> Exxon is just giving people what they want. The blame rests with people who want a lifestyle that's incompatible with avoiding climate change, not the companies that simply are feeding consumer demand.
Well, Purdue Pharma is also only giving people what they want. In and of itself, that doesn't mean much.
Exxon is doing significantly more than just giving people what they want [1], as do many (most?) of the big dinosaurs of the established industries that currently make the world go round. Do we need to go into the vast efforts at influencing the public that such entities expend in order to maintain their domination and wealth? You have vastly more expertise on this subject, so I wouldn't be able to tell you anything new.
The world does need to advance, but advance to where? Thermodynamically, it must slow down or it will overheat and crash into the ceiling.
> Not only is there no solution that allows us to keep living the way we are living while averting climate change. There never was. Even if we had listened to the hippies and cut U.S. emissions by half starting in the 1960s, China's growth alone would have completely wiped out that savings multiple times over.
You don't know that, and it's a false dilemma anyway. People change their lifestyles all the time in response to their economic environment and incentives, as they have been doing throughout history.
I tend to listen more to the experts when they say something is possible. When they tell me in no uncertain terms that a very important problem has no solution, I listen more to the kids.
Well, Purdue Pharma is also only giving people what they want. In and of itself, that doesn't mean much.
Exxon is doing significantly more than just giving people what they want [1], as do many (most?) of the big dinosaurs of the established industries that currently make the world go round. Do we need to go into the vast efforts at influencing the public that such entities expend in order to maintain their domination and wealth? You have vastly more expertise on this subject, so I wouldn't be able to tell you anything new.
The world does need to advance, but advance to where? Thermodynamically, it must slow down or it will overheat and crash into the ceiling.
> Not only is there no solution that allows us to keep living the way we are living while averting climate change. There never was. Even if we had listened to the hippies and cut U.S. emissions by half starting in the 1960s, China's growth alone would have completely wiped out that savings multiple times over.
You don't know that, and it's a false dilemma anyway. People change their lifestyles all the time in response to their economic environment and incentives, as they have been doing throughout history.
I tend to listen more to the experts when they say something is possible. When they tell me in no uncertain terms that a very important problem has no solution, I listen more to the kids.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/climate/exxon-global-warm...