Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Erm, if we stop using petrochemicals there won't be petrochemical companies.

If every individual modifies their behaviour then the world will change, but if everyone chooses to be a selfish asshole and fly round and round the world then it will all get worse.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
individual consumers modifying their behaviour, like travel habits or diet, won't change the world system. entire national economies, and nation's vying for position, control and prestige within that system, are dependent on access to fossil fuels. entire sovereign wealth funds are based on extraction of finite, and environmentally damaging, resources. i'm sure they'll give all that up because johnny plumber switches his diesel van for an EV. (passenger vehicles account for less than 25% of oil consumption worldwide.)

most of the world banking system and pension funds are heavily invested in fossil fuel funds. i'm sure all those fund managers will willingly divest themselves of those precious resources because dilbert looked at them angrily and called them selfish. that'll happen. maybe divest your own pension fund of any attachment to polluting industries first? even 'enlightened' institutions, who literally promulgate climate change research, like modern research universities, have been shown to be billions and billions of dollars invested into fossil fuel portfolios. again: systemic issues.

80% of the world's most valuable and powerful companies are involved in fossil fuels. literally more powerful than states, when you consider the primacy of the market over the state in the post-neoliberal world order. they have spent most of the 20th century determining, and destabilizing, the world order. a fossil fuel company closely allied to the british and american states created the modern state of iran. most of west africa and much of latin america has been treated as de facto puppet regimes to oil companies.

to say nothing of state-owned enterprises. the fossil fuel industry in effect frames the global geopolitical picture: the power of russia and their strategic control over gas/oil reserves; the growth predictions of china, india, brazil, etc, and their access to resources; the chokepoints of suez or hormuz, etc. and the world system's dependency on their constant supply. that's a lot of pressure and power-politics that relies on more than dave jetting off to the seychelles.

but i'm sure if we call enough western consumers 'selfish', it'll all change! make them feel guilty about driving or taking a plane! bring down BP using the 'disappointed parent' routine! nevermind that you yourself are an engineer and should surely know how much more of our modern world – e.g. plastics – is reliant on oil. demonising tourists is not going to cripple demand from heavy industry or states (as in your military-industrial contracts) for fossil-fuel-based resources.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-25 22:44:50)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

This is giving me a sense of déjà vu. Dilbert, weren't you fixated on documentary makers awhile back in terms of travel? Maybe even Attenborough?

I don't have the data in front of me but I would hazard that the positive effect of environmental awareness as boosted by nature films probably more than offsets the involved travel emissions.
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

uziq wrote:

https://twitter.com/talkRADIO/status/1452892180301889538

genius.
Is that sketch?
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690
What do you guys think of Nuclear power being classified as a green source of energy?
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I think a lot of progress has been made in nuclear tech and that there is still room to grow. Currently, would rather live near a nuclear plant than coal power. Very strong environmental case to be made for more nuclear, as efficiencies increase at a rapid rate. Probably more environmentally friendly than manufacturing equivalent output in solar panels or windfarms.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Solar, hydro and wind with energy storage, plus nuclear for backup, would be ideal.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

Ephemeral sources like solar and wind should probably be supplementary, not the other way around.

There is a pretty big gap between the nuclear tech of today and decades old yesteryear of Chernobyl and 3MiI. Fukushima could have probably been prevented had they went ahead with upgrades and changes to procedure in light of geologic conditions.

There shouldn't be a whole lot of flex on that. Give money too much of a say and I suppose you end up with disasters that were preventable ("why would you want to winterize pipes in Texas? Too much expense").
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Here my state runs largely on wind with gas as backup.
Last 24 Hrs was 83% wind
Last 12 months was 57% wind.

https://i.imgur.com/pkJp3Np.png

Wind is hardly ephemeral and its not even really windy here.

We could do a lot more with solar-thermal with storage
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
https://www.theguardian.com/environment … estruction

i don’t normally care much for monbiot, who often loses himself up a tree (often times literally) in his cork waistcoats with the eco-warriors. but this is a decent précis of the whole issue and a good write-up for cop26.

of especial relevance is his mention of ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’ and the shifting away from big systemic solutions to personal blaming and the insidious effects of the ‘personal carbon footprint’. this is literally what i’ve been saying to dilbert about systemic thinking over raging at conspicuous examples like david bloody attenborough. much bigger forces are at work, namely some of the most profitable businesses on the planet, to bury this stuff and maintain the status quo of extraction and pollution.

In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January.
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
Yes, be selfish, no-one can tell you you can't.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
great analysis.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690

uziq wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/oct/30/capitalism-is-killing-the-planet-its-time-to-stop-buying-into-our-own-destruction

i don’t normally care much for monbiot, who often loses himself up a tree (often times literally) in his cork waistcoats with the eco-warriors. but this is a decent précis of the whole issue and a good write-up for cop26.

of especial relevance is his mention of ‘micro-consumerist bollocks’ and the shifting away from big systemic solutions to personal blaming and the insidious effects of the ‘personal carbon footprint’. this is literally what i’ve been saying to dilbert about systemic thinking over raging at conspicuous examples like david bloody attenborough. much bigger forces are at work, namely some of the most profitable businesses on the planet, to bury this stuff and maintain the status quo of extraction and pollution.

In 2004, the advertising company Ogilvy & Mather, working for the oil giant BP, took this blame-shifting a step further by inventing the personal carbon footprint. It was a useful innovation, but it also had the effect of diverting political pressure from the producers of fossil fuels to consumers. The oil companies didn’t stop there. The most extreme example I’ve seen was a 2019 speech by the chief executive of the oil company Shell, Ben van Beurden. He instructed us to “eat seasonally and recycle more”, and publicly berated his chauffeur for buying a punnet of strawberries in January.
You should never publicly berate your chauffeur. You need to be classy and do it behind closed doors like a married couple.
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
uziq
Member
+492|3422
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 … hree-years

Shell and BP, which together produce more than 1.7bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, have not paid any corporation tax on oil and gas production in the North Sea for the last three years, company filings reveal.

The oil giants, which have an annual global footprint of greenhouse gases more than five times bigger than Britain’s, are benefiting from billions of pounds of tax breaks and reliefs for oil and gas production.
just remember guys, if we all start using paper straws, avoid international holidays, and shame our neighbours, we can sort climate change within the necessary time window of about 2.3 years. the oil companies will listen when oil demand from passenger transport drops by a few percent!

the way out of this crisis is through individual responsibility and the pulling up of one's ecological socks. talk of state intervention, governmental collaboration, or tackling the overweening power and influence of the major oil corporations is wishy-washy leftist claptrap from selfish hipsters.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-30 20:23:35)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

I saved the planet by painstakingly sorting glass into proper bins in the 80s while nearby Tacoma's pollution kept Bruce Springsteen away.

Don't minimize that.
SuperJail Warden
Gone Forever
+634|3690

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

I saved the planet by painstakingly sorting glass into proper bins in the 80s while nearby Tacoma's pollution kept Bruce Springsteen away.

Don't minimize that.
https://youtu.be/CSiz6kbIZkw
https://i.imgur.com/xsoGn9X.jpg
Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX

uziq wrote:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/30/shell-and-bp-paid-zero-tax-on-north-sea-gas-and-oil-for-three-years

Shell and BP, which together produce more than 1.7bn tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, have not paid any corporation tax on oil and gas production in the North Sea for the last three years, company filings reveal.

The oil giants, which have an annual global footprint of greenhouse gases more than five times bigger than Britain’s, are benefiting from billions of pounds of tax breaks and reliefs for oil and gas production.
just remember guys, if we all start using paper straws, avoid international holidays, and shame our neighbours, we can sort climate change within the necessary time window of about 2.3 years. the oil companies will listen when oil demand from passenger transport drops by a few percent!

the way out of this crisis is through individual responsibility and the pulling up of one's ecological socks. talk of state intervention, governmental collaboration, or tackling the overweening power and influence of the major oil corporations is wishy-washy leftist claptrap from selfish hipsters.
If we stop using their products Shell and BP will cease to exist.

Obviously they should be taxed fairly on their emissions, but we don't have a carbon price yet and in any case the Kochs have a loophole they can exploit forever.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
80% of their 'products' are not sold to end consumers you fucking moron. the individual street-level consumer can't just decide to abandon using plastics, for example, can they? there's more to oil companies than garage forecourts and car fuel. what are you going to do when you go to the supermarket or local store and find all of your stuff comes in plastic packaging? how many people have to go 'back to the land' and grow their own food in allotments, walking to work and wearing hemp clothing, before the major oil companies are hurt by the infinitesimal fall in demand? i'm sure individual consumers can change the nature of modern shipping and logistics, too! walk to work and the trucking and shipping companies will change their ways!

In the last 10 years, companies including BP, ExxonMobil and Shell have invested $89 billion (€82 billion) in 210 chemical projects linked to America's shale gas boom alone, according to the American Chemistry Council. And a further 133 projects are being planned or in the process of being built.

Petrochemicals, which make up 99% of all plastics, are the versatile building blocks of modern life. Derived from petroleum and fossil gas, they are found in clothes, paper, fertilizers and cleaning products — and even food preservatives and medicine.

Petrochemicals are rapidly becoming the largest driver of global oil consumption, a report by the International Energy Agency found in 2018. They are set to account for a third of the growth in demand to 2030 and half of the growth to 2050, ahead of trucks, planes and ships.
https://www.dw.com/en/plastic-oil-petro … a-52834661

they don't pay tax, they are effectively more powerful than states, but you seem to think individual consumers are going to make them listen. LMAO. get a grip, for christ's sake.

in the case of state-owned enterprises such as north sea oil or russian gas, how does an individual consumer choose to stop using home energy derived from fossil fuels? write to their state or national grid system and ask for the 'green package'? install solar panels and a large exercise bike, go off grid, and hope for the best? militant protestors in the UK can't even convince the government to get serious on home insulation. i'm sure a few concerned people using their 'buying power' will turn off the turbines of the national grid.

i take it you've elected to live in a timber building, by the way? because that's nearly as big a contributor to greenhouse gases as all that consumer-led combustion-engine-based transport you decry so much.

https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-05/global_emissions_sector_2015.png

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-30 23:41:51)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
This all sounds too hard, I'm just going to carry on eating steak and taking international holidays.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
i eat meat 2 or 3 times a week and i take international flights – not holidays – maybe once every 5 years. not superlative or model behaviour, but not exactly selfish. i imagine your weekly fuel consumption and use of a car probably outweighs my flight patterns, chap. flying to korea is by far the most carbon-costly thing i've done in 30 years on this planet. i haven't owned a car or commuted in a personal vehicle in my entire life. how are you doing on that score? and, again, didn't your entire family make the trip from the UK to australia? as well as living in possibly multiple countries before that as well? not sure how you can gipp me for making one relocation in my life when your ENTIRE family unit have made SEVERAL. dipshit.

pretending that 'steak' is the problem is pretty funny, considering the immense ecological costs of vegetarian lifestyles too. how's all those soy crop monocultures doing for the planet? keep eating tofu and telling yourself that you're a saint, immaculate as the conception. i'm sure you only buy locally sourced organic vegetables and not, er, internationally sourced produce in normal grocery stores. your food is definitely carbon neutral.

... we could be here a while.

my point being, dumbass, that you disproportionately focus on the behaviour of individual consumers, as if family holidays are melting the planet. they are not. if you focussed a similar level of energy and anger/ire at the real, substantive causes of climate change, then maybe your moral crusade would be coherent and have a point. instead you seem to think that if everyone stopped buying fuel from shell and going to ibiza each summer, the world would be saved. meanwhile you wear hugely environmentally destructive cotton clothes, live in a house made of concrete, drive a car an hour each way to the beach, use electricity from a grid powered in part by fossil fuels ... i could go on. you have just posted here TWICE in the last month about your shoes, imported from a supply chain involving india, and a gun part, which i'm sure was highly essential, from fucking florida. what's the bigger contributor to greenhouse gases? tourist flights or, you know, INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING AND SUPPLY CHAINS? you dumb fuck!

all i am saying is that it requires systemic change, which is normally only possible at the level of government fiat, and in this case on the level of international, top-down collaboration. it requires Big Thinking. your analysis and 'criticisms' are constantly levelled at the lowest-rung of consumer behaviour, which makes a marginal difference to global warming. you think nothing of purchasing things online that have to be sent around the entire globe on a cargo ship, or, ironically, in the cargo-hold of a passenger airliner (as indeed 60% of all international air freight is shipped). then you criticize tourists. LMAO. you are really not very smart on this topic.

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-30 23:59:41)

Dilbert_X
The X stands for
+1,810|6076|eXtreme to the maX
I eat meet, erm, never a week.

If people stop buying petrochemical products they'll go out of business - problem solved, amazing.
Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй!
uziq
Member
+492|3422
well done, you don't eat meat. i'm sure all of your food is carbon neutral and doesn't harm the environment at all. nope. its agriculture and farming, use of chemicals and pesticides, supply-chain logistics and clearances of forest land don't at all incur a cost to the environment.

yes, if people just stop buying things made of plastic, the entire industry will change its ways. let me just get out my best letter-writing pen to inform, erm, every single conglomerate that stocks the shelves of every single market in the western world, that i will no longer be buying their products because it contains plastic.

how about those leather shoes and the clothes on your back? i'm sure they didn't cost 10,000s of litres of water and involve greenhouse gas emissions. just think, you could be wearing cork and hemp based clothes and eschewing highly controversial leather products. a bit weird to forego the animal but use its hide, don't you think? you could almost call not eating meat but consuming leather a bit ... wasteful?
uziq
Member
+492|3422
dilbert's consumer-led, individual-blaming approach to global warming in a nutshell.

https://cdn.kapwing.com/collections/3-spiderman-pointing-meme-template-c5n1w.jpg

'you take a holiday once a year!'
'you buy from international vendors once a week!'
'you wear shoes made in india!'
'you drive a petrol vehicle!'
'you buy products with plastic packaging!'

perfectly cogent!

Last edited by uziq (2021-10-31 00:42:44)

unnamednewbie13
Moderator
+2,053|6742|PNW

An aside, it's probably fine for a vegetarian to still have leather stuff if it's something they owned before they went veg. Be a bit of a waste to just chuck your leather possessions in a landfill.

Speaking of waste, supermarket dumpsters. Food traveling halfway around the country just to get chucked while people starve. Fun stuff.

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