Exxon scientists accurately forecast climate change back in the 1970s – what if we had listened to them and acted then?
One of these moments came in the 1970s when oil giant Exxon chose to ignore its own commissioned research on the impact of fossil fuels. A new analysis published in the journal Science has found that Exxon’s forecasts from that era have proven incredibly accurate, yet it did not act to prevent its own predictions from happening.
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Oh look, Exxon’s own scientists produced a Hockey stick curve in the 1970’s from basic principles of atmospheric physics and chemistry.
They knew. They all knew. But the dollars for CEOs program was just too good. The money was too good!
I wonder how as a society we can address this pattern along with the perfect legal distancing of shareholders from said practices so that they can continue with impunity and willing fall guys.
Climate change is a national and global security threat. The fact that intelligence apparatuses allowed this behaviour is insane to me (but reasonable given the political mindset)
To be fair, we’ve known that CO2 causes warming since 1896, and suspected it since the 1850s.
Maybe take Citizens United one step further, and impose that corporations have responsibilities and well as rights. This requires figuring out enforceable penalties on the value of a corporation that can’t simply be transferred elsewhere.
Citizens United was a bit strange. I think that while the “legal fiction” of a corporation being a person has always been an important concept, the notion that it could be extended so far as to grant the full set of constitutional rights was always questionable. My view of it always was that corporations should be deemed to have constitutional rights, derived from the underlying rights of shareholders, when this is the best way to protect the derivative rights of the shareholders – so, for example. corporations should be entitled not to be deprived of property without due process of law, because forcing shareholders to enforce that right derivatively would be a mess, and denying that right to the corporation would in turn deny it to the shareholders.
But the First Amendment? Your rights of expression aren’t really diluted if corporations in which you own shares aren’t allowed freedom of expression. You can still holler whatever you want to holler.
It seems that due to Citizen’s United, that is the remaining path forward.
Reminds me of an argument, I had with my business owner friend:
Him: What about forgiveness of Nestle, how long should a boycott continue?
Me: They caused the death of infants, how about there are consequences first?
Sad, because he was my best friend, but his total lack of empathy and constant toxicity towards those of a lower “class” made it long-term impossible.
2 posts were split to a new topic: Climate Denial rhetoric
Bill,
There are many lines of evidence that support anthropogenic climate change. This is not the time for merely improving the case and waiting to act.
The world economy (and both of those countries in particular) is very integrated. If the entire west + rest of world moves on climate change together, India and China could not afford ignore this. Imagine if we incorporated total carbon pricing on all goods from extraction to manufacturing to energy inputs all the way to purchase points, they literally could no longer compete.
No, the challenge is not merely in the science. Why are you buying the entire cigarettes don’t cause cancer playbook and not questioning your starting point’s validity?
The other half of the equation - what if back in the 1970’s we did not listen to Jane Fonda with her China Syndrome and the anti-nuke activists who shut down the most attainable alternative to fossil fuel?
Or two steps further and take away rights.
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