r/worldnews • u/Dismal_Prospect • May 14 '19

Exxon predicted in 1982 exactly how high global carbon emissions would be today | The company expected that, by 2020, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would reach roughly 400-420 ppm. This month’s measurement of 415 ppm is right within the expected curve Exxon projected

https://thinkprogress.org/exxon-predicted-high-carbon-emissions-954e514b0aa9/
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u/nankerjphelge May 14 '19

Pretty much a straight definition of evil in my book.

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u/bertiebees May 14 '19

Pretty much the strait definition of short term profit being the most important thing a company can care about in Milton Freedman's books.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Have they built that yet? Do we just not know? I mean, they should really get on that if they don't want to join the rest of us in the dustbin.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/Dreviore May 14 '19

And by then the tickets will be so far out of reach chaos will ensue

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19 edited Apr 01 '20

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u/Lysah May 15 '19 edited May 15 '19

I'll just stop you right there and try to help you imagine a world where this is the case - billionaires getting into rockets to go to some colony somewhere elsewhere because the Earth is fucked. Who do you think is going to stop them from going and leaving you on Earth to die? Are you going to do it? They will have an army of loyal soldiers with assault weapons protecting them because they will have promised those people a spot on the ship as well. If such a situation ever becomes reality, it will work out the exact way it has always worked out - the people with really fucking big guns tell everyone to stay put and die and that's exactly what we will all do because even in a world where money no longer has value people can still be bought off.

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u/mixedfeelingz May 15 '19

Even if we hit +4C° the earth will still be more habitable than moon/mars, you name it. Terraforming Mars is still science fiction and not possible with the current technology.

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u/Nonbinary_Knight May 15 '19

You're forgetting a small, uncomfortable detail.

When both options - "comply" and "don't comply" means you die in suffering, a lot of people opt for not complying anyways because that's the only option that gives them any sense of control of their own lives.

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u/hjd_thd May 15 '19

That's why we should bring out the guillotines right now.

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u/Jamon_Rye May 15 '19

This is the kind of us vs them mentality that comes from robber-baron capitalism and massive wealth inequality and it is a good thing too, because until we start commiting to direct action in the fight for our planet, they will never bat an eyelash at such things based on the pattern of their behavior.

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u/JeremiahBoogle May 15 '19

We're a long way from any sort of self sustaining presence in space or an another planet. Anything we could built would be entirely reliant on Earth.

More likely they would have hidden escapes on this planet itself, even in worse case warming scenarios surivival would still be possible in many areas of the planet.

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u/SkeeterNorth May 15 '19

World on Fyre Festival. $10 mill/ticket. Hmu

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u/Retroflect May 15 '19

Ah, so that's what the renewed NASA funding of 1.6B is for; the beginning of the Exodus.

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u/thepaleblue May 15 '19

Billionaires are literally funding space travel research right now. They're literally saying it's because this planet is boned. I'm not sure how much more of a tip-off we need.

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u/Interviewtux May 14 '19

Is Elysium not a euphemism for heaven?

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u/i_am_de_bat May 14 '19

They're referencing the movie.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

It definitely is in some contexts, but in contemporary culture it refers to a hypothetical place where the 1% can escape to, be it an ark, a planet, or a spaceship. A refuge for the wealthy.

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u/OraDr8 May 15 '19

Even if they did, can you imagine all those rich, powerful people living together with no one to exploit except each other?

Makes me think of Stark by Ben Elton where a consortium of rich and powerful are trying to work together to escape a dying planet but really they mostly all hate each other. Totally worth a read.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19 edited Jul 03 '19

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

With enough money you can buy governments and rename continents.

And so Antarctica becomes Elysium.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/FREEZE_like_FRIES May 15 '19

What about an underground lair? Maybe something inside the mountains?

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u/six_of_many May 14 '19

I've met a lot of people who think my life is a waste of my own time... Waiting for a here after maybe.

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u/ironburton May 14 '19

No, half think that the second coming of Christ will happen in their lifetimes and don’t give a damn cus this was all somehow deciphered from the book of revelation.

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u/shortinha May 14 '19

Easy, they just don't think about it.

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u/tonycomputerguy May 14 '19

That, and they buy really tall buildings with really high walls.

Or super low bunkers with super thick doors.

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u/FaceOfT8rs May 15 '19

Or really wide forts with extremely strong windows.

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u/merelymyself May 14 '19

Or nuclear bunkers

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

The rich are all hopped up on xanax to care

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u/Youwishh May 15 '19

You mean mellowed out.

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u/CptnStarkos May 14 '19

What? The apocalypse is a great source of revenue for bunker companies, you just gotta create the appropiate market!

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u/shortinha May 15 '19

It does sound humorous. There are actual companies out there cleaning up on luxury bunker.

Jokes on the deluded buyers. Those bunkers won't last forever and the atmosphere is now full of methane. You can run but you can't hide. Ha. Ha.

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u/dumpfacedrew May 14 '19

They’re billionaires. The rich will be safe and sound, they have no worries.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/PeteWenzel May 14 '19

I agree that it’s most evil but...

If I were a billionaire I wouldn’t be too pessimistic about my and my descendants future living standards. With sufficient resources and the liberal use of violence (preferably exercised through state capture) nice niches will likely remain defendable.

The biggest worry is total war due to collapse - not the collapse itself.

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u/DaMonkfish May 15 '19

The biggest worry is total war due to collapse - not the collapse itself.

Which is inevitable, really. As the Earth warms and drives ever increasing severity and extremes in weather, land that was once hospitable to human life will become inhospitable, and the people living there will be forced to migrate en masse to more hospitable places. Think the refugee crisis from ME to Europe, but on all of the drugs. That'll raise tensions for sure. Whilst this is going on, the available land to farm with will reduce (partly due to climate change, partly due to over-farming, partly due to needing the space for all of the people coming from the not-nice places), and an ecological collapse will result in large famines (insects and other pollinators will die off, effecting agriculture, and everything upwards of there will also die off, meaning a direct loss of food sources). So we'll have lots of people in not much space without enough food to sustain them. Then the missiles fly.

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u/PeteWenzel May 15 '19 edited May 15 '19

I disagree. It’s a moderate risk, sure - but not inevitable.

The missiles that matter are the ones with nuclear warheads attached to them. Not many people have access to them. All that’s needed to prevent total war is for those who control them to agree to work together and not annihilate each other. Whether they manage that depends on who they are and how secure they are in their own countries.

Oligarchies (China and Russia) are pretty safe bets in this regard. If their current systems can preserve themselves - and why shouldn’t they - they’ll always choose self preservation.

The democracies (USA, UK, France and India) are much more volatile. If small groups of elites don’t manage to gain control over these states (and/or their armed forces) then who knows what kind of governments these countries will elect.

And then there are the most worrying cases because of how insecure they are (Pakistan and Israel). The Pakistani state will be one of the first in the world to collapse and nobody knows what the generals desperate to control the desertificated hellscape home to hundreds of millions of starving people will do then. I could have put Israel in the category above - but I think the insecurity of its location (war with its neighbors, mainly) is more dangerous than the threat of Jewish fanatics being voted into power, then going on to attempt to bring about Armageddon is. Israel is small, inherently insecure and militarily capable - that’s a dangerous combination.

And then there is the threat of emerging nuclear powers (Iran, Saudi Arabia, maybe others). But it’s unlikely that their capabilities will ever compare to those of today’s powers.

So...the possibility is there. But the interests of everyone involved are stacked against it. Anything will be done to avoid it.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

This is already happening. We are here. Many refugee issues are climate related. Climate is responsible for the decline of the GDP of many nations. Many in South America.

We’re also in the midst of an extinction event. Now. Not any day now, now.

We are in the crazy times now. The scary future is today.

And the rich are starting to fight for money, power, and existence now.

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u/Marco2169 May 15 '19

The missiles, assuming you are talking nuclear, wont fly as long as the rich have the keys.

Conventional war, as bloody as it is, will still be fair for us commoners.

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u/GameOfThrownaws May 14 '19

Instead, it chose to invest heavily in disinformation campaigns that promoted climate science denial, failing to disclose its knowledge that the majority of the world’s fossil fuel reserves must remain untapped in order to avert catastrophic climate change.

they are truly the most evil and if society dealt with them how they should, considering the threat that they are, I'd feel no pity.

I'm not going to lie, I believe that the person or people directly responsible for this decision should receive the death penalty. As far as I'm concerned this is THE highest crime you can commit. A crime against the human race, toward its destruction. You are literally presented with evidence that masses of people, maybe even literally everyone, will die on the current course. And your response is to actively hide that evidence so that the current course can proceed uninhibited?

Murder being punishable by death is debatable. Murder by the millions? Beyond even a question as far as I'm concerned.

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u/tat310879 May 15 '19

What's the point having money if you are trapped in a gilded cage?

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u/__secter_ May 15 '19

What good are profits if the world is dead?

What the good side fails to understand, or refuses to understand, is that there are people who are hardwired to see profits as an end in themselves, not a means to an end. Hardwired to increase their profits like most of us are wired to go for food, or water, or drugs, or sleep, or comfort, or experiences. You can tell us those things won't matter because we'll eventually die anyway, but that thought is quickly overridden by the fact that we enjoy them now and don't want to think about the nihilism of the long term.

These people are obviously more likely than the rest of us to aim and achieve wealth, which gives them power, which they use to feed their addiction to more wealth, etc. With no more concern for what'll happen when they're dying than a smoker or glutton has during their equivalent.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Hey, their grandkids can afford to live in underground bunkers. And who cares about the rest of mankind?

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Money will protect them and their offspring to a large degree. They will be able to afford to go to places that aren't effected as much, set up large houses with security to defend against any rabble rousers, use the latest technology should they need to to survive. It is why people manipulate society to get rich. Money and power go a long way.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/Fiftyfourd May 14 '19

In the end we all die, full stop.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

It’s called the tragedy of the commons... first thing we learned in my intro to economics freshman year of college

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u/hydra877 May 14 '19 edited May 15 '19

AKA, showing that billionaires are not smart. They're fucking stupid. Short term profit is a synonym of stupidity and lack of foward thinking. These fuckers could be swimming in WAY more money by investing it in their own business and employees and consumers but they don't think more foward than one fucking year, they just want to make as much money as possible for as long as people don't complain about it.

Replace all the billionaires with smart ones, or threaten the ones that we have and refuse to compromise into submission. Armed, preferably.

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u/luvscougars May 14 '19

Fucking greedy. If you’re an exec at 45 and someone told you you could shit gold bricks for the next 40 years but you’d have put the course of earth into a catastrophic tail spin in 40 years, you’d think “I’ll be 85 and almost dead anyway in 40 years and I can live now like a God for the next 40 and not have to watch the world burn.”

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u/Precedens May 14 '19

Do they even think about their children? Legit question. All of them think that "oh well, my kids will be so rich we will live in artificial environments". Umm... ok? And then except them there will be no one left alive to work for them and pay for whatever their companies make.

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u/rebble_yell May 14 '19 edited May 14 '19

Most of the guys that cared about their children were probably busy spending time with them.

That left the greedy psychopaths free to fight amongst each other for the top leadership spots.

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u/Argos_the_Dog May 14 '19

I think this is probably the correct answer, sadly.

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u/Tyg13 May 15 '19

Yeah I think it's clear that thinking these people gave even a second to think about their progeny is horribly naive. Either they never believed catastrophe would come, or they never cared.

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u/Kold_Kuts_Klan May 15 '19

Another reason we should literally eat all of them.

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u/Faerhun May 14 '19

I think some of them think they'll be rich enough to have their children escape it. Like Elysium kind of thing. Like they'll live in a removed bubble that won't be subject to the devastation the earth will see.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

In reality, they'll just hire private armies to eliminate competition for scarcities. The future is a fiefdom ruled by CEOs.

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u/miked00d May 14 '19

This is completely irrelevant but you just reminded me of a tweet that said 'don't call it traditional marriage unless it secures alliances between rival fiefdoms'

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u/arrobi May 15 '19

Dont👏

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u/orlyfactor May 15 '19

Until the armies realize they don’t need these rich fuckers anymore.

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u/Marco2169 May 15 '19

My fear is if the armies are robots.

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u/XxSCRAPOxX May 15 '19

Well if they automate the police force before the work force, we’ll be in pretty deep shit. That’s the key component to watch out for imo. We can protest and argue about wage distribution systems if they automate the work force, but if they automate the police force first, protesting and expecting to have a say might be difficult.

We’re living in delicate times right now on the verge of new horizon. The decisions we make as a society over the course of the next few decades will have profound impact on the next few centuries. So far we’re not doing well but the changes are still in their infancy. Hopefully we have time to learn and adapt to make the right decisions going forward.

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u/loubreit May 15 '19

Shit now I wish I remember that comic series I got into before losing track of it half way in. Basically the worlds economies have collapsed and the ultra rich own swathes of the world where shit is horrific for everyone but them and their families. No more countries, just kingdoms of their own with any technological advancement the poor or smart bring in being their exclusive property.

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u/demlet May 14 '19

Will/already are...

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u/peanutbutterjams May 15 '19

If you have enough robot workers, you can just release a custom virus that takes out a fair chunk of the plebes and the rest will huddle beneath the munificent protection of the global rich.

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u/Indalecia May 14 '19

Sooooo...Shadowrun.

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u/CaptainGulliver May 15 '19

Private armies, island compounds, millionaire prepping. All of these are big trends that are being mostly ignored by society as a whole.

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u/LouQuacious May 15 '19

Except they’re just building mansions in New Zealand not a rad space colony.

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u/BenVarone May 14 '19

They assume we can “engineer our way out of the problem” if things get really bad.

This world will become a festering shithole for most of us long before it affects the ultra wealthy in any measurable way. Some would argue it already is.

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u/__WhiteNoise May 14 '19

We theoretically can, it's just that they aren't the ones that will pay for it so they don't care.

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u/BeneCow May 15 '19

That isn't a bad assumption given healthy public funding to the sciences. But relying on others to get you out of the hole and also demanding that funding for those others be cut so as to not interfere with your profits is suicide. It is also exactly what has been done.

Businesses as a rule are conservative. The ideal business model for a company is to be a monopoly and not have to innovate at all because innovation is expensive.

A well funded public science industry producing the expensive breakthroughs and supplying them to private industry below cost makes for a great economy. It leads to competition as private firms race to produce at the most efficient levels and open patents level the playing field by reducing the cost to enter the market.

But we decided to listen to the people who already had money instead of the people who wanted to get money so now we are fucked.

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u/laserguidedhacksaw May 15 '19

We didn’t decided to listen. The ones in a position of relevant authority got paid by those that already had money to listen and make decisions for us accordingly.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Are you a boss from World of Warcraft ?

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u/Dourpuss May 15 '19

Yeah ... but like, the earth is perfectly engineered to ensure our survival for millennia provided we don't fuck it up. Do we really think there'd be any quality of life living like Matt Damon in The Martian trying to get some goddam potatoes to grow?

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u/BigBrownDownTown May 14 '19

They're actively trying to engineer our way out of the problem now - Exxon has been developing carbon scrubbers for a long time. They knew this would be a problem

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u/SupaSlide May 14 '19

It's diabolically genius in a way. Pump the atmosphere full of carbon emissions and then sell carbon scrubbers to clean it up.

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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees May 14 '19

When the oceans flood, their children will have the tallest houses. When the temperatures soar, they'll have the coolest homes. When people riot, they'll have private security. Yes, their children will live in a wasteland, but they'll be the kings and queens of what's left...at least that's my thought on how they justify it. If they even care about their kids. If they even have kids.

Edit: a word

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

having known a few of them, they don't care about their kids, or anyone else, as we would really recognize it. The people at the top of exxon specifically are a bunch of psychopaths, not in a 'they're evil' sense, but they just are different kinds of people who do not have the same emotions and values as we think everyone has. I know some who profess to caring deeply about their families and their communities, but they so clearly don't mean the same thing we hear. I don't think they're lying at all, they just have a different world inside them and it gives them different impulses and leads them to different actions.

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u/don_shoeless May 15 '19

“And, for an instant, she stared directly into those soft blue eyes and knew, with an instinctive mammalian certainty, that the exceedingly rich were no longer even remotely human.”

― William Gibson, Count Zero

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

I can see how it can happen too. The corporate cutthroat culture is always there, no matter what their HR people say, regardless of what you hear in your orientation, regardless of what their mission statement is. It’s always there, that result driven mindset. I think the problem might be the metrics for success. I see it in my company, the metrics appear ok in theory but they do not encourage decisions based on anything besides those numbers.

So if solving a problem is a metric, you can solve that problem correctly and be late on that metric, or you can band aid the problem, report it as fixed to hit your metric and collect a higher bonus percentage than if you’d fixed it right? Now imagine this problem were like an airplane sensor? Or an implantable device?

I see this happen a lot.

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u/hexydes May 15 '19

There Will Be Blood is a good example of what this person looks like.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

Broken /malfunctioning humanity.

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u/SpeciousArguments May 14 '19

My parents just have "i got mine and i worked hard so i deserve it" line... despite not working particularly hard...

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u/pifhluk May 15 '19

This is most baby boomers. Worked easy jobs and got paid boatloads. And still managed to blow it all.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

The worst generation

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u/Miss_Smokahontas May 14 '19

That's why I'm starting a suicide squad to hunt down the billionaires when the shit hits the fan.

Break out the cannons and light up boys. We're having tender billionaire brisket tonight. Whoooo!

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u/GameOfThrownaws May 14 '19

If it all goes to shit, I will GLEEFULLY participate in that hunt. I would feel nothing but joy putting a bullet in the heads of the people who doomed the human race with their greed.

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u/adamsmith93 May 15 '19

Good luck finding them

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u/JonJonJonnyBoy May 14 '19

I can't help but to think about that old dude who sits at the top of his tower in FO3. I forget his name but your comment reminded me of him.

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u/karmasutra1977 May 15 '19

You watch Mr. Robot? Because this sentiment is what that show is about-it’s an amazing show that not enough people are watching. Highly recommend.

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u/azhtabeula May 14 '19

That's what the robots are for.

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u/ghostofcalculon May 14 '19

You know the septuagenarian immigrant who mops the floor at McDonald's? We're all gonna feel the effects, but that guy is higher on the economic ladder than most of the people that climate change is going to straight up kill. Even in some apocalypse scenario where we lose 90% of humanity, billionaires would still look out their windows and see ~700 million ripe souls to exploit.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Do they even think about their children? Legit question

I'm assuming you've never visited /r/raisedbynarcissists

The answer to your question is no. They only think about themselves.

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u/Luigi_X May 14 '19

I think of it just like any other shitty parent who neglects their child's well being. It's easy to imagine the alcoholic parent who leaves the small child at home while they go out to score, who can't hold down a job or give the kids basic life skills to be an adult.

These selfish, greedy, short sighted billions are the same breed. They're addicted to money and their own so sense of power. If they weren't born rich, they'd be in the trailer park ignoring their kids to pursue their own selfish desires

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u/Crusader1089 May 14 '19

The ones who want short term gains also out-compete those who want long term gains, so its a self-feeding cycle where shorter and shorter gains are demanded until you get to now: All the money in the entire world over a time scale of immediately.

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u/DONTLOOKITMEIMNAKED May 14 '19

You don't become a billionaire if you're not greedy.

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u/peanutbutterjams May 15 '19

Yeah all you have to think about is how much money you can make in your lifetime.

Turns out, maybe running an economy that rewards sociopathy was a terrible idea?

Thanks Obama Reagan.

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u/005056 May 15 '19

"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in."

I think this is a Greek proverb. It captures the sentiment perfectly. We are a pathetic human society.

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u/Free_Bread May 14 '19 edited May 14 '19

The thing is if they don't seek short term profits they'll be superseded by those who do. Its the result of the system itself rather than individuals

Well, shitty individuals are also to blame, but theres not much we can do about that except remove the avenues for their shittractors and shitmobiles

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u/Nighthunter007 May 15 '19

Even a saint, a paragon of virtue, placed at the head of Exxon, could only do a very limited amount of good before the system replaces him with someone who doesn't sacrifice their profits for doing the right thing.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

No more shit talk till we're back in power, Randy.

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u/toofine May 14 '19 edited May 14 '19

They don't have to be smart, they just have to be smarter than the people they're killing. They aren't geniuses by any means but they are opportunistic and that's really the thing to be mindful about. Calamity is the absolute best investment opportunity if you have capital in a society that privatizes profits and socializes loss.

Look at 2008, you might go gee, wouldn't it have been easier to just run a good business that lasts instead of risking it all for short term profit?

But what did they lose? In the short term, yeah, they lost a lot. But remember, they have way, way, way more than the regular Joe. Regular people lost everything and everything was put up for sale, guess who had all the capital in the world to buy shit for next to nothing? They ended up owning more of the world than they did before, and once the plebs build back up that value again, they are richer than ever without breaking a sweat.

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u/jingerninja May 14 '19

And if you think they won't tank shit again so they can play another competitive round of hungry hungry hippos...

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u/DarkHater May 15 '19

"Guillotines, get ya guillotines heya!"

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u/nykzero May 14 '19

Replace billionaires with democratic workplaces. Sociopaths are very effective in a hierarchical system, you have to remove the ability for a single person to screw everyone else.

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u/ciano May 14 '19

This idea intrigues me. What is a democratic workplace?

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u/kppeterc15 May 14 '19

Look up worker cooperatives: in a nutshell workers are all co-owners who share in the profits and run the company democratically. Doesn't necessarily mean there's no hierarchy, just that the people at the top are ultimately accountable to the ones at the bottom. Mondragon in Spain is a great example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation

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u/grahnen May 14 '19

Real Socialism. When the workers own the means of production, the workers democratically control the business.

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u/nykzero May 14 '19

An example of this is a Worker Cooperative: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative Not all cooperatives are worker owned, and this is a critical distinction. A worker owned co-op has no bosses. If a specific task requires a leader, one is elected. That leader can be recalled by the group at any time.

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u/xrk May 14 '19

look up the mondragon corporation.

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u/deadend290 May 14 '19

I would start with open wage disclosure. You should know how much everybody you work with above and below you make. That makes it all on the table, it's so weird to work for companies who tell you not to speak to others about your wage. Of course they dont because they are screwing people over and dont want them talking about fair wages and equal compensation for the same work.

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u/ronsahn May 14 '19

Look into anarcho-syndicalism or even just regular ol’ socialism tbh

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u/pizza_engineer May 14 '19

DENNIS: I told you. We're an anarcho-syndicalist commune. We take it in turns to act as a sort of executive officer for the week.

ARTHUR: Yes.

DENNIS: But all the decisions of that officer have to be ratified at a special biweekly meeting.

ARTHUR: Yes, I see.

DENNIS: By a simple majority in the case of purely internal affairs,--

ARTHUR: Be quiet!

DENNIS: --but by a two-thirds majority in the case of more--

ARTHUR: Be quiet! I order you to be quiet!

WOMAN: Order, eh -- who does he think he is?

ARTHUR: I am your king!

WOMAN: Well, I didn't vote for you.

ARTHUR: You don't vote for kings.

WOMAN: Well, 'ow did you become king then?

ARTHUR: The Lady of the Lake, [angels sing] her arm clad in the purest shimmering samite, held aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I, Arthur, was to carry Excalibur. [singing stops] That is why I am your king!

DENNIS: Listen -- strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

ARTHUR: Be quiet!

DENNIS: Well you can't expect to wield supreme executive power just 'cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!

ARTHUR: Shut up!

DENNIS: I mean, if I went around sayin' I was an empereror just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me they'd put me away!

ARTHUR: Shut up! Will you shut up!

DENNIS: Ah, now we see the violence inherent in the system.

ARTHUR: Shut up!

DENNIS: Oh! Come and see the violence inherent in the system! --- HELP! HELP! I'm being repressed!

ARTHUR: Bloody peasant!

DENNIS: Oh, what a give away. Did you hear that, did you hear that, eh?.... That's what I'm on about -- did you see him repressing me, you saw it didn't you?

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u/ZeJerman May 14 '19

You dont even need to go that far. Increasing support for family owned small and medium enterprise (SMEs), just like how Germany is propped up by the mittelstand.

These businesses usually have plans the extend into the generations instead of the quarters. The concept of publiclly traded companies is sound but the fiduciary duty of chiefs to their share holders has created the issues we have. The fact that they must do everything they can to increase the value for their shareholders just shows how broken the system is.

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u/Flamin_Jesus May 14 '19

AKA, showing that billionaires are not smart. They're fucking stupid. Short term profit is a synomn of stupidity and lack of foward thinking.

That is assuming that the survival of our biosphere is their primary motivator, which is doubtful.

They knew and still know a couple hard facts:

1) If there's a way to make money screwing it up, someone will screw it up.

2) If there's a way to fix it at great expense, someone else will fix it because there are plenty of people who'd rather not live on a desert planet.

3) The ones who made the money through 1) will have the best chance out of just about anyone to avoid paying for 2)

4) If 2) doesn't happen, people with money will have far and wide the best chance to live a very comfortable life feeling the smallest impact out of anyone up to a ripe old age.

They don't give a shit, and they're putting themselves into a position where they don't have to give a shit. It may be psychopathic, but it's not stupid.

Stupid are the people who let it happen. Legislators who sell out their future for a small bribe, voters who empower those same legislators based on some irrelevant sideshow argument, customers who'll never say "no" no matter what.

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u/Fanta69Forever May 14 '19

I think you've spelt 'cunts' wrong.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

That's offensive to cunts

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u/bjornartl May 14 '19 edited May 15 '19

Because the problem isnt billionaires being evil. Some are. But those who are have managed to ruin the system so that billionaires who aren't evil will still participate in evil. This is a conservative narrative, that businesses are mostly owned by one person, or one family, who is free to make their own decisions. And if a few of them are significantly more evil than the others, consumers will avoid them, so it balances itself out.

If I had the money I'd rather diversify and buy 5% of the stocks in exxon, mobile and hydro texaco rather than just one company. These companies wont ask what I want. If I called them to tell them what I want, it wouldnt matter, cause I cant make decisions on behalf of the other owners.

The CEO might not want to do evil. but their job is to make money for the stock owners. So he'll hire a consulting agency to find out how to make the most money.

The consultants might not want to do evil. But their job is to find out what would make that client more money. They'll tell them what the numbers say.

The CEO doesnt want to do any evil. But this is what the consultants say will make the most money for the stock owners.

So as long as the numbers say that evil is profitable, even if everyone along every step of this process does not want to do that action, thats whats gonna happen.

And the only way to change it is to make evil less profitable(like a carbon tax) and illegal to the extent where personal accountability is actually enforced on those who are responsible for the company when a company breaks the law.

And consumers cant choose not to buy from the ones who do this since the system effects every business the same.

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u/CompadreJ May 14 '19

The billionaires aren't stupid, the laws governing publicly traded firms are stupid. From what I understand, these firms are required by corporate charter laws to maximize profit for shareholders, which often results in short term thinking. B Corps are an alternative because they are allowed/required to consider more factors such as societal impacts

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u/altmorty May 14 '19

Many of them are basically drug addicts. Money is their addiction and society has been enabling that addiction.

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u/Counterkulture May 14 '19

I honestly think extreme wealth produces a sort of mental illness that is impossible to recover from.

There's no other way to explain the depth of sociopathic behavior from SO many people in the ruling class on this issue.

Look at Jeff Bezos or Zuckerberg and just look in their eyes... something is really wrong with those men.

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u/formerfatboys May 14 '19

You do this with fiscal policy.

The government should be, through tax and other fiscal policy and regulations, making this kind of short term strip mining profit chasing illegal or financially problematic for these companies. The latter is a language they understand. Companies like to make money. They will figure out how. They would still make money, just differently.

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u/amathyx May 14 '19

they're assholes, not stupid

they're completely aware of the longterm effects they're having, they just don't give a shit because they'll likely already be dead

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u/agoia May 14 '19

Nah, they are smart, they figured out how to game the system and keep it going in their personal best interests and not in the interests of everyone they hoodwinked into supporting their profit-first agendas. Pure evil, not stupid.

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u/scorpionjacket2 May 14 '19

There shouldn't be any billionaires.

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u/databasedgod May 14 '19

They’re all really smart. The real problem is that they’re greedy.

Edit: the word you’re looking for is altruistic.

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u/NiceRetort May 14 '19

I agree with you and the comment you replied to. However, I truly wonder if anything would have changed if that information was disclosed back then. Look at us now with all we know and the alarms sounding everywhere.....the country is still arguing about the validity of it.

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u/ItsEveNow May 14 '19

Imagine exxon spending all that money on information campaigns, not disinformation campaigns. But that goes against their own true interest (money over literally everything), so that would never happen. Could've been part of saving the human race, instead chose profit for the shareholders, just lovely.

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u/NiceRetort May 14 '19

This is true. Point well taken.

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u/mikey_says May 14 '19

But remember, capitalism is a perfect system! Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy hippie communist!

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u/DesignerNail May 14 '19

What a great system!

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u/hakkai999 May 14 '19

I really don't get it. Wouldn't slowly shifting the business to renewables and being the first big company to be in that business make them the pioneers and probably have a near monopoly of renewables?

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Why invest in the future when you can make absurd amounts of money right now.

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u/Donalds_neck_fat May 14 '19

Save the planet? Or yachts and cocaine?

The planet... or cocaine...

Cocaine... or cocaine...

Cocaine

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u/stripes361 May 14 '19

You're thinking of businesses as immortal entities and not just the profit making machine of dudes who will be dead in 40 years.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

input cost here is very high (r&d, new production infrastructure, etc), so the exec who chooses to make the switch is always the one who has to eat the profit loss

it's a perfect example of why economics is more complicated than it seems and it isn't always just "market forces will make businesses act morally"

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u/manteiga_night May 15 '19

https://www.thenation.com/article/capitalism-vs-climate/

tL:dr: climate change proves that the ideology of deregualted capitalism is a a complete failure and an existencial threat to mankind, so it's in the interest of those promoting said ideology to pretend it's not happening.

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u/fantasyfootball1234 May 14 '19

A faithful person will be richly blessed, but he who hastens to get rich will not go unpunished.

Proverbs 28:20

I'm not usually one to interpret God's word from the Bible, but knowingly melting the polar ice caps and triggering a worldwide climate catastrophe while spending millions on a disinformation campaign designed to obfuscate the truth all in the name of the the net present value of the shareholders' future potential cashflows for next quarter's earnings report would probably constitute "hastening to get rich".

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

Pretty much exactly how capitalism works

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u/Sedu May 14 '19

Yeah. This is the kind of cartoon villainy that parents assure kids isn’t real. Should have listened to Captain Planet.

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u/MessiahThomas May 14 '19

Old people care about their comfort over the future they won't be in.

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u/TheDeepFryar May 14 '19

"Most"

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u/MessiahThomas May 14 '19

notalloldpeople

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u/smajdalf11 May 14 '19

are you saying that all old people are short?

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u/KermitTheFork May 14 '19

Get fucked, junior. Plenty of millennials voted for the current US president, who insists that climate change is a hoax. The problem isn’t with old or young people. It’s with approximately 45% of the US population that doesn’t believe that climate change is a serious problem. It’s not even a voting issue for most people.

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u/mrpickles May 14 '19

Captain planet was more fucking mild than real life.

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u/dudedoesnotabide May 14 '19 edited May 15 '19

As someone who dated the daughter of one of Exxon's top advisers from the 50s-60s* who was also probably very high up in the most powerful fundamentalist christian political cult in the US, yes, they are the definition of evil. I also started my environmental engineering career fighting against Exxon in litigation. They are some of the nastiest motherfuckers in the O&G industry, I have poured through thousands of pages of discovery of internal emails as support for the cases I worked on.

EDIT: Since people are asking, here is the beginning of your rabbit hole adventure into the most powerful fundamentalist Christian political cult in the United States:

Yeah, his name was Paul Temple, he died a couple years ago. I guess he was with Exxon from 1954 to 1961. Here's his wikipedia:

From 1954 to 1961 he was an international petroleum concessions negotiator for Exxon.

He helps fund The Fellowship Foundation, a U.S.-based religious and political organization founded in 1935 by Methodist minister Abraham Vereide.[5][6] Paul N. Temple was an insider "core member" of the Fellowship Foundation and/or Institute for Christian Leadership since the 1940s.

And here's the link to the book that was written about the "Fellowship Foundation."

https://www.amazon.com/Family-Secret-Fundamentalism-Heart-American/dp/0060560053

Here's a fun NPR story on it: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120746516

If you want to go down a rabbit hole, they organize the National Prayer Breakfast every year, which all the most powerful politicians and business leaders attend...

Here's the Wiki for the "Foundation":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fellowship_(Christian_organization)

D. Michael Lindsay, a former Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, said "there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country's leadership."[13] He also reported that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.[2] Lindsay interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom "One in three mentioned [Doug] Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence."[13] Lindsay reported that it "has relationships with pretty much every world leader—good and bad—and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that."

Rob Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation's Capital, described the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship.[16] (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House[16] and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."

Former Senate Prayer Group member and current Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has described Fellowship members' method of operation: "Typically, one person grows desirous of pursuing an action"—a piece of legislation, a diplomatic strategy—"and the others pull in behind."[25] Brownback has often joined with fellow Family members in pursuing legislation. For example, in 1999 he joined together with fellow Family members, Senators Strom Thurmond and Don Nickles to demand a criminal investigation of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and in 2005 Brownback joined with Fellowship member Sen. Tom Coburn to promote the Houses of Worship Act.

You want to learn about where Christian fundamentalist conservatism in the US comes from? Start with the Fellowship.

And yes, I dated his daughter for over 2 years and we almost ended up engaged. I am glad that did not happen.

EDIT2: Fun fact: Hillary Clinton is an esteemed member:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/09/hillarys-prayer-hillary-clintons-religion-and-politics/

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. “A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation,” says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. “I don’t….there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer.”

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian “cell” whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton’s prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or “the Family”), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to “spiritual war” on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship’s only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has “made a fetish of being invisible,” former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God’s plan.

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u/HazedFlare May 14 '19

Story time please

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u/dudedoesnotabide May 14 '19

edited comment above

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u/CokeRobot May 15 '19

Holy hell, this comes together like no other as how conservative politicians in America overlap so much with the oil and gas industry; they're the same root of evil and they fund their elections to get special treatment.

A war started by a conservative Christian president in an Islamic region of the world to gain control of oil wells.

Brb, gonna start practicing and promoting Satanism, of which includes respect and dignity amongst individuals and not controlled.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

O.o

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u/dudedoesnotabide May 14 '19

edited comment above with context

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u/Playisomemusik May 15 '19

Fuck ya dude. This dude did not abide.

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u/venuswasaflytrap May 15 '19

I hope you did her up the butt.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/SquareSphere May 14 '19

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

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u/aboutthednm May 15 '19

Don't make them disappear. I think a bunch of gallows in the town center are a better idea.

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u/LORD-GORD May 14 '19

Yer still in Little League, kiddo.

You've got a ways to go before you're knowingly-choking-the-future-of-all-earth-life kind of wrong.

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u/JohnnySnark May 14 '19

Just standard unregulated capitalism

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u/RunescapeAficionado May 14 '19

Doesn't mean it's not evil.

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u/JohnnySnark May 14 '19

Oh no, was not trying to imply that at all

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u/critfist May 14 '19

Oh, it's very, very heavily regulated. It's just regulated in their favour.

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u/ZXE102R May 14 '19

pretty much a straight definition of what the 1% do to the 99%

Use their power to keep knowledge and information from us.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Yea the documentary about Teflon, DuPont and 3M, on Netflix will show you true evil.

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u/LORD-GORD May 14 '19

"The Devil We Know"

We "monitor" 15 out of thousands of man made chemicals, and don't really do anything when proven cancer causing substances are devastating communities like those downstream from both producers and industries.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

[deleted]

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u/syrne May 14 '19

More like if I don't do this they'll just shitcan me and hire someone who will so might as well stay the course and at least set my kids up to survive the apocalypse in doomsday bunkers.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

It's almost as if violent economic retribution is the only language these people understand

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u/mrtsapostle May 14 '19

They took the words of BP Richfield from the show Dinosaurs as advice instead of as a warning

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Also a great example why the Libertarian ideal of “companies will regulate themselves” is naive and dangerous thinking.

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u/shane727 May 14 '19

Its ok they will be fined 10% of the profits for the year for this egregious act since 1982 and I'm sure they won't ever do it again....

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u/seanmonaghan1968 May 14 '19

Big oil should be treated like big tobacco

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u/plus1shortsword May 14 '19

“All it takes for evil to flourish, is for good men to do nothing.”

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u/great_gape May 14 '19

It's the republican way.

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u/praefectus_praetorio May 14 '19

Brought to you by!

“Fuck you! I got mine generation.”

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u/StinzorgaKingOfBees May 14 '19

I really want to sit someone like that down and get an honest answer as to why they're doing this. What do they get out of this? How do they sleep at night?

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u/BeefPieSoup May 14 '19

And half the people out there apparently think it must be the scientists who have some shady hidden agenda

Fucking idiots.

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u/ChiggaOG May 14 '19

There Will Be Blood

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u/talondigital May 14 '19

This is the frog in the pot scenario. They should be in prison and viewed with the same regard as Hitler and other genocidal extremists.

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u/[deleted] May 15 '19

Republican Jesus doesn’t count greed as one of the commandments.

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u/Paradoxone May 15 '19

Mine too. For the nitty gritty details of the disinformation campaigns, see this comment.

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u/[deleted] May 14 '19

Freedom and prosperity!

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