this post was submitted on 20 Oct 2023
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Climate@stad

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Climate News / Opinion

Both news and articles of interest. "Solarpunk" as well as dystopian articles welcome, but they should be rooted in talking about projections, technology, society or ideas relating to climate change and our future not be pure fiction.

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Unsurprising. And I suspect the results wouldn't be very different elsewhere.

And that's why we're fucked.

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[–] SLaSZT@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

I'm not really sure why I should have to pay more to the government so that a private corporation doesn't lose money when switching to another method of extraction and/or energy generation that destroys the planet slightly slower. Any government that wants to get serious about climate action is going to have to pass legislation banning the shit they don't want to happen anymore, because corporations and executives will not stop doing it out of the kindness of their hearts or their concern for their own children/grandchildren.

Oil and gas companies should have thought seriously about the energy transition in the decades since they discovered that fossil fuels are polluting the earth - they've had nearly 80 years to think about how this might go and they chose to be lazy about it (i.e., corporate lobbying and hoping the problem would go away). They should have to pay for it, they make trillions of dollars in pure profit every year; it's not like they've been giving us a discount all these decades.

Why am I expected to squirrel away every penny I earn for emergency expenses and retirement but corporations just get bailed out every time they fail to plan for the future? If governments want to prevent a behaviour they are going to have to get serious, but these politicians must be scared that they won't be able to score that awesome lobbying or consultancy gig after they've qualified for the public service pension (you get the full pension after 2 years of service) if they actually act with any sort of integrity.