Stop blaming fossil fuel companies – Climate Change is our own fault

Climate change has been heavily fuelled (ha) by fossil fuels, but can we put the blame on the fossil fuel industry? Could they really have known what all the world's scientists didn't know? I don't think so. It's time we stop blaming others for our own faults.

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#science #sciencenews #climatechange #fossilfuels

[wanfuse]

the problem was not the fact that they were not sure, but the fact they lobbied against climate action, where a billion dollars a year investment would have gotten us to an entirely different point today.

[kirkwagner]

I do not blame Exxon for continuing to sell their product toa willing public. What I DO blame them for is that, after their 1979 study, they adopted two different simultaneous approaches. Publicly they launched a campaign fighting against warnings about human induced climate change. But internally they launched a number of important, and expensive, upgrades to their infrastructure in preparation for those same climate changes. Notably deeping the foundations for their oil pipelines across areas of permafrost, which they knew would not be so frosty in the future.This was a literal example of hypocrisy, and future generations should damn them for that. If they had instead said "this is a problem and we need to start developing alternatives right now" they'd be seen as heroes in the future.

[BuellersBack]

They might have known, but they certainly did their best to spread misinformation about it through powerful lobbies.

[freddylarry]

In the 1920s public transportation was bankrupted in cities like Los Angeles, CA. by these companies. It wasn't just supply and demand.

[Feefa]

Systemic issues require systemic solutions, trying to fix them on individual level is foolish

[digidevil]

I cant blame them for causing climate change, I can blame them for every step they taken since to make the situation worse, especially now as they know full well the impact and are still barely doing anything.

[LETIshNick]

Sabline, you forgot 1979’s Charney report that compared 3 models (UKMO, NCAR and MPI-M), and came to the same conclusion in 3 of them. And plenty of others that appeared in this period, like Our Common Future. Unlike many other actors, fossil fuel industry has lots of money and therefore lots of power to buy political inaction. They are are totally to blame.

[Funkadelic]

Stop blaming the industry that has lied and manipulated world politics and economic policy?

[jacobohnstad]

Idk sabine how are we supposed to compete with their lobbying powers? I can vote and beg for change and nothing happens. I do what I can with the pennies I own but at the end of the day no difference is made.

[mariusmeyer]

One of the main reasons why we have done far too little to combat climate change so far is that governments are reluctant to take action. And this is heavily influenced by Big Oil lobbying.

[trulyaghast]

I’m not buying it. Took a college physics course in 1979 ‘Energy and the Environment’. So many of the impacts we are seeing today, were foreseen and written about in the class textbook. Wouldn’t surprise me at all, if much of the science used in the book, came from the fossil fuel industry research. They researched, they wrote about it and then they abruptly shut that whole trajectory down, or at least removed it from public view. Then they started heavily fostering and promoting ‘science’ completely antithetical to what they’d already discovered and the Climate Denial movement was born. Fully delivered and nurtured by the fossil fuel industry.
I have been totally aware and warning friends and family, for decades, about what we could expect to see, if we would not curb our use of fossil fuels. Of course, everyone thought I was cuckoo. And now, here we are. Everything I learned about in that 1979 textbook and more-so. It even talked about possible mitigation scenarios, and why they were unlikely to be feasible. (Reflective panels on satellites orbiting the Earth and similar things.)
I still have that textbook.
The fossil fuel industry is guilty.
I do acknowledge, however, that humans would in fact continue to purchase the stuff, even if the barrels were marked, ‘toxic, planet-killing chemicals’. There’s no getting around human nature.

[sambolt]

Awww poor companies that destroy the world get critizized unfairly.
You're really fighting the good fight here Sabine...

[carlbrenninkmeijer]

It was a big fight to get rid of leaded petrol. Tens of millions children poisened. Do not underestimate the inmate criminal nature of big companies executives. The smart but strongest and meanest make it to the top preferentially. A law of nature.

[Corpomancer]

Not act despite uncertainty? They certainly did act, creating massive amounts of deceptions, stating oppositions and lies over decades and somehow making us collectively forget Carl Sagan's testimony in 1985? We can and should put the blame on companies that are by all means innocent, yet often end up looking troublingly guilty.

[TheUnlikelyPotato]

Lobbying and propaganda is the issue. We still have a large percentage of the population in the USA regurgitating what Exxon has fed them decades ago. Look at the exponential growth and cost reduction of solar and batteries. We could have been where we're at 10-20 years ago, if it weren't for lobbyists drowning out any attempts at progress.

[modolief]

I see no reason to be even remotely forgiving to the oil companies.

[ericlipps]

The problem was that if they hadn't done so much to hide the reality of anthropogenic climate change, we might have begun to do something about it earlier. As for Exxon, the company has reportedly drawn up plans to _exploit_ global warming by going after Arctic oil which would become accessible due to glacial melting.

[Julia-hfyk]

You have to admit one thing: The "individual carbon footprint" (ingeniously invented by BP in the 1980s) was a perfect way to shift all the blame from big industry to the end customers. Politicians immediately jumped on the bandwagon and passed laws to put the evil consumer in his place and talk him into his conscience. And now we sit here, sipping our paper straws, grumbling about the airplanes and feeling like the wokest saviors of the world - while big industry carries on exactly as it did in the 1980s - apart from the fact that they make many times more profit today. Congratulations.

[pgress]

Oh, Sabine, come on. What was that even about? Whom to blame? I remember the 80ies and 90ies very well. Everybody knew, but just as today, nobody wanted to take action.

[glowson]

Considering that roughly half of the human-emitted CO2 was emitted in the last 30 years, if we had gotten a 20-year head start in the matter of CO2, we'd probably be on a more hopeful track lol.