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Comment by eclecticfrank | Hacker News Reader

A couple of years ago the University of Cape Town had a property called the "Shell Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building".

But nowadays only the weathered shadows on the facade remain where the letters "Shell" once were mounted.

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Western Australia announced a "Greentech Hub" for environmental technology and innovation, sponsored by Chevron [0].

Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations. The irony is almost overwhelming.

As usual, nothing has been heard from the Greentech Hub since it was announced by the relevant minister almost a year ago. Which is fine, because the entire point of the thing was to have it announced by the relevant minister.

It's all very Yes Minister / Utopia, and we all see straight through it.

[0] https://startupnews.com.au/news/minister-dawson-announces-ne...

> Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations.

The catastrophic levels of human deaths resulting from food shortages and supply chain disruption (and basically everything supporting civilization) would surely lower global CO2 emissions!

Y'see, I have more faith in human ingenuity than this. We'd cope. Yes, there'd be a bunch of deaths and life might get a little less pleasant. But we'd cope. We'd find something else to fill the gap, and get everything back to a new normal.

> Chevron is, as you know, an enormous fossil fuel corp. The simplest and best method of improving the environment would be simply to shut down their oil and gas operations. The irony is almost overwhelming.

Yea, but that would just make some other player take their place. The game-theoretic choice seems to be to keep doing what they are doing, while allocating some of that dirty money towards research in green tech.

Presumably one would shut them down by making their cost externalizations illegal, not by specifically dismantling the single company.

Ok but what if I said: we shouldn't arrest cartel hitmen, because that would just make some other murderer take their place. The game-theoretic choice seems to be to keep doing what they are doing, while allocating some of that dirty money towards research in nonviolent conflict management?

Believe it or not, law enforcement agencies actually do that, more or less every day, in every country. There is value in having crime organised, predictable, somewhat circumscribed, and controlled by people you can communicate with and influence to a degree.

Real life is rarely binary.

I think you meant "towards marketing claiming green tech".

And to think Australia was basically the first major country to try to introduce a carbon tax back in the Julia Gillard days. Now, it looks more like the last major country still resisting any change, no matter how small, to the oil-fueled economy, by spinning words and actions to the extreme in order to look "green" while splurging in oil like Texans gushers in the early 1900's.

Aren’t fossil fuels from plants and good for plant life ? I mean plants breath in co2 and out o2. Higher co2 levels could probably turn deserts green.

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