Longtime Aspen ski executive thinks corporate sustainability is a scam
cpr.org
cpr.org
That's pretty obvious, but the message needs to be hammered in over and over. The bigger issue is that game theory gets in the way - if pollution is taxed here, it will be exported to places where it is not.
We've overthrown foreign governments for smaller reasons. It's more a question of political will than anything else.
Hard problems are hard.
Example: The US has banned lots of Chinese stuff. The stuff now sneaks across the border into southeast Asia, or goes to a final assembly plant there and becomes Vietnamese or Cambodian. There are _supposed to_ be supply chain records and audits in many cases, though reality often doesn't match paperwork...
We have done close to nothing to enforce the current tariffs and such, allowing blatant country of origin laundering to go the whole time with next to zero enforcement action. You can bring a ready to prosecute case to regulators and they do utterly nothing.
Adding more to this regime would just be yet more performative nonsense to make some people feel good about themselves. We need far less of that in this world.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/ford-motor-company-agrees-pay...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-2...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdfl/pr/us-attorney-lapointe-an...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-1...
Now if you're just arguing the penalties need to be stiffer: sure!
But on a cursory search, I don't believe it's fair at all to say we've done "close to nothing" or there's "next to zero enforcement action" or regulators "do utterly nothing" or it's "performative nonsense".
What evidence do you have to back up your claims? It seems like perhaps you've actually brought a ready-to-prosecute case forward? Curious to learn!
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197961495 I think is the best quick example of the problem I am talking about here. Outright actual fraud by foreign companies laundering country of origin through intermediary countries. There is next to zero enforcement on this considering how rampant it is. There seems to be very little interest in doing any sort of "hard" prosecution on this problem - likely because it is complex and difficult to investigate appropriately.
I consider it rampant and enforcement a joke since I have spoken to vendors about past and future potentially tariffs and they are completely unconcerned by them. Minor cost of doing business increase to have products shipped through an intermediary company and relabeled. Maybe some quick final assembly if they really are trying to play the game.
I think current enforcement works okayish for folks trying to push the limits. It seems to fall over on outright fraud imposed by bad actors.
The EU is the farthest ahead on this.
See:
- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU_Carbon_Border_Adjustment_...
- https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/policy/carbon-border-a...
We're just seeing the example of tech companies, which for years paraded around as earth saviors with pledges of "carbon neutrality", just to discard any such plans when competition for AI supremacy makes them spend as much energy as they possibly can, as quickly as possible, the environment be damned.
And I'm arguing that the problem is you need over 200 governments to agree on both it and its enforcement, and that the wealth disparity between countries in and of itself will cause game theory issues for these sorts of agreements to break down, even if each government was enlightened socialist.
Capitalism is making it worse, to be sure, but socialism is not a solution here in and of itself.
The world will have to be drastically different to solve these problems. A carbon tax is the way to do it since offsets are often plainly fraudulent. We have a long way to go. Cars should be as efficient as possible if not replaced by rail. Food packaging ought to be reusable and standardized like shipping containers or milk bottles way back in the day. People would have to give up on their manicured chemical water intensive artificially green lawns and how embarrassing that would be. All appliances, devices and vehicles should be repairable. The way to drive this would be a prepaid tax to account for the costs of the pollution. It would have to be a high enough tax that people get angry about their standard of living changing so it won't happen under democratic politics in such an individualistic society. Everyone has to have their over sized car to signal wealth to their neighbour. But at least if there were regulations we would all be in it together and find more efficient ways to peacock to our neighbours.
That point was acknowledged in the second paragraph of the article. "His career led him to a tough lesson about his field: it’s a failure that perpetuates the very systems driving global warming".
> How many of Patagonia's rain jackets are covered in forever chemicals like PFAS?
From this year on, none of them (as linked in the policy above).
Now this is literally a hydra. Consumerism? Yes! Plastics and the lies of oil industry that 'plastic(s) is/are recyclable? Yes! Politics? Yes! Greed? Yes! Big bubble global economy that nobody wants it to bust/rightsize? Yes!
Musk has said many things about many topics. One that I admired one thing he said some years back was (along the lines of..) "for humans going to inhabit Mars it is better that they make up their own laws, and I (he) hopes they will do a better job than what we did on earth".
I don't feel/believe that Earth will ever be repaired/become pristine while it has humans on it. Perhaps we will wipe ourselves out and 1000 years later, once all signs of civilization will be consumed by floods, earthquakes, nature, the planet will be pristine. It's just a Arrow Paradox (Zeno's paradoxes).
I fear an Idiocracy/Wall-e kinda future.
This cartoon comes to mind: https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995
Also thinking we can write better laws if we start from scratch is typical hubris from someone who's never really studied Law. Just another variant of the most common SV syndrome.
It is. However, looking at the US legal system as someone who isn't profiting from it, it's difficult to justify its existence.
What I mean is earth doesn't "care" in what state it is in. It will just simply continue in whatever state it will be in. With or without humans.
Examine why people use fossil fuels and then prioritize development of reasonable and affordable alternatives.
> what if I just dumped the trash on the street and hoped and waited for my community to pick it up, or to just suffer from my trash?
What if you asked how much fossil fuel is burned transporting people and goods into the Aspen ski resort? Or what the impact of your mostly seasonal labor is? Or why their housing is a 25 minute drive from the resort?
> Leave us with what “Terrible Beauty” is
The projecting recognition that you are, in fact, one of the largest parts of the problem?
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain...
Give people in these areas higher paying jobs, retrain them as necessary, promote highly safe working environments (compared to dangerous oil fields). Then over time the sentiment regarding climate change shifts - politicians taking the cut from O&G will get replaced, laws can change, policies can be placed to push progressive initiatives.
One common argument against green energy projects is that they only have attractive returns when they come with sizeable subsidies attached, which really just means taxpayers are footing the bill.
I appreciate those same taxpayers are also footing the climate bill, but people tend to care more about the dollars in their pocket today than some future risk which may or may not affect them directly.
That argument has been out of date for at least five years.
You ain't building a solar array or a mega windmill farm in Appalachia - it is a significant upfront cost and very challenging.
> Give people in these areas higher paying jobs, retrain them as necessary, promote highly safe working environments
Easier said than done. One of the great things about renewable energy sources like Solar Arrays and Wind Turbines is that there isn't that much labor needed.
The manufacturing is largely automated and maintenance doesn't need hundreds of people - maybe a dozen well paid Technicians at most.
More critically, these are very technical power systems and the technicians managing these arrays often have a College Education in Electrical or Mechanical Engineering and a decent amount of professional experience.
The regions disproportionately affected by your proposal are those with some of the weakest human capital in the US (Appalachia, Permian Basin, the Gulf coast, rural Alaska).
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Green Technology adoption is critical to ensure we can remain on Earth sustainably, but handwaving fears about job sustainability is a disservice, and plays a major roll in the arising backlash to green technology.
Why is it only limited to solar or wind? Nuclear is a viable option and requires a shit ton of people to operate and pollution is nil compared to coal and O&G.
There are plenty of ways to get this done. However our shitty economic policies based on neo-liberalism economics of the 1970s to 2010s have put us in a place where we are powerless to do anything about it. Decades of deregulation, tax cuts for billionaires and multibillion dollar companies, stock buybacks, subsequent cutting of public services, corporate glazing, hyper capitalistic culture have left us with very little to tackle this issue.
How are you getting uranium at scale? Mining.
What do you need to mine at scale? O&G.
Nuclear also has extremely high upfront costs with significant opposition from society, making land acquisition and maintenance costs extremely high.
Nuclear Plants also tend to require significant education with some amount of college education.
> There are plenty of ways to get this done. However our shitty economic policies based on neo-liberalism economics of the 1970s to 2010s have put us in a place where we are powerless to do anything about it. Decades of deregulation, tax cuts for billionaires and multibillion dollar companies, stock buybacks, subsequent cutting of public services, corporate glazing, hyper capitalistic culture have left us with very little to tackle this issue
Maybe, but a major reason why a lot of green energy is viable today is precisely because most of the inputs and maintenance are largely automated, making it much more cost effective at scale.
It's difficult to make a case to unionized employees at in the O&G industry to say goodbye to SWE level salaries. The amount of retraining is very high (as these are complex systems) and often require a college education.
> What do you need to mine at scale? O&G.
So existing workforce in mines and O&G can transition to new green economy. Gotcha…
> Nuclear also has extremely high upfront costs with significant opposition from society, making land acquisition and maintenance costs extremely high.
So let’s stop giving (profitable) O&G billions of dollars in subsidies at the state, federal levels. Redirect subsidies towards acquiring land and maintenance (again more jobs…)
> It's difficult to make a case to unionized employees at in the O&G industry to say goodbye to SWE level salaries.
Unlike SWEs, those “SWE level salaries” come at the price of high risk of dismemberment, death, and injury. Offshore oil rigs and domestic oil fields are dangerous working environments.
Plus is working 12 hr days really worth whatever 6 figures they pay you? Sure you _may_ have a shit ton of money towards the end of your tenure. But lose out on watching your kids grow up.
~90% of global uranium produced comes from 4 countries - Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia, and Australia - not the US.
> Unlike SWEs, those “SWE level salaries” come at the price of high risk of dismemberment, death, and injury. Offshore oil rigs and domestic oil fields are dangerous working environments
These are dangerous jobs, but clearly the only jobs available in a lot of these areas.
As I noted previously, most renewable energy jobs (including nuclear) require some form of college education or significant retraining.
It's going to be tough convincing someone to leave a well paid and well benefited job, when the alternative industry is heavily automated and thus doesn't require the same amount of employment.
Let's be brutally honest - you aren't going to convince a PV fab to invest in manufacturing in Odessa TX or build a nuclear power plant in Nenana AK. The human capital just doesn't exist AND it is a fairly specialized engineering discipline that cannot be taught on the fly.
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I fully agree with you about the need to prioritize renewables, but you are doing a massive disservice to the cause if you are ignoring the very real concerns tens of thousands of employees in the O&G industry have.
These are hard questions, and hand waving them away with platitudes like "retraining" is just setting the movement up for failure.
Synfuels produced by atmospheric capture of CO² & Methane by nukkular powered atmospheric processors.
Conceptually like https://avp.fandom.com/wiki/Atmosphere_Processing_Plant / https://www.space.com/terraforming-in-alien-universe
Not just one. A global grid of them. At scale, yes?
Right here. Right now.
The problems with climate change are problems with time scale of centuries.
The problems with nuclear have timescales of millennia
The sites remain incredibly, invisibly toxic far longer than we have had people around, into the future.
Making the next few hundred generations pay for our current consumption is not really a morally defensible proposition
That's BS. There are some NPP's already decommissioned, and there is nothing toxic there anymore.
The little bits that were, have been transported away, to be stored elsewhere.
How that happened, or not so far, varies by region and is often delayed or sabotaged by stupid regulations, shizophrenic neglect and NIMBYism.
In similar ways some regions have no, or little battery backup for the grid.
Which wouldn't be necessary in the first place, if we hadn't stopped development and refinement of 'nukkular' in the first place about half a century ago.
It really isn't that much volume.
The most dangerous parts decay the fastest, that's what's making them dangerous.
And they could be used in advanced breeder 'nukkularz', FUCK YEAH!
The rest is rather harmless, and if our descendents are too stupid to stay away from that stuff, and don't make glowing toys for their mutated brats out of it, they don't deserve better.
Or maybe 'hormesis' kicks in another evolutionary step, and they develop true psionics!1!!
Call me immoral, I'll call you whiney.
And could be really clean, if handled right, from cradle to cradle.
But that's another matter to discuss, with endless chatter, about externalisation, drawing sankeys until exterminaton, succumbing to the offer of the cheapest bidder, just another dirty shitter.
Arr tyarr tyarr.
> The book is trying to get at this question of the gap between what people say they care about and what they do in response to a threat to all of it. If you ask the average American, “What do you love? What do you care about?” They'd say, “My family, my partner, my children, the natural world that I visit and recreate in– those things are important to me, my community.” And then you say “Climate change is a threat to all of those things. An existential threat. What are you doing about it?” And the reality on the ground from the last election is people barely even vote. And when they take action, those actions tend to be token recycling, and they don't take the next step of saying “what would really matter?” So the takeaway from the book is that the beauty of the world, our families, the stories we tell about ourselves, these are so precious that they're worth protecting. I'm hoping that that love and that caring will propel people to do really meaningful work on climate change.
You know, I think a different book needs to be written. The focus is always on the people who aren't doing much. I see it on HN all the time; hundreds of comments like "We aren't willing to make real sacrifices", "Everyone has a price", "No one truly cares", and so on.
On the contrary, I never see positive highlighting of the who is actually making sacrifices to do things that have an impact. Those get handwaved away in the above quotes, as if they don't exist.
They need to be put up on a pestedal, we need to highlight them and talk about how awesome they are. I've never seen any book do that. Tell people that you too can be one of them. Even when there's reporting on them, it's all very flat, matter of fact.
It's super harmful to wave them away, to not mention their existance, because in people's minds 1. it reinforces the idea that there's no choice 2. it makes people inadvertently feel good about themselves because oh well, we're all like that.
Spreading this exact sentiment is also such a well known strategy that bad actors have been using on a variety of topics for decades.
> I mean, if a company is publicly traded, it has to turn a profit for shareholders.
Real shame on CPR for implicitly supporting the myth of fiduciary duty, which too is incredibly harmful for the exact same reasons but for corporations - providing a cover as if there's no other option. As long as a company isn't intentionally, actively being run into the ground, there is absolutely zero risk of getting in trouble for not upholding fiduciary duty. It does not happen, it's a convenient myth to excuse companies offloading their negative externalities onto society in chase of shortterm greed. This is a real factor on this exact topic and it's really unfortunate this implication is being reinforced in such an article. Yes, they're not technically saying it, but it very much has that effect.
Oh yes.
(Us on) the left need to learn the lessons.
Fear and hate are the weapons of the right and billionaire robber barons
We must practice the Politics of Love and Hope.
It is hard to do when your heart is full of fear and hate, which is a reasonable place for a heart right now. But it is no use in saving the world.
Sounds trite, but it is true: Love will save the world. Nothing else comes close
It's about human nature and our monkey brains being wired for greed and for protecting loved ones we know closely over humanity at large.
So quoting Adam Smith out of context is not really relevant
That said, there is no "butcher, the brewer, or the baker" now, it is Butcher Corp, Brewer Corp, and Baking Corp.
I think that is the reason why historical 'see the world with love' figures withdrew from the world rather than engage with it.
I think concepts of politics of love and hope are vastly different between cultures/socio economic classes as well, where as monkey brain fear/hate are an easier, more universal sell.
The whole business is predicated on deforestation and people flying airplanes to ski for the weekend.
When that wasn't economically viable anymore because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1893 ,
it slowly reinvented itself as a ski-resort.
I'd bet there is more deforestation by avalanches in the area.
Or forest fires.
> ...and people flying airplanes to ski for the weekend.
There were railroads there.
They could be built back from Glenwood Springs along or in the midst of HWY82,
and/or the scenic route along the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Pass_(Colorado) ,
https://www.american-rails.com/tennessee.html ,
optionally via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagerman_Pass ,
Norrie, Ruedi Reservoir, Basalt.
More history & maps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_and_Rio_Grande_Western_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Midland_Railway
Choo Choo!
I never understood the point of suing oil companies. (Edit: I mean insofar as "fixing the climate" goes. If the goal is something else, ignore my comment.)
So let's say they don't even show up to court, and just lose by default, and the companies get destroyed. OK, congratulations... now what? Consumers aren't going to go "oh my gosh I'm such a fool... if Exxon hadn't fooled me about global warming I would've gone grocery shopping with my carriage horse." They're still going to drive everywhere like they were yesterday, they're going to want bottom-of-the-barrel (pardon the pun) oil prices, and they're going to vote for the leaders that give them that. Whether they're in denial or actively outraged at everyone else for unsustainable living, it's not like most people have enough disposable income, free time, or a bright outlook on the future to invest in more costly methods of living.
People want low oil prices, that's our way of life. The oil companies are there because of consumer demand. How does suing them greedy oil companies address that?
If somehow we had managed to figure out climate models before we stopped building nuclear plants, then maybe we could have ended up on a different trajectory but it just seems so unlikely.
Immediate reduction in emissions, preservation of ecosystems, boost to renewable energy, setting a good legal precedent, funding for climate restoration (not just monies recovered from murderous executives, but also a huge windfall from not paying them massive subsidies any longer).
Not to mention other benefits, like better public health and awareness.
Wild how this question was framed like some sort of gotcha; as if all of this is in any way radical and not a matter of necessity at this point.
... Did you read my comment? Did you read the original question? I'm really not sure where you got lost. Yes, if "greedy oil companies" were sued "out of existence" there would be an immediate reduction in emissions.
If you want to start a different question that limits the scenario to ExxonMobil and a realistic judge in the actual system that we have, then go ahead.
What would be possible, certainly, is an increasingly harsh sequence of taxes and mandates to force the economy to decarbonize. I think we should do that, but it’s not something that a lawsuit against oil companies could impose.
For 50+ years Exxon et al knowingly did everything they could to prevent a better world.
Every year the world gets hotter, and they just keep getting richer.
You want to give them a pass because people like and use the stuff that's killing them? We didn't use that logic for tobacco companies, and it worked out. We used it for banks, and it didn't. We use it for military spending, and it's another decision that could kill the planet.
The 'too big to fail' argument is a cop-out, just kicking the can. It's astounding that in a world 1.5C above what it should be there are people arguing against holding the people responsible to account by legal means. Just because we use their product to drive life on earth off a cliff faster than we could without them? That makes no sense to me; I don't buy it. Can you explain it to me?
What I don't agree with is the idea in the source article, where this is something we have to do instead of small-scale fixes. Emissions come from oil consumption, so emissions reduction simply cannot happen without small scale fixes from every company which depends on fossil fuels today. Perhaps suing Exxon will help incentivize that, but I worry when it's framed as a silver bullet, as though Exxon has some Department of Increased Emissions and if we shut it down we can fix the climate without disrupting other businesses.
If you win and the legal system shuts down the modern lifestyle, you are going to have people anti the legal system, not saying 'wow, good on your for removing the oil companies and our way of living'. If you weaponize government against people and their lifestyle choices too much it's possible people break the government instead of the government breaking people's will to live as they currently do.
Because for decades fossil fuel companies used tobacco lobby style tactics to sow doubt about the real cost of that lifestyle.
And yet somehow suing them into oblivion 'won't solve anything'? Suing tobacco companies into oblivion did wonders for us. I think it's worth a try.
> If you win and the legal system shuts down the modern lifestyle, you are going to have people anti the legal system
The modern lifestyle is driving us off a cliff. No one - no one - has argued that suing fossil fuel companies is a one and done complete solution. That's a straw man.
What I said was: "No one - no one - has argued that suing fossil fuel companies is a one and done complete solution. That's a straw man." Why are you changing the argument, acting as if I said something quite different, and then asking me how the different argument is a strawman? ... That's literally a strawman. You gonna strawman all the way down?
And, how do you think the collapse of global ecosystems will affect quality of life? How do you think a billion or two climate refugees will affect quality of life? How are the 83% of extreme weather events which climate change is impacting affecting quality of life? How is the pollution of our air, water, soil and food from oil companies affecting our quality of life?
The reason "average people" aren't pushing back even more on all this is directly due to decades of FUD pushed and funded by ... oil companies. And people are arguing that they shouldn't be sued??
Annual fossil fuel subsidies are in the trillions. They're not likely to be sued 'out of existence' any time soon; it would be admitting that our governments have been complicit. Environmental protesters are being treated as terrorists, ffs.
If we continue business as usual, then we are in for outcomes far beyond horror.