- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
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44% of PROFITS, not gross income.
Which means that even if companies were actually charged for the mess they made, they would be operating in the black AND their profits would still be 66% of normal.
I’ll be that guy… 56% of normal
Oh look here everyone, it’s the math guy!
Probably got some fancy education like primary school.
I mean… It’s really hard to subtract 44 from 100.
So, they’d still be wildly profitable, then?
Huh.
‘Wildly profitable’ would not be enough to them.
‘Extremely profitable’ would not be enough to them.
‘Insanely profitable’ would not be enough to them.
Infinite growth is one hell of a drug.
See also: any other form of cancer.
Infinite growth, until you kill your host. In this case the host is the whole human population.
Honestly, the whole world.
Will it recover? Maybe. Life is resilient.
But we’ve already presided over a pretty quick mass extinction that is still ongoing.
Life on earth has recovered from several mass extinctions, life finds a way. Humans are cooked though. Best of luck to the next sapient species to evolve.
Yeah it really drives home just how fucking cooked the situation is.
Sorry kids the biosphere is fucked and human society is an echo of what it once was but there were some rich people who didn’t want to be slightly less rich than they already were.
No. Because some companies would make no profit and others would be unaffected. Who’s going to pay more, Shell or novo nordisk? Shell would simply cease to exist
Huh that’s very reasonable actually. Generous even. Now let’s see what they can pay workers.
As little as they can get away with. And then they’ll brag about record profits.
Yeah, I was thinking… only of their profits? So they can afford to still make a shitload of money and not put out all that pollution?
I mean this is paying for damages, not fixing the pollution
I’d like to see a calculation for that. It seems expenses to be more careful would be comparable, but who knows.
So, 44% of their profits are in fact 100% of our futures? That money didn’t come from nowhere. All of us will pay that debt. Reporting needs to start reflecting that, and legislation needs to be enacted to get restitution. Until then, it’s all toothless.
So what are we waiting for? Fuck em
Boo fuckin’ hoo. Pay up, shitbags.
Narrator: … and so they never did and also got away with it.
Sounds like a win win
So in other words, they can afford to pay damages for it. Make them pay!
Even with the fine, their huge profits hardly change. This shows that the penalty isn’t enough to discourage pollution. Stronger actions are necessary to make companies responsible.
Fossil fuels are the main actors in this. Corporations can only use the energy we provide them with.
Fossil fuel producers will never pay damages for climate change due to political donations. You may get the odd instance now and again, where there is selective scapegoating and that will be that. The tobacco industry (AFAIK) has never paid for the damages they have caused. They poured billions into politics and offset the argument against them for decades. Fossil fuel companies are doing exactly the same thing.
So rather than finger point towards specific actors, we should be sorting our political systems out. Political donations need to be banned. Campaigns should only be allowed to run through a single channel that is funded by the country. All other types of political advertising should be stopped. It is well known that the most successful campaigns have a price tag attached. Therefore it is easy to buy votes with campaigns. Moreso in a FPTP system. While we allow political donations we will never stop egregious profiteering without consequences.
And what if everyone were honest about what these “damages” should be?
Even this fantasy scenario of consequences is an incredibly low-balled Cost of Doing Business of murder.
Stupidly click baity title. The only corporation that does not pollute is the one that doesn’t produce anything. Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there’s a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.
Lowering our consumption is unfortunately the way to make those companies pollute less.
People don’t want to hear about their personal responsibility to consume less, but it’s true. Corporations aren’t run by Captain Planet villains polluting for the same of pollution. They sell what people buy.
Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there’s a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.
If the taxes are accounting for the externalities well enough, even the lowest bidder will be sustainable.
Corporate pollution and your pollution are the same thing
But they’re literally not. I have no way of controlling or even knowing about what corperations emit
Thats whats tripping everyone up, thinking these corporations are off isolated somewhere just producing climate change gases.
No, what theyre producing is what you’re buying. When someone says an oil company is responsible for however much greenhouse gas emissions, what they mean is the greenhouse gas emissions when you the customer burn that gasoline in your vehicle. Plus gases emitted processing the oil and getting it to the store for you to buy it.
These companies “taking responsibility” for their emissions would mean halting production of most things you go and buy.
this is a systemic issue, not an individual one. I can’t control what a company does, weather they choose to buy 100% renewable energy or not. and what about their suppliers? how could a consumer possible know about their business practices, let alone influence them? this isn’t about people buying the wrong products. the rich are lighting the planet on fire for a buck, and they must be stopped.
How did you read what i wrote and get controlling companies? Its your own damn car, im accusing you yourself of emitting the greenhouse gases youre trying to pawn off on someone else.
my personal emissions are a flea’s fart in the wind compared to the oil empire of BP or shell
They are literally the same emissions. If you ever see numbers associated with oil company emissions, the gas burned in your car makes up part of that number. Multiply that by everyone else burning gas in their cars, and you have the emissions associated with oil companies.
So, theres two ways to stop those emissions. If you think the oil companies themselves are responsible for those emissions, then they stop emitting, which means they stop producing gasoline, you go to the gas station and no one can get gas anymore. That’s oil companies taking responsibility.
Or, the consumers take responsibility by no longer buying gas. Switching to electric cars or electing people to design less car centric towns.
Say there is a manufactured necessity. One cannot reasonably make it themselves or go without it. The manufacturer chooses to skimp on pollution controls or illegally dump so that the owners can make more money. How is that my fault?
big oil literally destroyed public transit so we’d be dependent on their products. believe me, living without a car is hard and I’m lucky enough to make it work. and the situation is artificially created for the benefit of the oil and auto industries
Yep, I went without a car for several months in a large US city that theoretically is decent for public transit and my life became much more difficult. I was able to make it work, but it has seemed barely sustainable. Now I live somewhere (not by choice really) that is completely impossible without a car/delivery… unless I spend hours a day walking, which would be very hazardous due to everyone else’s cars.
indeed. we need to dump money into transit construction in big cities
I mean this more literally than you think. What youre thinking of as pollution isnt as prevalent as you think. Its not a lot of ghg’s emitting from factories themselves, and its not factory waste filling dumps. What you throw out as pollution is also the bulk of corporate pollution. Plastic packaging in plastic trash bags in their own packaging to throw out, all of it needing gas burning to ship around. The gas itself being another major “corporate” pollution that oil companies produced but is being burned in your car and the trucks delivering goods to you. You demand all of this pollution.
I don’t agree with those metrics, and also the main response I could give is pretty much exactly the same as what I just said. Perhaps one of my problems is your phrasing: “You demand all of this pollution.”. No, I sure as hell do not. If you were to say “consumers demand all of this pollution.” that would be less confrontational, but still incredibly incorrect. Do individuals consume the products of industry? Yes, amazing conclusion you have there.
I personally didn’t design the city in which I live to have no reasonable public transportation and it’s fairly bizarre and insulting to say that the average person did. I was born into this insanity. Saying that I ‘demand pollution’ because the fossil fuel industry suppressed renewable energy while investing in polluting sources is similarly so wrong that it’s insulting. I never at any time said “you know, rather than cloth diapers, people 40 years before I was born should start using weird plastic diapers they just throw away!” High-level people who operate companies absolutely choose to skimp on pollution control for their profits and convenience, not that of the public or their customers. Take mining waste for instance. Do consumers use the products? Yes. Do consumers choose personally to abandon mines and allow them to fill full of toxic acidic water and pollute the nearby waterways? Uh, no, the owners of the mines do.
I never at any time went to a grocery store and said “you know, when you sell a single banana, it sure would be nice if you put it on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic”. I never at any time said “you know, rather than invest in solar, we should frack the shit out of eastern Colorado and SE New Mexico” or “tar sands oil is a really, really good idea!”. And personally, i do seek to reduce my consumption and be efficient.
So for some reason you’re blaming every individual for society being set up in such a way as to benefit oil and gas companies. Guess who arranged that: people who profit from and operate petroleum companies. Essentially your claim is that since all industry exists to benefit the end user (ignoring the owners/executives/employees benefits) that consumers are 100% responsible for everything. It’s a ludicrous and highly confused way to view the world.
Alright, you might be more personally aware than others. You also gotta be aware of the responsibility of most consumers. Sales of large trucks and SUV’s are on the rise. No one’s electing people to design less car centric towns, most people want more car focused transportation. Renewable energy has not been supressed at all, in fact its cheaper and more efficient than ever and available for anyone to buy. I think consumers are the only ones that can stop this
I think you’re wrong. Renewables were suppressed for a very long time by companies who stood to profit from them being suppressed. I think you’re vastly underestimating the amount of political sway large corporations can have on politics.
Where I am we have two parties with near identical climate policies who both receive the majority of their funding from coal and gas companies and who both choose to debate about any other topic.
People have also been flooded with so much disinformation that even now some people still think climate change isn’t real. Putting the responsibility on individuals instead of on the actual perpetrators of this mess is kind of ridiculous.
I do agree we’re the only ones who can change it but we’re not responsible for it.
https://www.eco-worthy.com/collections/100w-195w/products/100w-12v-monocrystalline-solar-panel
This doesnt look very suppressed to me. People just arent buying em.
We’ll just forget all the misinformation and climate denialism these companies have funded for decades that stopped solar panels even being a thing until just recently.
It’s one of the things that infuriates me when I hear refusals to address climate change: the “business as usual” way of doing things entails externalising countless costs, meaning comparing costs is an apples-and-oranges endeavour.
@theendismeh @silence7 @climate
The “business as usual” approach reminds me of the saying “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail”