Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-08-31/shell-silently-abandoned-its-100-million-a-year-plan-to-offset-co2-emissions

by jatorre • 3 years ago

291 285 3 years ago

bloomberg.com

archo• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/G0ULZ

Ladyady• 3 years ago

Appropriate shortlink there...

threesevenths• 3 years ago

Shareholders will be shareholders and demand value. CEO performs to increase shareholder value regardless of any negative outcomes that won’t directly impact shareholders

Entirely predictable result of the narrow view of the CEO shareholder relationship.

voisin• 3 years ago

It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash, so rather than go with a quantity of low quality carbon credits, they scrapped the program altogether.

I view this as more of an indictment of carbon credits than anything.

tw044• 3 years ago

It doesn’t sound like it is about shareholder value here. They can’t find enough carbon credit programs that meet their internal quality requirements and they are trying to actually not greenwash

That's just not accurate. This is the CEO who basically cut all of their plans around renewables.

https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/shells-renewables-boss-leav...

Cockbrand• 3 years ago

See also "Yes, the planet got destroyed. But for a beautiful moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders." [0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/cartoon/a16995

throwaway103xx2• 3 years ago

Large organizations have a lot of inertia. They don't want to change what has been working, even if the signs it'll stop working are clear.

They have the brains. They should branch out and create a moonshot division that starts to make money and shows stakeholders they can bet on them.

tw044• 3 years ago

It makes a ton of sense if your focus is only short-term profit. It makes absolutely 0 sense if your goal is to try to decrease the legal liability of knowingly causing global warming and actively suppressing those internal studies to increase profits.

Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years and the previous CEO was preparing their defense of "don't punish us for the sins of our fathers". Whereas Sawan is doubling down on "maximize this quarter, who cares about the future, not my problem".

That's all ignoring the: do you actually care at all if your great grandchildren have a habitable planet? (or maybe grandchildren at the rate we're going)

wredue2• 3 years ago

Some 40% of the population is actively pro big oil and actively denies the carbon footprint causal links with climate change and warming.

You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning?

Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion. If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.

throwaway103xx2• 3 years ago

I doubt we wil all be dead. It'll be awful but we will accept as the new terrible reality.

tw044• 3 years ago

I think 60% of the population is enough to pass laws such that it doesn't actually matter if the other 40% is willfully ignorant.

I also think as the climate becomes more and more inhospitable, that 40% number will continue to decrease.

atoav• 3 years ago

You think 20 years is enough for this reckoning?

20 years minus the latency inherent to the system. If I recall correctly the latency from "stopping to emit CO2" to "starting to see effects" is estimated to be 13 years.

robnado4• 3 years ago

The earth is getting warmer. To try to guilt people about it achieves nothing. The only action humanity can take at this point is to predict the effects of global warming and build infrastructure to slow it down, mitigate it or plan for the mass migrations.

NoMoreNicksLeft5• 3 years ago

Honestly, I think they’re all going to get away with it with zero repercussion.

Suppose for a moment that I completely agree with you on all points of substance. Even then, I would have to tell you that corporations are designed (not metaphorically, but literally designed) to deflect and shield liability. There never is anyone to be held accountable, because everyone who acts is an employee, and the ownership is divided among millions of people, through many layers of misdirection. None of whom make any decisions.

Unless you were careful, and if you have a 401K, you yourself may in fact be part owner. Or owner of an owner of an owner of an owner. Should you be held accountable?

You can't arrest a corporation. You can't put it in a holding cell overnight. You can't sentence it to prison for 10 years. You definitely can't give it the death penalty and execute it. And it's no accident this is the case. The major (and perhaps only real) difference between a corporation and simpler business customs is that the corporation is this magical wall between the owner and the business that can't usually be breached. If the business goes bankrupt, no one can seize the businessman's home as collateral. That's what a corporation is for. You live in a society that, however upset it might be over climate change, isn't upset at all over this "design". They like it. They revel in it. And it's not going away.

If humanity is still around in a couple hundred years, there might be retroactive virtue signalling. But that doesn’t matter cause everyone responsible will be long since dead.

But that's already true from a pragmatic standpoint. Even the CEO now, he was hired in a few years ago, He's just some schlub taking the jobs he knows how to do, without any real power to change what you want. If he tried, they'd fire him and get another. The people who set the ball rolling made sure of that. And even they aren't guilty in any real way, either, unless you want to pretend that someone in the early 1900s should have known better.

bryanlarsen6• 3 years ago

Price is set at the margin. Supply 100, demand 101 price goes up. Supply 100 demand 99 price goes down until supply and demand equalize.

75% of new electricity production is renewable. 10% of new car sales are EV's. A large fraction of new home heating installations are heat pumps. The three largest hydrocarbon demands are transitioning. That's going to have a meaningful effect on demand. It'll take decades to get anywhere close to zeroing demand, but it's going to have an effect on the margin quite quickly.

Can the companies & countries addicted to massive oil profits cut production quickly enough to stabilize prices? OPEC is trying but they're only a small and shrinking fraction of production and the gains from defection are so large...

corethree10• 3 years ago

Is it still 40 percent? Seems much more evident now what's happening.

Maybe 40 percent is still pro big oil but they don't deny the causal link.

I'm pro big oil because I still drive a gas car. In that sense if you use big oil products you are a supporter. I would put supporters at over waaaaay over 40 percent. 95% is a better estimate.

MaxHoppersGhost6• 3 years ago

Even if 100% of the global population was on board with getting rid of oil it would take more than 2 decades to lower demand by even 30% without causing massive decline in living standards.

matthewdgreen4• 3 years ago

If your view is that these companies are multi-decade sustainable businesses, then you want to invest in shoring up the firms' reputation and drilling new wells. If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.

DoingIsLearning2• 3 years ago

If your view is that all fossil fuel assets are headed towards zero over the next 3-4 decades, then you want to extract every last penny from the existing assets and move them into the pockets of shareholders.

I can not locate the long piece article now but I read a piece from someone that effectively got invited into a Shell (UK) think tank and heard exactly that from some vp/executive at a dinner table.

That they aimed to diversify (think corn/algae based fuels, hydrogen infrastructure, charging networks), but that they ultimately still believed that the public opinion would still make it palatable to continue hydrocarbon fuels extraction for another 2 to 3 decades.

Lendal• 3 years ago

Petrochemicals are never going to go to zero. We'll always need them. We won't always need to allow every person on the planet to burn them as fuel, but we will still need them to manufacture the many other products that aren't destroying the atmosphere.

photochemsyn2• 3 years ago

I think the notion is that if you control enough capital, you'll be able to relocate yourself and your family to those parts of the planet that are least impacted by the consequences of continued fossil-fueled global warming.

This also points to the problem with renewables from the capital viewpoint: they're just not as profitable, as you can't sell sunlight and wind or create artificial supply restrictions to jack up prices (which is the historical economic story of the oil & gas industry over most of the 20th century).

sgu9992• 3 years ago

That's all ignoring the: do you actually care at all if your great grandchildren have a habitable planet?

Their great grandchildren will be able to comfortably inhabit it alright, that's all that matters to them, at the very best.

corethree10• 3 years ago

The future is pointing to the end of these companies. Shell is maximizing its returns before the end.

It is the most long term outlook you can get. What's more important?a future where my children are billionaires or a future with slightly less global warming? Shell is not the only source of global warming on this earth.

You need to think in terms of human scale choices. Not just simplistic right or wrong choices. If we were that ceo... You, I and all of us maximize our benefits and make the most rational and most logical choice by destroying the environment.

It's the tragedy of the commons pushed to the maximum extreme. I make a shit load of money participating in the destruction of the commons. We'd all be lying to ourselves if we didn't make that choice.

If you think about it from the corporate perspective it also makes sense. The company is heading towards a wall. Not just environment pressures, but a future where oil is dry. We are running out. In the face of an inevitable end what is the best most rational choice? It's obvious.

UtopiaPunk3• 3 years ago

It's not the "tragedy of the commons," it's capitalism. They're opposite things. The "commons" were fenced in and taken from the public by private entities. In the same spirit, a healthy environment and stable climate system are being taken from all of us by private corporations. I would argue, in fact, that if the public had control over these resources, we would govern ourselves in a far different manner that would not lead towards such a bleak future simply because we are motivated by short-term profits.

Elinor Ostrom has written an excellent book called "Governing the Commons," and she was awarded a Nobel Prize in Economics for her work. I recommend it.

agloe_dreams3• 3 years ago

I think you are missing something. Where is what they will do:

1. Spin off green energy products into their own company. 2. Pour money from oil business into Green energy. 3. When reckoning comes for gas, they let the oil biz take the fall, but the fall won't be much as they will have nearly bankrupted it already.

nancyhn6• 3 years ago

Climate related deaths have declined by 98% over the last century.

You are 50x less likely to die of a climate-related cause than in 1920.

8x as many people die from cold temperatures as warm ones.

The planet is more green today than a century ago. CO2 is plant food.

We need more energy, not less. Renewable, nuclear, and yes even fossil fuels.

It brings people out of poverty and increases standard of living. When humans move up Maslow's hierarchy they start to care about the environment. CO2 emissions have been decreasing in the US since 2007.

mullingitover2• 3 years ago

These seem like ChatGPT’s response to the prompt “Give me a list of disingenuous points for dismissing anthropogenic climate change.”

JTbane• 3 years ago

Climate related deaths have declined by 98% over the last century.

Wow, HVAC is an amazing technology.

c1sc0• 3 years ago

Climate related deaths have declined by 98% over the last century.

Average life expectancy has increased because child mortality is down, do we stop medical research?

You are 50x less likely to die of a climate-related cause than in 1920.

Great. Let's keep investing in mitigation AND prevention. It seems to work!

8x as many people die from cold temperatures as warm ones.

Climate change is not just global WARMING.

The planet is more green today than a century ago. CO2 is plant food.

At the cost of loss of biodiversity. We don't just need green, but diverse green.

We need more energy, not less. Renewable, nuclear, and yes even fossil fuels.

Agreed. (Surprise!) But I'd prefer to see fossil used for industry and not energy. Renewable & nuclear should be sufficient.

Agreed. Moving up people on Maslow's hierarchy also causes them to need to have less kids (in a sane environment with a good social safety net for old age) which should stabilise the population by 2060.

mdgrech232• 3 years ago

I guess I don't see what other option we have other than drill baby drill. Yes we're killing our planet but renewable aren't able to provide the energy we need at scale. Switching to 100% renewables and not drilling means increased oil prices and ultimately less consumption across the board. Less food, less driving, less heat, less AC. We'd all have to give up a lot and no one is signing up for that. There's this magical thinking that we can switch to renewables and keep everything the same or that it only be a minor speedbump but that's nonsense. Switching to 100% renewables means redefining modern life as we know it in a way that involves a whole lot less materialism/consumerism for everyone.

Capricorn2481• 3 years ago

The option is not 100% renewable or 100% fossil fuels. It's not a ridiculous goal that we can just reduce emissions

bubbleRefuge2• 3 years ago

why can't we do nuclear with plugin hybrids in urban areas. the federal government , which, as an issuer of money, can afford anything, unlike states/municipalities, should massively fund nuclear to save the environment meet energy demands. seems like such a no-brainer.

pydry• 3 years ago

All of these changes that seem impossible that are routine when there is a large scale war on - production shifts + consumption is restricted.

The difference is that an existential climate crisis it just isn't treated by our leaders with the same importance as a good old fashioned war.

trashtester9• 3 years ago

Feels like the oil companies are going to face a big tobacco moment in the next 20 years

I think a lot of people feel that.

Personally, I think we may more or less have forgotten about "Global Warming" in 20 years, just like we forgot about the "Ozone Layer" or "Acid Rain".

If AI continues at anything resembling the current pace for another decade or two , there may be so much disruption, that Global Warming seems quite insignificant to most people.

axioms_End• 3 years ago

Small difference: we banned chemicals responsible for ozon layer disruption, similar situation with acid rain (talking about 1st world with rain). So it's not like we forgotten, more like it's a non-issue now. Global warming is only going to get worse.

webworker• 3 years ago

You can’t seriously believe that we’re in that grave of danger

SubiculumCode2• 3 years ago

I seriously believe it. Climate change will almost certainly lead to food insecurity and political upheavals, leading mass migration and war, not to mention potential knock-on effects where, for example, photosynthesis reductions due to extreme heat at the equator, rapid rates of methane release as permafrost melts, mass death in a heating and acidifying sea... . really there are just so many things that could go wrong, much more wrong. So yes, we should be very serious, and very scared.

matthewdgreen4• 3 years ago

Take a look at atmospheric methane levels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_methane

coliveira• 3 years ago

Their entire plan is:

- Deny the existence of the problem.

- Pay for others to join the denialist movement.

- Pay others to say that individuals should fix the problem, not the company.

- If they cannot deny anymore, promise they will certainly do something in the future.

- When the future arrives, say they couldn't do anything for financial reasons.

- Finally, say that the harm is already done, and nothing else can be done about it (we already see this happening).

cutemonster2• 3 years ago

And:

- Convince weak minded but important influencers that there's no problem,

by forming "real" friendships (no bribes),

so they in turn sincerely honestly spread the manipulation themselves.

(Ive seen that & read that Putin uses this against the US and EU, and it apparently works great, but that's off topic)

wonderwonder3• 3 years ago

I think its deeper than that. Its not an oil company issue (I am not implying in anyway that they are the good guys here) What would happen to society if tomorrow all oil companies just said the risk of global warming is too great, we are all shutting down. Society would collapse.

Its not so much they are doing this for profits; which of course they are, but society as a whole very much needs them to continue to do so in order to assure our continued existence in our current form.

verisimi• 3 years ago

Do you realise that the Rockerfellers (famous oil scions) organised the environmental movement into what we have today, via people like Maurice Strong (himself an oil entrepreneur). There is a good argument to be made that the environmental movement is a creation of 'big oil'.

berniedurfee• 3 years ago

- Profit!

polygamous_bat• 3 years ago

Of course, the board of shell can just delay the legal responsibility until all of them are ghosts – then they've won and their next generation can just inherit their yachts to stay on top of (literally) the rising sea.

protastus• 3 years ago

Your analogy with big tobacco is on point.

Big oil and big tobacco share a strategy of promoting false skepticism, shifting blame to consumers, using the legal system to harass and intimidate scientists, and lobbying to get support from elected representatives. Big oil is of course bigger, and the entanglement with politics, jobs and other companies in the private sector is much stronger.

These issues are widely documented, and the books that climate scientist Michael Mann wrote were eye opening to me.

The only sensible exit is to legislate at scale. These companies will not self regulate. The lag between cause and effect makes this extremely dangerous. A heavy carbon tax is an obvious way to do it.

rayiner• 3 years ago

important was what he omitted: any mention of the company’s prior commitment to spend up to $100 million a year to build a pipeline of carbon credits, part of the firm’s promise to zero out its emissions by 2050.

Not counting the CO2 output of its product obviously.

jnsaff22• 3 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong but even the original plan only covered carbon footprint of Shell's operations?

Which I presume are pretty much a minor fraction of the carbon footprint of their products and kinda makes the whole exercise a PR campaign.

Even when it would cover pipeline leaks and the like it's still nowhere near their total impact.

fluoridation2• 3 years ago

Were you expecting Shell to increase the efficiency of every existing internal combustion engine?

Aachen7• 3 years ago

It's what I wondered at the headline as well. Sounded ambitious, but with how much profit they make it's not immediately obvious whether it's infeasible, especially if you can convince a government to then be exempt from a part of the fuel taxes because you don't have to pay for the pollution aspect

jnsaff22• 3 years ago

Idk, we could illustrate this a bit with: "hey, we are in the business of murder, we switched from machine guns to sniper rifles, our murder is now much less wasteful (in terms of bullets used)".

That is not to say you are wrong, it was maybe just that when a fossil fuel company tells you it's reducing it's carbon impact then the whole premise is going to be cynical at best.

closewith• 3 years ago

I wonder what the percentage is. Refining alone is ludicrously energy-intensive, plus end-to-end transport costs.

konschubert4• 3 years ago

It’s ridiculous.

gwbas1c• 3 years ago

It's worth understanding how disruption works in business. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma)

Generally, established companies have a lot of trouble, and often fail, adopting when the rules of business change.

In this case, Shell is having a lot of trouble adopting to carbon-free (or neurtral) energy.

IMO: I think the best approach is to seek out carbon-free (or neutral) energy business models and disrupt Shell out of business. From Shell's POV, the best thing they can do is invest in the disrupters and have them organically displace their existing fossil-fuel based businesses.

kmeisthax• 3 years ago

Xerox's copierheads. Except the copiers are also Dutch oven-ing the planet, a good chunk of our copiers are made in regressive absolute monarchies operated in league with far-right religious conservatives, and the most powerful country in the world is politically captured by the need to provide cheap copiers to businesses.

TheAtomic• 3 years ago

Agreed, Shell is f'd. Increasingly I wonder if Apple is in the same boat. An AI-based phone from SpaceX with Starlink connectivity, or from Nvidia, would disrupt their entire business model. And they don't really seem to get AI.

Spivak2• 3 years ago

Huh? Apple already partnered with Globalstar for satellite connectivity which I think will come to fruition for more general connectivity long long before any of Elmocorp figures how to make phones at the quality of iPhones or even $Galaxy_Flagship.

And no one has figured how to make AI work for the kinds of tasks people ask phones to do. It might be possible but no one's yet made it work so it's hard to argue that anyone is "behind" on this front when no one has brought even a commercial AI-based voice assistant to market which is has the lowest barrier to entry and the highest user tolerance for failure.

So I think you're right that a lot of old-guard tech is becoming too big to be agile but I'm less sure about the thing that will actually disrupt them.

agloe_dreams3• 3 years ago

And they don't really seem to get AI.

To say this is to not know how Apple operates. They have been shipping local AI in phones for a decade now. Every phone has one of the best neural processors out there. Apple is better prepared than anyone. And that's before considering their remarkable restraint to not release something until they are happy with it. They are 100% working on LLMs and I'm sure they will do it their own way. This isnt some sort of fanboy post, it's their story. From OLED to the Mac transition to Apple silicon. Slowly, then all at once.

jacquesm3• 3 years ago

For those interested in how a Dutch non-profit sued Shell for climate goal compliance and won (they've appealed):

https://en.milieudefensie.nl/climate-case-shell

riffraff• 3 years ago

The plan that was shelved was about carbon offsets, these have not proven to be particularly effective so maybe not too big a deal.

The greater loss is that the new CEO had already scaled down Shell's investment in renewables, setting a target of 4.5% of the total investments in renewables by 2025[0].

Some other Oil&Gas companies seem to be a bit more inclined to actually invest in renewables, or at least pay lip service to it, e.g. ENI aims at 30% by 2025[1].

Remains to be seen how much will actually be invested.

[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/shell-boost-dividend... [1] https://www.eni.com/en-IT/media/press-release/2022/03/pr-cap...

NoMoreNicksLeft5• 3 years ago

If there are x offsets available, and demand is x + 100, then when Shell buys offsets, they're not really fixing the problem at all, they're just shifting blame right? They're saying "since we spent this money on the offsets, our carbon emissions were good (or at least 'less bad'), but the other company that couldn't afford or wouldn't bother with the offsets is bad even though there were only enough offsets for one of us".

Honestly, this upsets people?

unlikelymordant3• 3 years ago

The increase in demand drives up the price of offsets, which increases supply and investment in better carbon capture techniques and scaling. Im lumping in things like direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, and enhanced weathering as offset generating technologies that are currently too expensive to be widespread, but with higher carbon prices would become practical.

plopz• 3 years ago

the bigger problem with carbon offsets is that the underlying system that is supposed to be backing the units aren't actually offsetting any carbon. wendover has a nice video on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AW3gaelBypY

tinco• 3 years ago

Buying offsets is not shifting the blame, it's paying someone else to fix the problem. The reason for that should be that you either have no cost effective way to offset the carbon yourself, or there is a very attractive market for the offsets.

If demand were x+100, and theoretically some company wouldn't be able to afford to buy the offsets, it wouldn't somehow have ended up with the blame of Shell, they would just have found no one to solve their problem for them and would have to fix it themselves.

Of course this is assuming that whoever is selling the offsets is actually performing the task of carbon offsetting effectively, something that many believe is not actually happening so that puts things into even more murky waters.

NotYourLawyer• 3 years ago

The “radical plan” was bullshit carbon offsets, and it only applies to Shell’s own emissions, not the emissions from burning the oil/gas Shell produces.

This plan doesn’t even deserve being shelved. It deserves being shitcanned.

Biologist123• 3 years ago

TL;DR: this article is mainly about Shell rowing back on its offset development targets, not for the oil it produces, but for its operational emissions.

Having worked in the sector, albeit not with Shell, my guess is that the board were advised that offsets increasingly carry massive legal jeopardy, including director’s liability.

This is an interesting summary of the problem:

https://www.clientearth.org/media/nq4jnyww/ce-offsets-legal-...

iamflimflam1• 3 years ago

I try to remain positive, but climate change is the one area where I have pretty much lost hope. People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change. Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

steve_adams_863• 3 years ago

The main thing I struggle to downsize or make sustainable is my work. As a programmer, I depend on an immense infrastructure of earth-harming systems to get my equipment (both in my possession or leased in the cloud). My employers use a lot of energy. In the scheme of things we aren’t the worst polluters, but it’s undeniably bad.

I’ve dramatically reduced my personal energy usage, I don’t eat animal products, my family has found ways to generate remarkably little garbage, and other “nice” things, but it’s pretty much meaningless. It’s all theatre compared to the damage we do with our car, jobs, community and provincial infrastructure we depend on, etc.

I feel like I’m willing to change my life, and I have already I guess. I’m just not willing to give up my livelihood when it means so little in the bigger picture. I’m no different from someone working on an oil rig or forestry or whatever. What I do looks nicer, but my rationale is no different.

Aachen7• 3 years ago

Anyone who drives a heavy vehicle alone is using immense amounts of power (hundreds of horses' at once, by approximation), it takes some infrastructure but with wind, sun, and water we can power that. What makes you say that your livelihood depends on an amount of energy so large that it's really bad? Why couldn't that be generated sustainably?

Why not talk to your employer about a step in that direction, given that solar panels are typically profitable within a handful of years for an average household, let alone if you can 100% offset the kWh generated because all the energy can be used in-house?

Scea912• 3 years ago

What percentage of global emmissions is spent on computing infrastructure? Last time I saw the numbers it was practically negligible if we exclude cryptocurrencies.

otachack• 3 years ago

I've hit a similar wall and one answer to hurdle over is to organize with more people to push for bigger, community wide changes. This can include making your roads safer for biking, getting your local governments to penalize local polluters, etc. Getting the right politicians to vote in your collective ideals helps, too.

It all takes work so you have to brace yourself to sacrifice your free time and balance everything. It's not easy, but there are countless people already trying to do it.

Simorgh• 3 years ago

There is that classic western maxim that evil triumphs when ‘good men do nothing’, but I no longer think this is true.

Evil triumphs when ‘good men’s’ efforts fail.

Climate change represents an inherent risk to humanity, but some climate change mitigation strategies represent a risk to short-term profit incentives.

We are starting to see economic agitation globally as institutions everywhere begin to question the logic of our systems.

This and other factors has led us to a multi-polar world, which is itself creating new problems that inhibit global synchronisation on this issue.

It is a planetary scale problem. It needs a planetary scale solution.

fulafel• 3 years ago

COVID showed I think that people and institutions are quite willing and capable of concerted action if they understand there's real threat to human welfare. Imperfecly, sure, but far from hopeless.

digitalsushi• 3 years ago

I would rather die than be slightly uncomfortable.

The above is my mockery of how I expect we will in 40 years

corethree10• 3 years ago

If I'm going to die anyway why not be comfortable before I die?

If I change my own behavior but everyone doesn't then my actions are negligible.

Rationally my best course of action is to not change.

Remember it is each individual acting extremely rationally and logically that in the end contributes to global warming in aggregate. That is why it's so hard to reverse this. The tragedy of the commons.

akamaka5• 3 years ago

If you embrace hopelessness and do nothing to make the transition away from fossil fuels, it’s your own life that will be grim as carbon is more heavily taxed and life becomes increasingly unaffordable.

I’m personally quite optimistic, because I’ve already made most of the necessary adjustments, and it wasn’t very hard at all.

corethree10• 3 years ago

If you embrace logic the trend lines point to an obvious future regardless of optimism or pessimism.

Unfortunately this future is inline with the the pessimistic viewpoint.

It's not about pessimism or optimism in the end. It's about logic. He's right. It's done. Likely the worst case scenario for global warming will play out. We already crossed the permanent threshold.

konschubert4• 3 years ago

You are right. People won’t change. But solar is cheap, storage is getting cheaper and nuclear is always an option too.

So we don’t have to change we live, we just have to change the way we generate our energy.

danans• 3 years ago

People (and I include myself) are simply unwilling to accept that their lives have to change

The real tragedy is that a fair amount of this change would make people's lives better.

For example, more walkable human scale communities, less combustion in vehicles and homes, more comfortable, healthier, and cheaper to operate homes, reduced air pollution for communities in the vicinity of power plants and industrial facilities.

But on the other hand, yes smaller houses and cars, less meat, etc are hard to adjust to.

Barring some of unforeseen technical miracle the next 20-30 years are going to get increasingly grim.

Disagree on that. The technologies we need are all pretty ready or close. It's about bending cost curves and the rate of deployment.

manoDev• 3 years ago

"It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism."

morgengold• 3 years ago

There is only one thing that will work: we need a price for CO2 emissions and we need a collective of economically powerful nations that push that through at the same time. Other nations who refuse to take part need to pay for market access.

gregwebs• 3 years ago

You are always going to be unhappy if your goal is to change the rest of the world. If you focus on yourself you will accomplish more and likely be happier. Start adapting now and know that the rest of the world will adapt eventually. Figure out how to reduce your own impact.

I moved to a location that is not going to see negatives from climate change. Even if your location isn't great, just work on what you can do. Stop consuming junk on Amazon and start freecycling in your neighborhood. Spend more money to buy goods that have a lower environmental impact. If you own a home, there's a lot you can do to improve the environment. Compost, install rain barrels, maybe solar panels, use native landscaping, plant more trees that will provide shade.

gumballindie• 3 years ago

My thoughts exactly. Best one can do is plan for the worst. I bought a property at an altitude high enough so that if sea levels rise won't affect me (I am likely going to stay here that long anyway, but my goal is to develop habits), I de amazoned where possible and gave up habbits alltogether where not possible but can cope without, rain barrels and solar panels on their way and so on, playing around with microgreens, learning about plant seeds (I don't think i'll ever pick up farming but it's a good skill to have).

cornfutes• 3 years ago

How much of the corporate virtue signaling was in response to a jobseeker-oriented market? Now, with all the layoffs, employers have their pick of white collar workers.

photochemsyn2• 3 years ago

Carbon offsets credit programs and fossil fuel emissions capture schemes fall into one of two categories: technical failures or economic frauds.

The technical issue for fossil fuel carbon capture schemes involves conservation of energy. Simply stated, a diesel truck that captures all its emissions as it drives down the road is an obviously implausible scheme, as anyone with even a vague appreciation of how engines work should realize. Clogging the exhaust is the first problem, separating the CO2 (and incomplete combustion products and particulate & inorganic contaminants) from the exhaust stream is the next, and storing the concentrated CO2 is the third.

The only reason these carbon capture systems have been built in practice is to generate a stream of CO2 for enhanced oilfield recovery, a process in which CO2 is injected into aged oil wells because it facilitates recovery of oil from these wells. The CO2/oil mix that comes out is refined as usual and most of the injected CO2 just escapes back to the atmosphere.

The economic fraud all revolves around the technical fact that 'carbon credit' schemes don't offset anything, and in a warming world so-called 'carbon stores' like British Columbian forests have been going up in smoke due to increased wildfires. Similarly cap-and-trade doesn't work; it was originally based on a scheme to clean up sulfur in diesel fuel but the sulfur just ended up in ship bunker fuel (although cities are somewhat cleaner due to the introduction of ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel).

What's particularly egregious about these schemes is the degree of dishonesty demonstrated by their political and industrial promoters - they know they don't work. For example, production of natural gas is booming to record levels at present while the very politicians and executives responsible for the boom are running around proclaiming how concerned they are about climate and running ads stating their dedication to net-zero. Similarly, even if some coal plants are retired in the US, exports of coal to Asia are rising and production is barely falling.

The fact is there's not a single major fossil fuel producing country or corporation on the planet that has any intention of shutting down production in the forseeable future. This is why countries like China, that have to import most of their fossil fuel, are so far ahead in renewable energy production and technology.

BLanen• 3 years ago

Good. Any implementation of carbon offsetting is a sham anyway and Shell's plan didn't even offset its product's emmision but only its own business process(because offsetting the emissions of the products would be many times more costly than the product itself)

Aachen7• 3 years ago

Even if it's mostly a sham, that's better than nothing

konschubert4• 3 years ago

No, it’s worse. It takes money and focus away from things that work.

thelastgallon• 3 years ago

“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” he said: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change...

sobkas2• 3 years ago

Then there should be consequences for destroying environment and making earth inhabitable for humans. Oil industry knew that burning fossil fuels will lead to global warming. Plastic industry knew that recycling is a total sham, and most of it will at best end up on a landfill at worts everywhere including our food. They knew but then they lied to us to make more profits. Maybe we should take that ill gotten profits from them and if it will bankrupt them so be it. Because we're slowly getting out of time to do anything.

civilized• 3 years ago

I think developed nations collectively bought into fossil fuel-driven civilization, so it seems like scapegoating to lay all the blame at the feet of the producers.

But like you say, it is appropriate to blame the producers for hiding what they knew about the greenhouse effect and well-funded lobbying and propaganda campaigns to deny and minimize it.

mdgrech232• 3 years ago

I think is the uncomfortable truth is we're all to blame for a certain extent. People def hide evidence and acted to their own benefit but to a certain extent so many of us were known accomplices.

UncleMeat9• 3 years ago

It is true that the people demanded the lifestyle provided by fossil fuel emissions. But corporations didn't just say "oh if you insist." When new policies and regulations are attempted that will not affect the lifestyle of the people but will eat into corporate profits, they fight tooth and nail.

An honest corporation that was just acting to serve the needs of the people wouldn't do something like fight to reduce the exxon valdez spill fine by 100x or raise a fit when regulatory agencies mandate generation shifting.

trashtester9• 3 years ago

If the world stopped consuming fossil fuels today, overpopulation would no longer be an issue in about a year or two.

Because 90% of the population would die.

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

so you think its a collecrive decision made by all of us with full knowledge, and fossil fuel companies are just doing what the consumer wants?

Then why do journalists investifating recycling sham, oil spills, etc. frequently end up dead or in prison?

UncleMeat9• 3 years ago

It is unfortunately very hard to address this with suits and getting even harder. Rules around standing can be leveraged to deny suits and the power of administrative agencies keeps getting hamstrung by the new major questions doctrine. Montana is the only state that guarantees a right to a clean environment in its constitution, but conservatives are seeing how this can be leveraged against polluting industries and are mobilizing to remove this right.

Megacorps have a tremendous amount of power in our political system and that makes it very very very difficult to hold people to account for anything.

throwaway71271• 3 years ago

As Jacques Ellul says (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOCtu-rXfPk): when the bridge collapses, who is to blame?

hhthrowaway1230• 3 years ago

Someone is trying to do that https://www.stopecocide.earth

nancyhn6• 3 years ago

Why do fewer climate related deaths; down 98% the past century

and a more green planet than a century ago

and far fewer people in poverty

all lead you to believe it's becoming uninhabitable?

ClumsyPilot4• 3 years ago

because half of bees are gone, half of barrier reef is gone, 75% of insects are gone, UK has like 10% tree cover left, emperor penguins, had zero chicks survive

Do you think you can survive if the biosphere is gone?

tremon• 3 years ago

Why is the planet more green today than a century ago?

Perhaps because of all the chemical-induced algae blooms turning previously blue water into murky green?

jacquesm3• 3 years ago

What amazes me is that you just can't opt out, short of jumping off a cliff. Everything you do involves the destruction of non-renewable resources. If you look at what you produce in terms of garbage and other waste every month it is completely insane. Everything is packaged in plastic, high grade cardboard, glass etc. The amount of energy and materials required is ridiculous. And yet, not a month goes by or something that used to be packaged in paper suddenly is only available in plastic, something that was available in re-usable glass is only available in plastic and so on. The hold-outs seem to be beer bottles but I don't drink beer...

MaxHoppersGhost6• 3 years ago

If you look at what you produce in terms of garbage and other waste every month it is completely insane. Everything is packaged in plastic, high grade cardboard, glass etc.

This has bothered me since I was a child and drove by a landfill and realized just how much trash we produce. I met someone that went a month without using one time use plastic and she couldn’t really avoid it. It’s everywhere.

fwungy4• 3 years ago

The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using.

We should be focused on mitigation strategies and superior technology that wins conversion based on market forces and not government mandates and long term subsidies.

The Green Suicide of the West isn't going to help climate change, and will probably make it worse.

elzbardico• 3 years ago

Give a couple of years for the professional managerial class to start to understand this. Meanwhile, consider the advantages of learning to speak Chinese.

akamaka5• 3 years ago

The rising BRICS dominate hydrocarbons and they aren't giving them up, selling or using.

Surely you’re looking at the wrong statistics. Brazil is a leader in renewable energy, with fossil fuel use already on the decline for the last decade.

China is the world’s largest producer of solar and wind power products, and their renewable energy ramp up has only been slowed down by the rest of the world buying up half their output.

The risk to western economies is that they are too slow to transition away from fossil fuels and suffer from their dependence on ever more expensive oil and gas.

fwungy4• 3 years ago

Brazil is making ethanol from its vast sugar plantations. They are a special case, and ethanol isn't great on a full lifecycle basis. It doesn't make sense without agricultural surpluses or subsidies, as there are in the USA.

China is the world's mass manufacturer. They will happily make whatever they can sell. If the West is demanding solar panels and windmills due to top down energy policy directives China will happily make and sell them.

There is plenty of fossil fuel available and a huge installed base of ICE's around to use them, especially in the developing world and BRICS. If the West stops buying fossil fuels it only makes them cheaper for those who will happily consume them.

The West needs to use its technological edge to develop market winning sustainable technologies and cheap, safe, electricity production. Crippling itself with unrealistic sustainable energy policies is going to be counter productive to climate change solutions.

hkt3• 3 years ago

Remember folks, you can strike back: ditch your car, ditch your gas cooker, get solar panels, get batteries, use less energy, get a heat pump. Change your life to be healthier and deprive these animals of profit.

throwaway8943455• 3 years ago

You don't even have to ditch your car (an absurd proposition for most people), you could just get an EV.

MaxHoppersGhost6• 3 years ago

Do you realize how they get batteries for an EV? And where the electricity comes from? And what every part of the EV are made out of?

kjkjadksj5• 3 years ago

Too bad theres 8 billion other potential consumers

frob• 3 years ago

In other news, the local union of serial killers scrapped their plan to fund an independent homicide unit.

egberts13• 3 years ago

As one of the thousands who planted one of the million trees within Sacramento, California during the 1970s, I did my part toward reducing CO2 and added cooling of urban areas.

You should too. It's not that hard.

I am doing it again, but in another city.

throwaway8943455• 3 years ago

The average lifetime co2 emissions per person seems to be in the tens or hundreds of tons (probably on the higher end of the spectrum for Americans, especially those decades in the latter half of the 20th century). Most trees weigh a single digit number of tons when fully grown, and many trees don't survive to full growth and in any case they may release much of that carbon through decay or combustion. It seems pretty unlikely to me that planting a tree actually offset your carbon emissions.

egberts13• 3 years ago

ah, yes, a throwaway account.

At least, provide for some citation to be worthy.

https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...

FrustratedMonky• 3 years ago

Meeting with C-suit.

COO: "This is turning out to be hard"

CEO: "F*it, let the planet burn".

CFO: "I'm down with that, I'm retiring rich and have a good 10-20 years of cocaine and hookers before my house on the coast gets washed away"

jl2718• 3 years ago

Study the carbon cycle a bit and then come back and tell me I’m wrong about this:

Offsets do not work. The best application of that funding would be to stop destruction of the ocean habitat. Short explanation: Almost all surface and atmospheric carbon ends up in the ocean by rivers or rainfall. Geological-timescale sequestration is performed by zooplankton et al in the form of CaCO3, but something has to eat them or they will block the light for their own food supply, and the rest of the ecosystem follows from there. And yes, surface habitats also matter, but their destruction is more localized.

alentred• 3 years ago

This reminds me of this part of the "Death to 2020": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yUW9iiU6R8

pmarreck• 3 years ago

To clarify, this article is mainly a criticism of the lack of effectiveness of offsets. This is why Shell shelved it. They were spending a ton of money on this, and getting almost no actual carbon footprint reduction. That is a waste by almost any measure. Hopefully, they are investigating better ways to shrink their catastrophic carbon footprint contribution.

Almost NONE of the comments in this forum so far reflect this observation, which I find concerning. If you are angry about the state of affairs here (which I would completely understand), at least read the article (and take a deep breath) before commenting

_ea1k5• 3 years ago

In my area, their EV charging network has built several sites in the last few years. They are all terrible due to severe limits on peak amps (200A, IIRC).

TBH, it is pretty surprising, considering that they should clearly be seeing the opportunity.

xenadu02• 3 years ago

The whole world suffers from an extremely deep lack of vision.

Why does a utility like PG&E fight so hard to hurt solar installation? If I were CEO I'd buy or start a foundry to make solar panels. Then I'd start an installation and service org. People need energy, why should I care where they get it so long as they get it from me? The grid isn't going away so stop trying so desperately to protect that revenue stream.

Why can't oil companies do the same sort of thing? If Shell were smart they'd be making and selling wind turbines, solar panels, inverters, batteries, etc. Use your stupid lobbing arm to get subsidies passed that make the electric utilities pay part of the cost of these products. Instead they're just giving those markets away because they don't know how to do anything beyond oil and jealously try to protect every scrap of oil revenue.

Even ATT focused so much on long-distance revenue and milking people for tiny data pipes they let cable companies and new ISPs waltz in and takeover huge chunks of what had literally been their monopoly business. Bell labs invented VoIP and could have owned that space... but they didn't dare threaten long-distance revenues. Then a few years later competitors evicerated those revenue streams anyway.

It all comes down to a lack of vision and a focus on protecting existing revenue streams. I guess my brain just doesn't work that way. I see change as inevitable so I'd rather try to own a piece of the new market than worry about protecting the old one.

avery17• 3 years ago

Hello, i am big oil exec. I make money when people buy oil, not solar panels. Id like to give you big money personally if you dont buy solar and only buy oil from me. Then you get money and i get money. We both get big money and you dont have to do any new hard work. You can just coast now. Big money. Sign here.

cannabis_sam• 3 years ago

The same way that you wouldn’t accept your elderly relatives trying to burn down the house you both happen to live in, every fossil fuel based company should be nationalized and shutdown as quickly as possible, while reducing the impact on society’s poorest who depend on that type of energy.

No, wait, private ownership and corporate freedom have actually been proven to be the pinnacle of human economic organizing, so please hand back the lighter and petrol to your demented grandparents and their delusions ideas.

Unfortunately, the people running and investing in these companies will be long dead when their decisions come back to bite us all in the ass.

time4tea• 3 years ago

Carbon offsets are total bullshit, so really this changes nothing.

Perhaps now they will report their true carbon emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/aug/24/carbon-c...

aedalat• 3 years ago

As both a Python developer and Energy (oil and gas) engineer, I am a regular reader of Hacker News and enjoy the quality of discussions in the comments on the HN Top articles. This thread however disappoints me. The news of any producers potentially reducing their CO2 targets in any form is upsetting. However, painting them as bad guys vs good guys or using the tobacco industry analogy is too simplistic in my opinion. Doomberg is a great newsletter to start with to have a more educated discussion around these topics. The articles below, give great background to mature this discussion and moving it passed Oil company boss wants to be rich, they shut down all the other alternative rubbish. 1. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/where-stuff-comes-from (if you time to read only one of these, make it this one) 2. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/got-milk 3. https://doomberg.substack.com/p/tour-de-farce

Article below is an example of challenges facing rolling out renewables. They are not all Oil and Gas related as generally perceived: https://archive.md/udhVH

There are also couple of really good books on the topic, which I am happy to share if the interest is there.

Shell abandons its plan to offset CO2 emissions

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