BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy
reuters.com
reuters.com
It's a systems problem requiring systems solutions, not a problem of (as movies simplistically tell us) "bad people."
To the systems point we really, really really, really really need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels to 7 trillion a year globally. We have to stop making it profitable and encouraged by the system.
https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel...
> we are the only species that will become extinct because survival wasn't profitable enough
If some other species had a comparable concept used to organize themselves, I doubt humans would even be aware of that nuance.
If you fill a jar with some yeast and sugar water, they'll feast and multiply at an accelerating pace until they've turned their environment toxic.
Painfully analagous to humans.
The way regulation works is that species are limited by their environment. If there are many antelopes, there can be many lions. But if there are two many lions, the population of antelopes goes down to the point where not all the lions can survive, right? This is simplistic, but that's the idea (the higher the population, the bigger the impact of a disease, etc).
Because we are really good at changing our environment in order to be more individuals who consume more resources, we escape those regulation mechanisms. By doing this, we destroy most species, including ours.
Now let's not pretend that ants would be better: if they somehow escaped those mechanisms, they wouldn't suddenly vote and stop growing (presumably). The fact is that they haven't escaped them, and we have. Well for a while. Now it's very likely that some kind of mechanism will end up regulating us. Maybe it will finish destroying most species, and it will take thousands of years to "recover" (with some definition of "recover").
What's interesting with us is that we do know we are destroying ourselves and the biodiversity (which is arguably one of the enjoyable things in life), but we can't seem to find a way to fix it.
In essence, our extinction (if it were to happen) would be because we were unable to solve the collective action problem... each individual choosing their own best course dooms the entire species.
When looked at it this way, lots of species go extinct for this reason; resource exhaustion due to uncapped expansion.
The difference is that we don't expect animals to be able to reason through the situation and realize that individuals would need to sacrifice for the greater good of the species.
This old song. I am all for a sacrifice... As long as it starts from the top. Wake me up when that happens.
This is misleading. See https://www.slowboring.com/i/145942190/the-case-of-the-myste...
> The vast majority of the “subsidies” are “implicit subsidies,” which include “undercharging for environmental costs.” In other words, they are characterizing governments’ failure to impose a carbon tax as a “subsidy” for fossil fuel use.
Everything is implicitly subsidized because every action that any living being takes affects some other living being and the ecosystem as a whole, because we all live on the same planet. It's a meaningless statement.
Sure, we can assign those costs to builders, why not? There's already lots of discussion about the true cost of EV batteries and how they're subsidized.
> Everything is implicitly subsidized because every action that any living being takes affects some other living being and the ecosystem as a whole, because we all live on the same planet.
Actions don't all have the same effect so I think it's totally fair to consider their true costs.
I think where it gets a little tricky is how you decide to assign costs to people that have children or are children. But that's really getting in the weeds.
No, we generally pay for pollution. If I litter I pay. If I have to throw stuff away I pay (via taxes). If I have to dump dangerous chemicals I pay.
Oil industry can dump whatever they want into the air and they don't pay. You, and I, pay. We don't actually know how profitable oil is because of this.
I don't understand why you're making excuses for carbon pollution.
One thing that stands out is that well intentioned policies often cause diaster if they don't simply trust the ability of humans (and by extension communities) to adapt and incorporate new information as it comes.
I believe that these subsidies are a prime example. They intend to help by alleviating the shock of world events, and it's only through an increase in trust/courage at all levels that we can overcome this tendency.
We need to stop bandying about this $7T figure. 80% of it is "implicit subsidies", meaning made-up numbers based on carbon pricing and environmental impacts and whatnot. It's like saying we implicitly subsidize solar power by not accounting for the environmental impacts of covering up square miles of land under panels, or of the pollution from the production of panels. If you go back far enough, it's like telling the caveman not to light sticks on fire to keep himself warm, because of the carbon emissions that aren't being priced in.
Fossil fuels are, with present-day technology, the best source of energy for humanity to develop and maintain high living standards. It's easy to stop using them if we're OK with dialing back our living standards two hundred years. It will be easy to stop using them at some point in the future when we have abundant, clean, cheap energy from a proliferation of nuclear power, or some battery technology breakthrough that will let us economically harness wind and solar energy. However, currently, it's not easy. Oil and gas is profitable because it makes us all richer, let's not forget that.
Ditto the fertilizer and many other things that keep you alive to type on here too.
It's very hard to maintain modern civilization without oil/gas products. Unless you want to be Amish.
Actual production may become lower than today, but I'd like to believe we don't have to go full Amish.
What examples do we have of publicly-traded megacorps that have successfully made shifts at the scale which we see oil companies trying to make? (With extrinsic motivation being a primary driver?)
Cigarette companies?
Incentives are not destiny, though they are often persuasive. Peoples' decisions do matter, which is why there are people in the system and it's not just some idiot algorithm.
Also true of consumers and politicians.
It's a people problem requiring people to coordinate their actions for the net good of all people, instead of coordinating their abdication of responsibility for the good of the corporation.
If we all had better representation, maybe we could have some accountability in governments to help enact policy that we actually want.
Oil companies are full of oil experts. There's no reason to think they'll do well competing with companies full of renewable energy experts.
Is that another way of saying the "Market" will dictate everything?
I never thought about it this way in terms of politics. But may be some food for thought.
Direct timecode to the start: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg#t=419
Between reversions like this, RTO mandates, and global conflicts that seem to include blowing up oil refineries it seems like there's absolutely no hope or interest from any major governments, businesses, or organizations to do anything to address global warming and climate change or even maintain our carbon outputs.
There was a time when I dreamed of owning a Tesla, there is absolutely no way I'd drive one now.
I think China is going to steam ahead towards Solar, Nuclear and EVs, so maybe there is hope there!
1. Range
2. Cost (correlated with range)
3. Lack of charging infrastructure
Where I am, unless you own a home, charging an EV is more expensive than gas.
[1] https://www.supplychainconnect.com/news-trends/article/55137...
I don't believe so. As I understand it, there are not enough rare metals available, with the known battery technologies. I don't think will ever be the production capacity to construct and maintain (replace) electric-based equivalents to the solutions fossil fuels fit. Fossil fuels came to dominance because of a number of maximal equations. eg The energy demand to move goods, on the scale of trains, is impractical. Operating electronics in extreme temperatures, is impractical.
Apologies for the paywalled article. The following quote sums up the article:
"Globally, the mining of raw ingredients for battery manufacturing could peak by the mid 2030s, reckons RMI, an American think-tank. This will be caused by a combination of better recycling and continuing advances in battery chemistry, which boosts the energy density of cells so that batteries can be made with fewer raw materials. This, RMI believes, might see mineral extraction for batteries being avoided altogether by 2050."
This is a hope, at best. For better or worse, I wouldn't bet on it. I don't think electric vehicles will "eat the world" in the foreseeable (or farther) future.
In the US, only 39% of emissions are from fossil fuels used for transportation [1]. Where I am, around 60% of my EV power comes from natural gas plants that run at night, where electricity is 3.5x cheaper (electricity costs more than gas during peak hours where I am).
With the lack of new nuclear, and the required 25-50% increase in our power grid, a quick (as in 20 year) change in EV adoption would almost certainly mean that more of these natural plants come online when charging happens, negating at least some of the CO2 savings.
80% seems fictitious.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=307&t=10#:~:text=C....
I'm still pressing a head with my personal contribution by cladding our new house in panels!
[1] Desalinization, where 300 million are currently services: https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water-science-school/sci...
[2] Block 2% to reduce warming by 1.5C. https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-six-ideas-to-limit-glo...
How could finding naturally growing plants eventually be more successful than technological innovations around agriculture, in a drier climate (our future)? This doesn't seem logical/rational, since every desert civilization moved away from a hunter-gather existence. Irrigation has existed for millennia, invented by people that lived in dry places [1], because it wasn't optional.
[1] https://eprints.nwisrl.ars.usda.gov/id/eprint/815/1/1070.pdf
Moving from one stage to the next is not guaranteed, but EV's, battery & solar and definitely well past the first two stages. I'd argue that solar might even be in column 4 -- China installed 100 GW of it in the first six months of 2024, and the rest of the world a similar amount.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-has-more-than-...
Countries without a large land mass can't do this, a good example being Singapore. And even then, solar is being a potential large reliable power source by getting Australia to literally cable power thousands of kilometers.[0]
Solar has won IMO, it will just take a while for it to reach stage 4 everywhere.
[0] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/21/australia-greenligh...
If you’re a geek, you probably got hyped up by Elon when he was saving the world with electric cars. Now that he’s regressed to his effort to offer himself for impregnation services to repopulate and installing fascist dictatorships, the electric car stuff has gone by the wayside.
Cults of personality usually end up toxic.
https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/how-much-land-power-us...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...
You tend to need commercial solar installations nearish to people - projects in say Nebraska have a lower ROI than say New York or Massachusetts. There’s much more limited amounts of land and farmable land in particular.
With climate change, aquifer depletion and other factors, farmland imo is a strategic resource that should be protected. The corn bounty is not likely to continue forever.
2- Carbon is much more than energy. Take a look at medicine, for example. Remove plastics, the field as we know it stops. Stop the flow of primary feedstock from refineries and no more medicines. Coal is another excellent example. You can replace as many coal plants as you want with renewables, you still need it to make the high-grade steel required to manufacture the renewables. Which is one reason why China is digging up more coal per year than any country ever had since the Industrial Revolution.
From "Indonesia’s coal producers diversify as money for mining dries up" - https://www.ft.com/content/9546f590-2fb0-4939-a090-8bac7ba6a...
"In recent years, foreign banks have largely stopped financing coal operations, with Indonesian companies primarily securing financing from domestic institutions"
If the justification for burning the earth to the ground continues to be “investors focused on short term returns” then governments need to start telling companies like BP they are legally and financially responsible for the effects those policies have on insurance rates and everything else.
At some point if they can’t do the right thing because it’s a sound long term investment strategy, they need to pay the real price of their short term focused strategy.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-alman...
The lack of action by people while expecting the government to do something is farcical.
“There ought to be a law!” the outraged but impotent mob cries - and there will be one, when you take matters into your own hands and write it, just like the people who established this government did.
> The company continues to target net zero emissions by 2050. "As Murray said at the start of year... the direction is the same – but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused, and higher value company," a BP spokesperson said.
Bit confused by the discrepancy of these statements. Is this because this is an insider source that has not been officially announced (seems like it), or are they saying "We still plan to cut emissions by 2050... maybe sometime later" (seems less likely).
The fact they’ve cut all targets for 2030, and cut back all renewable plans tells you there’s no actual plan to hit net zero.
This was a pretty obvious end result when the head of their renewables group resigned in April and instead of replacing her they decided to “shrink the executive group” by exactly one headcount.
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/bp-cuts-size-executi...
The thing that truly drives me nuts is people still scream and yell about small individual actions mattering when stuff like this is going on, it just seems like gaslighting to me.
Specifically, in this context, they are still reducing output. Just not as aggressively. Do we have reporting on what this means in real impact terms? Last reporting I have seen, the majority of carbon emissions are from locations that we aren't governing. Such that this is akin to yelling at people for not eating all of their food, because someone somewhere is starving.