
100 companies responsible for 71% of greenhouse gas emissions - urahara
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/100-companies-responsible-71-per-cent-greenhouse-gas-emissions-global-warming-climate-change-shell-a7834031.html
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jblok
This article makes out like the companies themselves are directly responsible,
rather than the customers of these companies, i.e. you and me. We cause these
companies to pollute by creating a market demand for their products or
services. Not to say there's not things a company can do to improve it's
efficiency, but ultimately, a company isn't going to keep their factories
firing away if no one is buying their stuff.

The same argument can be applied when people look at China and think they are
the problem because of their high use of coal and manufacturing industry.
Well, I'd guess that a lot of their output is going to Western consumers, so
again, it is they who are responsible.

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daptaq
Ah yes, what's better than trying to shift the blame from the actual people
and groups doing this, to individuals, who often don't even know better? No
need to address the companies or (dare I say) suggest regulations. It's the
consumer who should think about this, he's the center of the market universe -
besides 7 billion other centers - and only he - with the coincidental
cooperation of all other 7 billion people - can change this. How? Why by
consuming... ethically. Then the companies can still go on doing what they so,
find market, created deals nobody knows of, destroy the environment and
infiltrate governments with their "special interests". All the consumer has to
do is spend more money on fancy stuff, and he doesn't have to feel guilty
anymore. It's all ok! It might not be easy to ensure that all the people
consume "correctly", but it's sure easier than trying to address the companies
to produce "correctly". It's just basis economics.

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delazeur
You're straw-manning here. A lot of rhetoric about pollution implicitly or
explicitly paints a picture of evil corporations polluting for fun and profit,
but any successful scheme to reduce pollution has to acknowledge that
corporations are just one part (even if they are a very large part) of a
broader human system. We can't move forward by simply pinning everything on
corporations; that's a good strategy for making ourselves feel righteous but
not a good strategy for effecting actual change.

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sqeaky
I don't think it is a straw-man to point at a real problem and demand answers.
A straw-man argument is creating something that doesn't exist then attacking
that. He didn't call them evil, you are accusing him of doing that (You are
closer to constructing a straw-man than he is).

These companies really do pollute, really are the largest American CO@
emitters and as Americans we have a right to answers and solutions.

~~~
delazeur
> I don't think it is a straw-man to point at a real problem and demand
> answers. A straw-man argument is creating something that doesn't exist then
> attacking that.

"You are shifting the blame" is a straw man because the GP didn't do that.
Rather, it pointed out a nuance in the issue that the previous comment didn't
acknowledge.

(And a nit: a straw man attacks an argument that was not made, not a thing
that doesn't exist.)

> He didn't call them evil, you are accusing him of doing that (You are closer
> to constructing a straw-man than he is).

Read my comment again. I said "a lot of rhetoric does X," which is vastly
different from "you are doing X."

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winter_blue
I looked at the report[1], and pretty much all of the companies listed are
energy companies (e.g. coal/petroleum/etc). I was expecting to see a lot of
heavy industrial manufacturing companies.

I can understand a coal plant producing a lot of emissions, but I'm wondering:
why would a petroleum company generate a lot of emissions? Do they burn a lot
of the fuel they produce? I thought they just pump the crude oil out, pass it
through fractional distillation, and sell the resultant fuels?

[1]
[https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1...](https://b8f65cb373b1b7b15feb-c70d8ead6ced550b4d987d7c03fcdd1d.ssl.cf3.rackcdn.com/cms/reports/documents/000/002/327/original/Carbon-
Majors-Report-2017.pdf)

~~~
harryh
They're not just counting the emissions that Exxon (for example) produces by
extracting oil. They're counting the emissions from when that oil is burned by
the end consumer (say by me in a car) and accounting that back to Exxon.

Yes, this is kinda dumb.

~~~
undersuit
Why is it dumb? Purposely selling a product that pollutes and wanting to shift
all the blame to the customer sounds dumb to me. They aren't selling paper
weights.

~~~
harryh
If people stopped wanting to burn hydrocarbons for energy all of these
companies would stop digging it up from the ground.

Conversely, if all of these companies were suddenly shut down 100 new ones
would rise up in their place to replace them.

Demand drives consumption.

Writing a report about how 71% of emissions come from 100 companies doesn't
convey meaningful information to the reader about the nature of the problem of
global warming.

~~~
undersuit
People don't want to burn hydrocarbons for energy they just want energy. The
proof is in the pudding, if people wanted to burn hydrocarbons for energy
there would be no renewable energy sources.

Demand for energy drives a consumption for energy and these companies provide
the energy. If we had instead learned how to convert puppies to energy in the
late 19th century instead of fossil fuels, we'd probably be burning puppies.

~~~
harryh
Yes, but we don't know how to convert puppies into energy. Hydrocarbons are
(mostly) what we have so hydrocarbons are (mostly) what we get.

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fakesmoke
There's a really scary picture of a power plant leading off the story. There
is a huge amount of smoke pouring out of its smoke stacks.

Only, most of the smoke stacks are chillers and most of all that smoke is
steam. The chillers looks like the kind most often associated with nuclear
power plants.

If you took all those emissions and photoshopped away all the H2O, you'd have
a very small wisp of smoke. That smoke would still be a problem. But the photo
would not inspire fear and concern.

When an article leads off with that kind of spurious fearmongering, it damages
any real value that might exist later in the article. Any real data and real
concerns get obscured in all the fake smoke the article is purposely
generating.

~~~
sqeaky
CO2 is invisible.

Pictures makes articles more appealing, easier to understand and profitable.

It's not like they are even lying, you agree there is some smoke an pollutants
in there.

What should they take a picture of?

Can't smokestacks, a long time symbol of industry, be just that a symbol? It's
not like they are lying about the numbers in the article or even make claims
about the picture.

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caseysoftware
> _“Our purpose is not to name and shame firms, our purpose is to provide
> transparency and call attention to the quite extraordinary fact that just
> 100 companies played a crucial role in the problem,” said Pedro Faria,
> technical director of the Carbon Majors Database, which collected the
> information for the report. “It’s obvious they have a share of
> responsibility in the solution.”_

You made a list of the top 100 companies.. that is literally naming names.

Then you say they're responsible for 71% of the problem and need to improve..
that is literally shaming them.

For a supposedly-intelligent person, it's disappointing he doesn't know the
definitions of the words he uses.

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scottmsul
Company sizes follow a pareto distribution. In a pareto distribution, some
small number x companies will be responsible for some large y% of anything.

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dx034
A rather stupid statistic in my opinion. Of course we could save the planet by
banning all car manufacturing and power plants. Doesn't mean that this is a
serious option. It's not important who produces emissions. It's important
where emissions can be reduced and how we can achieve this.

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thriftwy
In other news, just 100 companies are responsible for making 71% of people
overweight.

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gautamdivgi
These are all energy companies. I think there should also be a study on which
are the top consumers of their products to better correlate data and change
consumer behavior. As an example - one of my pet peeves is the resistance to
remote work where possible. The amount of gas and time saved not commuting to
work every day has got to be quite significant (along with the need to
maintain smaller offices, etc.). If it can be quantified in terms of
greenhouse gas emissions there may be more acceptance.

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folli
And 90% of consumers are responsible to buy from these 100 companies?

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bamboozled
Exactly, this is the fallacy that we need "other people", like politicians to
solve climate change for us.

Try voting with your wallet and changing your bank.

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Joe-Z
A politician representing the interests of the people who voted for him/her is
a fallacy?

Then consequentially I should get back all my tax money that went into setting
up international trade and other economic deals, since apparently this should
also have been my responsibility and these arrangements would have just popped
up if I had 'voted with my wallet'.

~~~
bamboozled
I never said that, but the majority of adults are responsible for this mess
including the representatives they've elected. This includes you and me.

~~~
delazeur
> I never said that

Perhaps that isn't what you _meant_ , but it sure looks to me like that's what
you _said_.

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bamboozled
Relying on someone else to fix it won't fix it, is essentially what I'm
saying, for if everyone had that attitude, then nothing would happen,
absolutely nothing.

Politicians are just people too.

~~~
delazeur
... People with far greater than average power to change society. I can't make
laws. Can you?

Voting for representatives who will make laws that create the change you want
to see in the world is absolutely not "relying on someone else."

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nojvek
It seems the large companies are mostly oil companies. The faster we
transition to non-oil based energy, the faster we solve the problem.

The big issue is oil has a very high energy density. Its relatively cheap to
extract and transfer.

If we do end up figuring out solar panels that intake C02 and water and output
oil, that would be the biggest invention of our generation.

Basically we need more efficient trees at scale. May be DNA programming will
come to the rescue.

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anentropic
R E G U L A T E

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known
They're Pyramid schemes in disguise

