Dear Hank, In a video from this year, you said that the fact that people toss (100 companies release 71% of carbon emissions) is a way of oversimplifying things. Can you elaborate on this to help me understand? Thank you
These 100 companies produce fuels used by every industry. So you can blame just the oil company, or you can also blame the car companies and the plane companies and all of the companies (and governments) that depend on fossil-fuel-based international and inter-state shipping infrastructure (which is, I think, pretty much all of them.)
I am less interested in who is producing the fuel and more interested in who is holding us back from progress. For clarity, those are almost always the same companies and the fossil fuel lobby has been extremely effective in slowing our reaction to climate change and holding back governments from investing in renewable energy. But the frame of “it’s just 100 companies” makes it feel like this is something that just 100 people are subjecting the other 7 billion to. In fact, pretty much every company benefits from our dependence on massively subsidized fossil fuels.
I think the “71% of carbon emissions come from 100 companies” is a valid reaction to the “we can save the world as long as we all buy organic produce and drive Prius’” personal responsibility message of the 2000s which is, yes, complete crap. I think that pushing that narrative to the side makes complete sense. I also don’t always think over-simplifications are evil or anything, it’s just that this is an oversimplification.
To me, it sounds a little like, “If these 100 companies would just stop being bad, everything would be ok.” But, we can’t just switch tomorrow. If those 100 companies stopped producing fossil fuel tomorrow, I wouldn’t be surprised if most people were dead within 12 months. So we have to invest heavily to begin the transition right now because it’s going to take a long time.
It also feels a little hopeless. Like, how do you get a company to stop making money voluntarily? I can’t say, “Company, you must stop making money!” But I can say, “Government, you must stop giving that company subsidies, you must tax them and give the proceeds to create better mass transit and help people who can’t afford their heating oil. You must invest in renewable energy infrastructure.”
I know this might sound nitpicky, but the story that makes sense to me is that our governments decide how they want to subsidize clean and dirty energy, and every dollar that subsidizes dirty energy digs us and our children deeper into an already very deep hole, and every dollar that supports clean energy begins filling that hole in.
discoholicmusic
pixelskylines
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
blakekathryn
2087
