This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
From news reports, it might sound like the fossil fuel industry is on the defensive after a landmark court ruling and two shareholder votes challenging the industry’s resistance to curbing its greenhouse gas emissions.
The recognition by each individual of their own carbon footprint is the key to curbing GHG emissions. We altered and adjusted our individual behaviors to overcome Covid-19.
I hope we learned from that as a way to overcome AGW.
Really?!? I’M the first to comment on this’n? OK, I’ll try to make it worthy… Ha ha–as usual, I farted around long enough that someone else beat me to it! 
I’ll start by commending Professor Griffin on a fine collection of thoughts regarding how it’ll take multiple, repeated points of contact/impact to turn the fossil fuel and related sectors toward and/or accelerating renewable energy.
(Full disclosure, I’m an engineer at a large natural gas transmission and distribution company, so I absolutely have my entire career–so far–planted firmly in the fossil fuel camp. However, I’d also note that I serve on an internal task group where we’re also rapidly (w/ strong and broad backing from our highest leadership) investigating and pursuing potential hydrogen blending (e.g., as a method of capturing/storing excess green electricity production for time-shifted “peak (load) shaving”) and renewable natural gas (RNG, e.g., capturing methane from landfill emissions, liquid wastewater treatment facilities, and/or biogas reactors) projects and opportunities, as are many of our industry peer companies.)
Given the topic at hand, I was a bit surprised not to see mentions of a few items that crossed my mind while reading, but rather than mildly chastise him over it and entertaining the delightful possibility that I may know some things that others may not, I’ll simply use his article as a starting point to add a few of them that I think are worth reminding us of.
The first is 350.org, a major focus of which is encouraging (large and other) shareholder groups to divest from fossil fuel-related investments as a means of applying social, moral, and economic pressure on such firms and industries, as Prof. Griffin describes perfectly well. And I can’t mention that worldwide organization without linking to this powerful sermon, entitled “God’s Taunt”, at the Riverside Church of NYC by one of 350.org’s founders, Bill McKibben. I’ve probably watched and listened to his thoughtful and entertaining sermon dozens of times and it never fails to inspire me.
Another is to note that among those larger shareholders in the fossil fuel industry are public pension funds (CalPERS is among the largest and best known) and others that may be more open to moral suasion than purely money-grubbing capitalists, who’d sell out their own mothers, just for an extra nickel in their pockets.
Another couple of videos I’ve drawn inspiration from dozens of times are from another of my personal heroes, Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute who quotes Maurice Strong saying,
"Not all the fossils are in the fuel!"
In another, Lovins notes that,
“once capital markets think you’re in or headed for the toaster, they don’t wait for the toast to get done before they decapitalize you and invest in your successors…”
A final comment is about the economic and business importance of environmental, social, & governance (ES&G) interests.
Good luck with getting folks to understand that when the convenience and low cost of buying even something so innocuous as a screen protector for your cell phone on Amazon is likely to end up with you receiving an overly-packaged thing in the mail some days later with an origin in China, having traversed half the globe to get to you.
Scapegoating the oil companies is much more fun for Greenpeace activists than acknowledging that the iPhone in their hands is the product of massive carbon output and environmentally-destructive production and distribution lines.
I stand with @geographyjones and @castor_troy on this one. Lots of folks with MAGA hats frequently seen shopping at Harbor Freight Tools around here. About everything there made in China. People don’t always live their ideals and the same disconnect applies when the topic is reducing carbon emissions to save the planet.
Yesterday on NPR’s Here and Now, I heard major US auto manufacturers seek to be 80% electric by 2035. Ambitious goal, I think. Would help them and the planet if they communicated the problem to reluctant people in a more effective way.
Also, I would like to see additional standards for batteries (as was already done with ethernet data communication protocols and wiring) to reduce battery costs and build infrastructure to support electric vehicles. Voluntary industry regulation of battery configurations would actually increase competition and would simplify EV battery production.
Good point. Fuel consumption is just part of the problem. Consumerism, which drives our economy, is itself a major GHG contributor.
Those fresh tomatoes in January also come at a high cost.
But we continue to privatize the profits and socialize the cost.
You have a point, but for most of what you buy on amazon (or elsewhere), though it may originate in China, it is not drop-shipped from China. It comes from some domestic distribution center. Manufactured goods from China are transported by container ship, and the containers are then shipped by truck or rail.
And durable goods are less of an issue than consumables, like burgers (produced at great environmental expense by farting cows) and $5 cups of coffee. Don’t get me started on almonds and pomegranates.
One almond requires 1.5 gallons of water to produce.
(See what you did!?! You got me started on almonds!)
Sorry!
We’re good. I’m blaming everything on Mercury in retrograde until Tuesday when it’s finished.
Once again the only green in environmental progress is the Dollar.
As individuals we can do our part and learn how to better cut back our carbon cost. Being raised as consumers, we have our work cut out for us.
The fossil fuel industry will transition to an energy industry only when the profit potential out weighs the increasing costs of oil and the trillions of oil reserves they are holding.
A functional government would certainly help. But the old farts in charge need to die off and let people who are concerned for their future take over. I so miss the United States. The potential remains and gives us hope. Much like the potential profits will reorder the energy industry, an administration that made significant progress in the climate crisis would gain popular support.
That said, I would remind my fellow gardeners to sharpen their hoes before going to chop weeds.
Not being cost effective anymore is killing coal as well…
Well Played, T****!
Nuts!
h/t Gen. Anthony McAuliffe
That’s a great quote from Bastonge but I like Captain Dick Winters’ “We’re paratroopers. We’re supposed to be surrounded” even better.
I thought so, too. Until I received a screen protector wrapped in enough bubble wrap to have stopped the iceberg from scraping the Titanic, shipped direct from China to me.
Shorter BlackRock: “Screw the planet if you must, but don’t screw our bottom line.”
Yes, absolutely good points, which is why I often use these types of discussions to mention that it seems obvious to me that a carbon- or fuel-related tax fee would also be an encouragement to on-shore many manufacturing and other businesses closer to their customers, including returning jobs to the US.
Years ago I ordered a Japanese hand saw on Amazon, and it was shipped directly from Japan, probably by canoe. It arrived 6 weeks later.
There was an episode of “Bored to Death” where a trendy new Manhattan restaurant touted a 100 mile ingredient sourcing radius and the competition then advertised a 50 mile radius.
I think this is an important paradigm shift. We are already seeing the development of urban farming. Especially vertical farming.
This is good news for re-wilding efforts such as World Wildlife Federation. I am convinced that habitat loss from industrial monoculture agriculture and it’s consequence of a loss of biodiversity is every bit as troubling and dangerous as AGW.
