Is it just money that motivates these people? Is that all? At this point, they must just want to watch civilization collapse for short-term gains.
matthewdgreen · 1h ago
There are literally millions of people in this country who would like to watch civilization collapse, and aren't even smart enough to get paid for it.
dralley · 1h ago
There are plenty of "legacy" environmental organizations that view any form of construction, including construction of renewable energy, as worthy of being opposed. They aren't all interested in the bigger picture of advancing renewable energy to slow climate change.
griffzhowl · 36m ago
Maybe, but this study is about specific, named organisations with documented personnel or financial ties to fossil fuel companies. Not sure how your comment is relevant to them
shermantanktop · 6m ago
If the waters are a bit muddier now, that’s the relevance. Flooding the zone with confusion and whataboutism is the tactic of choice these days.
danans · 1h ago
> Is it just money that motivates these people?
For fossil-fuel companies, it's about control and extending the world's dependency on their products as far into the future as possible. The others are on their dole to one degree or another, when you consider that many of the edges in the graph in the article represent not only relationships, but also flows of money.
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
Why don’t they invest in other sectors though vs doubling down? Tobacco companies, famously unscrupulous, did just this, saw the writing on the wall and now make their money off zyn and vapes vs trying to swim upstream selling traditional tobacco products. Seems to me an oil company has enough resources where they can out invest most any green vc outright and dominate the marketshare if they were so inclined.
This is playing out like the hubris film companies had towards digital sensors. Seems they don’t teach history in MBA programs I guess.
griffzhowl · 18m ago
It's probably to do with vape companies still needing nicotine, and so the tobacco companies still control the primary source, so they can gain the advantages of vertical integration from buying up the downstream offshoots. Non-fossil fuel sources of energy by definition have different primary sources of energy than those controlled by fossil fuel companies, so they can't capitalize in the same way.
Btw, I looked up Juul from your other comment and saw they're 35% owned by Altria (formerly Philip Morris) who are "one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products in the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco." [1]
You couldn't hope for a more tragically hilarious summation of the cynicism in this industry than that combination of businesses to be in
> Why don’t they invest in other sectors though vs doubling down?
Control and relevance. These things matter to them as much as profit.
The barrier to entry to produce renewables is lower than fossil fuels - there is no natural oligopoly.
If you own your house, you can put solar on your roof and a battery on your house, and dramatically cut back on your fossil fuel derived energy needs. Communities can do the same, as can utilities and independent businesses.
That's a future where fossil fuel companies are far less relevant. Not irrelevant, but nothing like what they were. That future may be unavoidable, but they are trying to delay its arrival as much as they can.
bryanlarsen · 56m ago
Many oil companies did try. For example BP's "Beyond Petroleum" initiative was more than greenwashing (although it was also greenwashing).
Those initiatives failed due to short-termism, infighting, failure to commit sufficient resources, et cetera.
kjkjadksj · 42m ago
And yet solar and wind grow hand over fist internationally. One would think they would want to buy out some of these emerging companies in this sector and take advantage of the inevitable increasing investment and profit potential in this sector. Every other industry seems the investor class is elbowing and charging to get there first and secure marketshare e.g. ai but you just don’t see that sort of chomping at the bit with green technology for whatever reason. Seems so strange considering the entire world will need to be retooled and the money that stands to be made is so enormous. Probably more money that has been made in oil so far by several orders of magnitude thanks to parallel investments in other sectors and technologies that weren’t around when oil got its start 150 years ago.
Workaccount2 · 14m ago
Solar has been growing predominately because the Chinese government is willing to lose billions in subsidies to panel manufacturers.
Zigurd · 1h ago
Easier said than done. Legacy social media is dying, and Meta has plenty of resources to create products in and monetize other product sectors. And yet...
If what you know is how to pull oil out of the ground, and build multi billion dollar rigs to do it, that's your sector.
kjkjadksj · 51m ago
It isn’t like the tobacco companies knew any different. They just opted to buy Juul which they could do with their massive cash reserves. Their own efforts (blu?) failed. As the saying goes, those who can’t do, buy.
m463 · 35m ago
I've listened to plenty of smart people who have what seems contrary viewpoints that seem to be reasonable after explanation.
for example:
1) more expensive energy of any kind is extremely harmful to society
EDIT: more expensive energy reduces prosperity for everyone. Renewable energy can and should be competitive and cost effective.
2) automatic filing of taxes is more harmful long-term than individuals filing taxes manually
EDIT: automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever.
3) government funding of internet/broadband/etc is harmful
EDIT: picking winners is more harmful that makeing good public policies.
it's just hard to reason though the details, though it is worth the effort.
My point is that there could be valid viewpoints that are not self-serving/greed-based.
Workaccount2 · 15m ago
One of the core problems of contemporary news media is that you only ever get exposed to the straw man arguments of the other side. It's just so lucrative to perpetually paint the other side as obviously idiotic, so people can jerk off their ago about how smart they are. Then after years of this they have built a solid immutable mental model of their opponent that is mostly incorrect, but the thing they hold dearest. All so they can keep you tuning in to watch fucking advertisements...
ggm · 31m ago
Please summarise these reasons. Frankly, I'm sceptical. I suspect it's a different philosophy not counterfactual outcomes. Some people dislike socialised tax and regulation.
dev_l1x_be · 1h ago
The same reason why they almost the same people behind anti-nuclear initiatives. Maintain the status quo.
jfengel · 1h ago
As I understand it, at least some of these groups are nominally pro-nuclear. They are aware that nuclear plants have a very long lead time, while wind (and solar) can be installed quickly. So they can advocate for nuclear as a way of fending off other non-fossil-fuel energy sources, without actually replacing any fossil fuels with nuclear.
Zigurd · 1h ago
Even under ideal conditions, nuclear is much more expensive than solar and wind. And when was the last time there were ideal conditions?
bryanlarsen · 52m ago
20-30 years ago nuclear was a quicker path towards decarbonization than solar was. So pushing solar over nuclear made sense for those hoping to delay decarbonization.
Now solar is a quicker way to decarbonize, so similar efforts are anti-solar, pro-nuclear.
kjkjadksj · 1h ago
What I don’t get about all these evil scrooge types that run out world, is why wouldn’t they want to make money off things like wind and actual climate salves? Seems to me the coming climate crises is going to cost a ton of money and lead to destruction of entire national economies. Meanwhile they could have been raising all boats and made even more money and had even more things to invest in.
Is oil really that profitable to ignore the havoc it wreaks and will wreak on virtually every other industry, including itself when there is less money moving around to spend on oil and oil products?
I just don’t get it how being so objectively shortsighted is actually the corrupt greedy money position instead of ensuring the world as we know it doesn’t collapse and that the money printing machine doesn’t fall apart. But what do I know I guess.
Teever · 1h ago
Its because they're in a death cult purity spiral.[0] They suffer from cognitive dissonance so a part of them understands this stuff but another part of them identifies so strongly with their peer group and profession that this second part wins out.
It's really unfortunate that such glaring cognitive defects appear to have doomed the human race smothering itself to death on this planet instead of reaching out to the stars.
The oil industry sees some of the most advanced applications of engineering on earth. One would think this is a sector used to disruption and investing in emerging technoligies with potential for profit because that is how they’ve been optimizing the oil industry this entire time. I guess somehow a line is drawn in the sand with oil vs not oil but I don’t know why. It seems hard to imagine that these massive corporations are structured such that the influence of engineers and consultants are eschewed for the feelings of a few of uninformed people. Seems unbelievable to put that amount of money behind such obstinate thinking.
lovich · 1h ago
If you haven’t heard the term you should look up accelerationists.
There’s several competing flavors of it like the ones who think “the good” communist revolution will happen after society collapses vs the ones who want democracy to fall apart because they think monarchical societies are morally superior, but they all have the same line of thinking that “the collapse” is coming any day now and they want to accelerate when they say occurs
ggm · 28m ago
Organised communism is almost completely defunct and afaik the 4th international likewise. At this point accelerationist left views would be as fringe as sovereign citizens and certainly not allied to the coal oil and nuclear industries.
The former RCP members who joined the tory party in the UK, people like Dominic Cummings are interesting of course. And Steve Bannon is fond of posturing as a Maoist in style if not in substance. His oilskin coat is a performance Mao jacket.
throw7 · 1h ago
Three wind projects got scrapped in NY and I always wondered if there was some alternate hidden reason. It does seem though that it was just costs and technological shifts that made NY cancel them...
> production of wind energy is crucial for meeting science-based climate goals
What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it?
I hear people talk about their solar installations all the time, and it seems like the anti-nuclear sentiment is finally wearing off too. I don't think I've ever heard anything positive about one of these windmills. It seems to be a fairly straightforward wealth transfer from tax payers and utility consumers to the windmill people. Property values go down and electricity prices go up. Windmill people move on to collect the next subsidy.
dralley · 1h ago
They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies) and tend to produce peak power during periods when solar is offline (e.g. at night or cloudy days). Farmers like them because they don't take up much space and they provide revenue independent of how well their crops do, which varies wildly year to year. It's cheaper than burning fossil fuels (though not quite as cheap as solar)
Adding wind to the network does not make electricity prices go up (unless you do something stupid like shut down all your nuclear plants at the same time). That's nonsense. It's maybe not quite as cheap if you factor in the storage requirements to build up the grid "properly", but still cheaper than coal at the very least.
onetimeusename · 1h ago
> They pay for themselves in a couple of years (even without subsidies)
Do you have a source on this?
ceroxylon · 42s ago
It varies, but if you want concrete numbers, this study in Brazil found their payback to be 0.494 years:
They're ~the cheapest power options available and provide decades and decades of zero-marginal-cost energy. Building a wind turbine today has about the same all-in "LCOE" as running existing nuclear plants. Building new nukes results in electricity that's about 4x as expensive as building turbines instead.
Not to say we shouldn't build more nuke plants, but they're extraordinarily expensive to build and have construction timelines measured in decades so it's nearly impossible to make them pencil out on a per-kwh basis when compared to wind or solar + batteries that can be deployed and commissioned in 6 months.
bix6 · 1h ago
It’s one based on science instead of whatever someone finds convenient. So sub 2 C.
Why would wind not be essential for it? Wind is free just like solar. Some places have amazing wind. Wind costs have declined dramatically so it’s a viable piece of the mix.
WD-42 · 1h ago
Property values? Do you live on an oil rig or something?
cosmic_cheese · 1h ago
There are some who think windmills unsightly, which I don’t understand at all. The old style associated with Dutch stereotypes is cute and picturesque, and the modern type futuristic. If I see windmills within eyeshot, my first thought is, “oh cool, the people here really have it figured out.” Of all the things that I might see on the horizon, windmills are among those that would bother me the least.
bix6 · 1h ago
They’re just not a big fan of windmill people ok?!? ;)
AftHurrahWinch · 1h ago
As usual, the facts are in the linked report not in the journalist's summary.
It's more precise, avoiding that strange construction, "science-based". If I understand correctly, linguists call these productive analogies (?), where we start producing more of them by analogy to some root, so:
For what it's worth: one of the reasons Google has a datacenter in Iowa (of all places) is that there's a windfarm out there making up something like 60% of the local power generation. That makes the power super cheap (and with all the land they have, that windfarm can continue to scale).
If Google's putting their money into it, I suspect there's more to the wind story than "wealth transfer from tax payers and consumers to the windmill people."
thuridas · 1h ago
Electricity prices go up? Are you blaming the windmills? It should you blame the new AI data centers
And windmills are profitable by themselves. And reduces foreign imports with increasing taxes on this goods. If we removed all subsidies coal would be the real affected.
I am not sure about property value but burning gas next to homes creating health problems to power Elon musk data centers surely doesn't help. The dark fumes from coal, gas or oil are going to affect it.
Wind power also has the benefit that it keeps the carbon in the ground and isn't contributing to the massive climate crisis that humanity and the earth's ecosystems are facing. And there's no direct waste from energy production.
cyberax · 1h ago
> What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it?
Land-based wind power is OK-ish. It's susceptible to renewable droughts, but it's fine as long as it's just a part of the mix.
But the offshore wind power is pretty much the _only_ reliable renewable, outside of classic hydro and exotics like tidal power or geothermal. Offshore wind generators are pretty much guaranteed to always produce at least _some_ power due to diurnal wind patterns.
For fossil-fuel companies, it's about control and extending the world's dependency on their products as far into the future as possible. The others are on their dole to one degree or another, when you consider that many of the edges in the graph in the article represent not only relationships, but also flows of money.
This is playing out like the hubris film companies had towards digital sensors. Seems they don’t teach history in MBA programs I guess.
Btw, I looked up Juul from your other comment and saw they're 35% owned by Altria (formerly Philip Morris) who are "one of the world's largest producers and marketers of tobacco, cigarettes, and medical products in the treatment of illnesses caused by tobacco." [1]
You couldn't hope for a more tragically hilarious summation of the cynicism in this industry than that combination of businesses to be in
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altria
Control and relevance. These things matter to them as much as profit.
The barrier to entry to produce renewables is lower than fossil fuels - there is no natural oligopoly.
If you own your house, you can put solar on your roof and a battery on your house, and dramatically cut back on your fossil fuel derived energy needs. Communities can do the same, as can utilities and independent businesses.
That's a future where fossil fuel companies are far less relevant. Not irrelevant, but nothing like what they were. That future may be unavoidable, but they are trying to delay its arrival as much as they can.
Those initiatives failed due to short-termism, infighting, failure to commit sufficient resources, et cetera.
If what you know is how to pull oil out of the ground, and build multi billion dollar rigs to do it, that's your sector.
for example:
1) more expensive energy of any kind is extremely harmful to society
EDIT: more expensive energy reduces prosperity for everyone. Renewable energy can and should be competitive and cost effective.
2) automatic filing of taxes is more harmful long-term than individuals filing taxes manually
EDIT: automatic filing will lead to silent frictionless automatic tax increases, forever.
3) government funding of internet/broadband/etc is harmful
EDIT: picking winners is more harmful that makeing good public policies.
it's just hard to reason though the details, though it is worth the effort.
My point is that there could be valid viewpoints that are not self-serving/greed-based.
Now solar is a quicker way to decarbonize, so similar efforts are anti-solar, pro-nuclear.
Is oil really that profitable to ignore the havoc it wreaks and will wreak on virtually every other industry, including itself when there is less money moving around to spend on oil and oil products?
I just don’t get it how being so objectively shortsighted is actually the corrupt greedy money position instead of ensuring the world as we know it doesn’t collapse and that the money printing machine doesn’t fall apart. But what do I know I guess.
It's really unfortunate that such glaring cognitive defects appear to have doomed the human race smothering itself to death on this planet instead of reaching out to the stars.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purity_spiral
There’s several competing flavors of it like the ones who think “the good” communist revolution will happen after society collapses vs the ones who want democracy to fall apart because they think monarchical societies are morally superior, but they all have the same line of thinking that “the collapse” is coming any day now and they want to accelerate when they say occurs
The former RCP members who joined the tory party in the UK, people like Dominic Cummings are interesting of course. And Steve Bannon is fond of posturing as a Maoist in style if not in substance. His oilskin coat is a performance Mao jacket.
https://governorswindenergycoalition.org/3-offshore-wind-pro...
What exactly is a science-based climate goal? And why would wind energy be essential for it?
I hear people talk about their solar installations all the time, and it seems like the anti-nuclear sentiment is finally wearing off too. I don't think I've ever heard anything positive about one of these windmills. It seems to be a fairly straightforward wealth transfer from tax payers and utility consumers to the windmill people. Property values go down and electricity prices go up. Windmill people move on to collect the next subsidy.
Adding wind to the network does not make electricity prices go up (unless you do something stupid like shut down all your nuclear plants at the same time). That's nonsense. It's maybe not quite as cheap if you factor in the storage requirements to build up the grid "properly", but still cheaper than coal at the very least.
Do you have a source on this?
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainability/articles...
Not to say we shouldn't build more nuke plants, but they're extraordinarily expensive to build and have construction timelines measured in decades so it's nearly impossible to make them pencil out on a per-kwh basis when compared to wind or solar + batteries that can be deployed and commissioned in 6 months.
Why would wind not be essential for it? Wind is free just like solar. Some places have amazing wind. Wind costs have declined dramatically so it’s a viable piece of the mix.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nrMSJOxI6Iqw6HRKtnvWjOkj3tp...
It's more precise, avoiding that strange construction, "science-based". If I understand correctly, linguists call these productive analogies (?), where we start producing more of them by analogy to some root, so:
Faith-based -> Community-based -> Evidence-based -> Plant-based -> Science-based
Or some other hypothetical inheritance chain.
If Google's putting their money into it, I suspect there's more to the wind story than "wealth transfer from tax payers and consumers to the windmill people."
And windmills are profitable by themselves. And reduces foreign imports with increasing taxes on this goods. If we removed all subsidies coal would be the real affected.
I am not sure about property value but burning gas next to homes creating health problems to power Elon musk data centers surely doesn't help. The dark fumes from coal, gas or oil are going to affect it.
Wind power also has the benefit that it keeps the carbon in the ground and isn't contributing to the massive climate crisis that humanity and the earth's ecosystems are facing. And there's no direct waste from energy production.
Land-based wind power is OK-ish. It's susceptible to renewable droughts, but it's fine as long as it's just a part of the mix.
But the offshore wind power is pretty much the _only_ reliable renewable, outside of classic hydro and exotics like tidal power or geothermal. Offshore wind generators are pretty much guaranteed to always produce at least _some_ power due to diurnal wind patterns.