 Gbps internet connection at home, for which I'm paying $10 per month. I live in Romania.

The US and its companies are not the only ones on this earth, so unless you're going to claim some sort of conspiracy that prevented global progress, I'm not buying it.

I think you misunderstood my comment. Comcast is a US company; the fact you have 1Gbps Internet in Romania and yet many parts of the US don't (or don't for a reasonable price) just illustrates my point.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/25/africa/shell-oil-spills-niger...

Couldn’t the oil companies have included environmental responsibility in their work and not just have focused on profits?

Is this where allowing this type of rhetoric on HN ultimately evolves to, dipshit climate change deniers from undeveloped third world countries spouting brainless propoganda counterpoints to "the narrative" that using oil on the scale that we do harms the environment?

extremely disappointing

> "Big Oil" might have delayed some reforms

Is the understatement of the century. They knew about global warming from internal research close to a decade before public science was able to gather enough data to raise alarm bells. Over that decade big oil spent time not researching greener alternatives or options for improving things but rather prepared for the globe spanning disinformation campaign you've so lightly referred to as delaying some reforms.

Big oil is a major reason for why 8 billion people are being fed, clothed, and entertained unsustainably. We don't need oranges avaliable year round. We don't need North Sea salmon in pacific Islands. We especially don't need to import so much most is thrown out as waste.

There is a lot wrong with the world right now, and population management needs to be part of the conversation but we are not yet at a point where the volume of people is simply unsustainable. We are unlikely to reach that point as well, since population growth seems to slow naturally as populations hit carrying capacity.

By the late 70s wasn't a secret, it's more that nobody would listen over the sound of oil prices crashing half a decade later. Exxon even briefly had a substantial research division into renewables. In the 80s!

YouTube channel Climate Town has a very good summary of history of early climate chance action, The Time America Almost Stopped Climate Change

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MondapIjAAM

Some people really do follow this line of thinking all the way down to "the industrial revolution was therefore bad for humanity", but I think most people would agree that not true, so these simple narratives must be incomplete

Jason Crawford has a really good analysis of this sentiment, trying to understand why people think this, on his Roots of Progress blog: https://rootsofprogress.org/the-spiritual-benefits-of-materi...

Delayed. By about 40 years.

Also oil is insanely cleaner to burn than coal or wood

I’m sure it is. But it starts to get murkier when I consider that the wood came from a tree 200m up the road, but the oil is from the Middle East, processed somewhere and delivered to me 10,000km away.

The United States is now the largest producer of oil in the world, if that helps.

I’m in New Zealand, we should be using 100% renewables as we are just too far away.

Yes, this narrative should be stopped. Nothing is getting destroyed.

Let's tell the people who live in the Niger Delta this.

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