We recently had a lengthy thread about that. What you’re seeing is a PR process called “greenwashing”: make wishy-washy statements vaguely suggesting that you’re on board with the science because you’re such a gosh-darn responsible corporate citizen and doing all kinds of environmental things involving pretty flowers, butterflies, and windmills, while continuing to spend nearly $1 billion a year in dark money to secretly undermine the science throughout the Internet and in the editorial pages of right-wing papers, and even funding bad science that occasionally gets published in second-rate journals.
ETA: That said, some companies are much worse than others. Exxon has long been at the forefront of climate change denial and its funding, and even in the PR greenwashing you can see that their statement is the most vague, beginning with a stress on the “uncertainties”.
Still the fact remains that if one is a customer, which most of us are, there are ways to severely trim one’s contribution of greenhouse gasses. There are options for buying power from renewable sources, or even putting solar panels on the roof of almost any building. One can purchase the most energy efficient devices and energy efficient cars on the market. One can select public transit or bicycling or walking over driving.
But all of these options are costly in terms of time, money, or both. Given the choice, the vast majority of customers choose the cheapest and easiest ways to get electricity and transportation. If we all truly cared deeply about reducing emissions of greenhouse gasses, we could do a lot more. But we don’t, and so the corporations can hardly be blamed for selling us what we choose to buy.
As ITR champion stated individuals and consumers do the same thing, but due to actor observer bias it is easy to blame the “corporations’” morals.
Yet we ignore our actions and our friends actions. We still fly around for recreation and we still live huge distances from work because we want a yard. We still turn up the heat vs. put on a sweater and we still buy foreign organic fruits because they are “better”. Despite the massive increase in CO2 production.
The corporations are just an extension of our own actions, so the question is not if they are evil but if WE are evil.
If the oil companies/countries agreed to only produce oil at a level that would not contribute to AGW their heads would be on pikes.
In the year 2000… as I pointed before Gore is not one that opposes consumption, his point is that we should be carbon neutral and invest in renewable energy. (Other environmentalists have indeed a beef with him for concentrating on the carbon neutral item, but looking at how irrational the opposition has been to change I wonder if he is more correct)
And this is missing that using oil is not the problem, the emissions are. Like in the example of acid rain: the energy companies that were more responsible for the emissions of acid rain chemicals got reigned in thanks to regulations and new technology that was used to remove or scrub the sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide.
The point here is that we, the regular people that did not create those emissions, did not need to be shamed to do the right thing because back then (as it is mostly the case today) there were groups that were doing most of the damage then, where we enter the picture is when the costs of using those energy sources increases a little bit because of the removal or capture of those harmful chemicals.
Sulfer dioxide was produced by electricity generation, factories, and motor vehicles. The consumers were “shamed” to do the right thing, through the letter of law. Thus the reason you have a catalytic converter on your car.
The belief that you will be able to effectively use the stored energy contained in oil without producing the lower energy state CO2 is pure wishful thinking.
But you are correct, the oil is not the problem, the use of that oil for frivolous activities is what the issue is. It bears little in common with the production of “harmful chemicals” in relation to acid rain, SO2 is an adjunct to the process of energy production, CO2 is the desired end state of the fuel.
To make that reality opaque by using an obtuse term like “harmful chemicals” is only a personal mind game intended to make one feel better about being a party to the result.
And the car companies did that and charged a little bit more for it.
Yes, just like I said, we do enter the picture and pay for it eventually, a few individuals would had installed those devices but it was mostly the big companies the ones that made it more economical to all.
The point here is that your idea of looking to first shame all into doing the right thing ignores that historically either big companies or governments had to intervene first or to be a part of the effort.
Nope, it is based on history, the profits to be be made are such that even though the companies claim that economical Armageddon was coming they are more likely to find ways to do it, with an increase in prices; but since other energy sources are there already to take some slack I do not see the old fashion energy companies demanding huge increases.
Nonsense and not very clear, I have seen even efforts to find ways to contain the emissions made from coal, it is only logic to assume it will be easier to capture the emissions from gasoline and other fossil fuels, and as they are not the only game in town it is not realistic to assume that civilization will end by thinking that they are the only sources of energy. They need to change and I do think that they will be able.
You’ve regaled us with an article almost 15 years old from the Gore presidential campaign stating that oil companies were once again ripping us off. Which they probably were.
Has it occurred to you that it’s possible that several things are true simultaneously – that as our economy is presently constituted, everything else being equal higher oil prices have negative economic impacts, but that oil combustion is extremely environmentally damaging? It’s called reality, which is often complicated, and which requires well-considered strategies to deal with. One of the proposed strategies is taxes on harmful fuels, which are then used to subsidize and incentivize the use of renewable energy. This is a little different than higher oil prices motivated by unbounded greed, but don’t let that dissuade you from trying to make your main point, which is that Al Gore is Evil. :rolleyes:
Coal and oil hold vast amounts of permanently sequestered carbon from hundreds of millions of years ago. Burning it re-introduces all that carbon back into the atmosphere and the active carbon cycle. The belief that you will be able to burn the stuff without sending the climate back to the Cretaceous is pure wishful thinking.
The court decision makes sense wrt at will employment. In fact it’s not so much that they can lie. It’s rather that it’s immaterial in an “at will” system.
Still, it can pretty much be understood why this is perceived as evil. It would be very much be considered that way in an interpersonal relationship. Problem is : it’s not a “corporation” doing that. It’s people in the corporation who are doing it. Someone decided employees would be lied to and given a false sense of security before getting rid of them. And this is morally deeply wrong.
The problem isn’t so much that a corporation is evil. It’s that people hide behind corporate culture to act in immoral and evil ways, and presumably to avoid feeling guilty and being blamed for it. Whoever decided to do that was simply morally bankrupt.
The issue really is that a large number of people like to believe that unacceptable behaviour somehow becomes acceptable when you do it on behalf of a company. It isn’t. Immoral actions don’t suddenly become moral or even neutral just because you do them on behalf of your company, of your country, or whatever. You’re always responsible for your individual actions. Nobody is forcing to lie to your employees. If it comes to that, nobody is forcing you to stay CEO. Nobody is forcing you to buy stocks in this company, either. There aren’t evil corporations. There are evil people who manage to feel good about themselves because “business is business”.
That’s no excuse. Not even as good as “I was following orders”. Basically, ultimately, it falls down to “I was acting this way because I wanted to make a buck and it’s not like I care about the consequences (climate change or lying to lay off people) for others as long as I’m making money for myself”.
Have you talked to many corporate types lately Clairobscur? I think most of them are pretty comfortable existing in the moral ambiguity their line of work represents, in fact, I think they feel perfectly fine with it all. C Wright Mills had a quote in the Power Elite, I believe it was, “One has to get beyond principal.” or something of that nature used to describe how one becomes comfortable in that environment. Anyway; what really annoys me is corporate types who go around thinking they’re much better people - as if they should get the whole package for doing what they do. They are not really people who are doing well and good at the same time, its not as if they’ve contributed to humanity in some way, like Einstein or Hawkings, or even Neil Degrasse Tyson, but they often have this annoying snooty uppityness that is just irritating. On the other hand, I could deal with someone who is just like, “I’m a dirty corporate bastard and I make a lot of fucking money asshole.” I can at least respect that.
Please accept my apologies for the drunk old man rambling nature of this post.
Lying, collusion etc are usually considered immoral anyway, so I don’t think discussion of these corporate tactics is really what the OP was looking for.
I think he/she is saying releasing a pollutant is a bad thing, and who is culpable for it?
The problem straight away with that is that CO2 is not a pollutant in the traditional sense. It’s an essential component of our atmosphere. There’s no problem with releasing more of it until you get to the billions of tons per year point.
And then in terms of use of energy, fossil fuels basically make our whole way of life possible right now. So, sure that includes conspicuous consumption like bugatti veyrons or whatever. But it also includes life support machines, food production and…I dunno…making blankets for kittens.
So I guess I’m just saying: it’s complicated. But while there isn’t a ready to slot in alternative to powering the world as we know it, I hesitate to call any of it “evil”. However, some actions to support / promote alternatives I would consider virtuous.
Maybe this is a little bit of a nitpick. The thread took a logical and orderly diversion from the specific question in the OP, and the poster has been perfectly happy to engage this diversion as far as I can tell. I think a rereading of the thread and the OP’s comments would show this pretty clearly.
Well, by such a definition, even the most moronically polluting managers I’ve known weren’t evil, merely stupid. They weren’t aiming to harm anybody, simply didn’t see that being less polluting was actually cheaper.
OK, no need for snark. I’m just saying that the OP / title seemed to be asking a different question from the one most people are answering, and a more interesting one IMO. Plus of course if we’re going to just discuss corporate ethics, why single out power companies specifically?
No snark intended; and admittedly what I was saying was a little nitpicky. I was just trying to be matter of fact about the situation, It started out as one question and the discussion just sort of morphed a little. The OP has a similar corporate ethics thread started about the same time regarding the Microsoft layoffs, also a pretty interesting discussion, between the two I’m starting to forget what was written in which.
Then I guess I don’t know what points you were making there, and my apologies if I’ve misinterpreted them. In any case I stand by what I said, and if you agree with it, so much the better.
But let’s pursue this a little further and look at this statement you made:
We have to stop excusing oil and coal companies on the grounds that they are simply doing What People Want™ because that obfuscates the real issue. What people want is basically to live comfortable lives, and certainly no rational person would wish on themselves or their descendants environmental disasters, mass extinctions, and the other human-induced global catastrophes that threaten not just our lifestyles and livelihoods but our very lives. Given a scientifically accurate understanding of the facts, most people would be more than willing to make the necessary adjustments to avert catastrophe, as we all did in smaller ways the matter of sulfate emissions and acid rain, or to prevent poisoning ourselves with tetraethyl lead, the “miracle” gasoline additive of the 1950s.
Those adjustments involve not just conservation and energy efficiency but the support of public policies on emission controls, carbon caps, and the priority of developing clean energy sources. But by and large little or none of that has happened, and you have to ask yourself why.
The “evil” aspect of fossil fuel industries isn’t in the fact that they respond to our putative needs, but in their long-term multi-pronged strategy of hiding, minimizing, obfuscating, and otherwise lying about the harms that their products do. Companies like Exxon Mobil have elevated these disinformation campaigns into a major covert PR industry in its own right (and Exxon did it while simultaneously divesting themselves of alternative energy initiatives that they already owned!). In that respect it appears that even the current Rockefellers think oil companies are evil, which is both gratifying and ironic since they are heirs to the Standard Oil fortune, a monopolistic behemoth that eventually morphed into Exxon Mobil.
Oil companies are in a sort of catch-22 position. If they champion green energy and sustainable sources, etc… they directly decrease sales of their primary products, which is directly counter to both the profit motive and their duty to their shareholders.
On the other hand, if they use the means at their disposal, they’re fulfilling their duty to the shareholders, but they’re EEEVVILLL for not being green, or environmentally conscious, or what have you.
Basically they’re not going to please everyone, and if they try, they’re not going to please anyone, so I suspect that ultimately the management will please the shareholders, because that’s what keeps everyone’s jobs and gets bonuses and profits.
It would take a concerted shareholder effort to willingly forego profit in favor of environmental concern to get the oil companies to do things differently, without being smacked by some legislative hammer.
Obviously, these guys agree with the premise in the OP.
I’d have to say that, fundamentally, the responsibility for the crisis is the fact that we use a lot of energy that is derived from fossil fuels, and that blaming Wall Street for this is a bit silly. It’s like blaming McDonald’s because people have health issues related to eating double cheese burgers with large fries (but the all important extra trough sized diet coke to counter act this). Oh…and can I get a hot fudge sundae and apple pie with that too?
At least these protesters are walking to their sit in, instead of driving there…though they most likely drove to the meeting place or took the subway, after using their cell phones or computers to organize the event in their nice air conditioned house or apartment while sipping on a cold beverage and some fresh, organic fruit brought to their local store by a truck…
