There is no punishment horrible enough that we could inflict on oil execs, especially the ones that have known about this since the 70s and chose to fight for the status quo, that would make up for what they’ve done to us.
We could take a note out of maos book and treat them like he treated landlords
Don’t the farm lobbies regularly intervene against efforts for better health standards?
I’d say specific segments lobby against better health standards.
Like the sugar lobby pushes against sugar restrictions. Corn lobby pushes for corn subsidies and tries to keep sugar subsidies low.
The only thing I’ve seen farmers lobby for is the right to repair their tractors.
Nah, associations of farmers have been responsible for monkeying about with dietary recommendations for a long time.
It was all those corn farmers in the Midwest that said you needed to be shoveling the cornmeal like you were a cow to be healthy when they published the food pyramid.
Farmers shut Oprah down 25 years ago.
We’re not blaming oil rig workers. We’re blaming the industry. And yes, food manufacturers and fast food restaurant chains (not farmers) are largely to blame for the obesity epidemic.
But I do (sort of) blame farmers (agribusiness really) for a lot of obesity. Maybe everything doesn’t need corn syrup in it?
Fossil fuels are useful as hell for chemical feedstocks and we mostly just burn them. Stop trying to prevent solutions by spuriously individualizing the causes.
The US government subsidizes corn heavily.
Less sympathy now as farming is increasingly industrial but if your options are:
A) grow a crop and risk not getting paid anything if it comes out poorly
B) grow corn and get a nearly-guaranteed payout
B seems to be the safe bet. I don’t think blaming people on choosing B is the move. I know I wouldn’t voluntarily choose A if my livelihood depended on it.
Part of the background is that the government wants to keep farmers “on hand” even when demand isn’t there, for national security reasons.
Essentially they want to be able to get more crops out of all farmers in a bad year, rather than rely on only a fewer number of farmers in a good year.
There are many greed/corruption/waste issues with this system, but all nations have a strong interest in keeping their breadbasket staffed up for hypothetical bad times
Yup, it’s a subsidy that I think generally makes sense, except I don’t think the plan was for everyone to pour so much resources into corn.
Probably around the point we got to: “can we use mashed up corn as fuel and plastic” is when we should’ve tried incentivizing a greater diversity of crops 😅
I’ve heard the fuel and plastic thing is again a subsidized endpoint for corn to keep the conveyor belt flowing.
There’s more than just corn like that
I grew up on a tobacco farm, when it’s sells it sells like an auction. If no one buys your crop, the government bought it for a set price and threw it in a warehouse in case we “ran out” of tobacco between harvests and companies wanted to buy more or some shit
But that’s not even really a subsidy, so I’m not sure why you’re talking about it.
I would say that a government guaranteed price floor would count as a subsidy, especially on a luxury/vice product like tobacco.
Not sure what the mixup is but it’s a subsidy.
Blaming farmers for obesity is like blaming oil field labourers for climate change.
Not the farmers at fault. It’s the companies that have spent untold billions perfecting food items with properties that abuse and manipulate our bodies that are at fault. It’s so bad that it’s a whole field of study.
E.G. Potato Chips are so addictive because they give a massive burst of flavour and a hard crunch, but don’t give anything to chew. So you want more and don’t get full until you’re overstuffed.
Exactly. The comparison isn’t with farmers, its with the processed food industry that do every single thing they can to have you stuffing your face with their products.
Agreed, but to add, I think a much more honest analogy would be comparing farmers to roughnecks that work oil rigs since those people are just cogs in a much larger machine. Those steering the machines are the oil companies and agribusinesses, and when reframed, I think most people would agree oil companies bear just as much blame for global warming as agribusinesses bear for obesity.
The oil companies have known that global warming was their fault since the 1970s and have either suppressed and lied that information or paid people to ignore and obscure that information.
They suppressed ecologically viable alternatives and even overthrew democratic governments to get their way.
When attempts are made just to get them to clean up their own mess they create stacks of shell companies to move the profits around and leave the people on the ground in the local area with the mess.
They are absolutely at fault and deserve zero mercy.
Farmers aren’t the ones putting corn syrup in things.
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That argument could hold some water if they weren’t the ones writing the laws that keep us powerless to regulate these problems.
Or been hiding their knowledge of their part in the problem longer than a lot of people have been alive
We’re blaming farmers for greenhouse emissions as well.
I’m all for setting their offices on fire, honestly.
No, it’s like blaming General Mills for obesity, which would actually be accurate and correct.
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The farm lobby is partially to blame as well. Corn and soybeansare heavily subsidized. They also put ethanol in our fuel, which is worse for the environment.
And the farm lobby has so much power because the US system of government decides representation based on land rather than population. Also the first presidential contest is in Iowa which is crammed full of corn and soybeans
Yeah and “guns don’t kill people.”
I mean sure, they don’t, but it’s a useless statement.
A gun sitting in a case harms no one. But that was never the fear
Neither does oil sitting in the ground.
He’s right. I should have built my own energy production infrastructure, and gotten some of my own massive government subsidies in order to compete with well-entrenched oil companies.
People forget how much we subsidize the oil companies.
Nothing those ghouls say is in good faith. Stop publishing their lies.
False comparison. Blaming oil itself as an object, for the climate crisis would be like blaming farmers for obesity.
To reverse it, blaming the energy industry for the climate crisis is like blaming the manufactured food industry for obesity, which is accurate and true on both counts.
Food processing companies want to make their food tasty and desirable to keep people buying it, and do that cheaply enough to stay process competitive and turn a profit, so they cut corners and use heavily processed source materials, which may have little or no nutritional value compared to the fresh-from-the-farm items that those processed items replace. They add sugar, usually in the form of high fructose corn syrup to sweeten up dishes that have had all their natural flavor and sweetness reduced to nil by the processing of the source material, and now you have a high sugar, low nutrition meal that tastes decently similar to the product you were trying to make, but at a reduced overall cost.
Bad nutrition leads people to eat more, since their body isn’t getting what it needs. With all the added sugar, and increased consumption, we get obesity. The best thing you can do to fight obesity is to eat more raw and natural foods like fruits and vegetables, also buy your meat from a butcher and learn to do some basic home cooking; avoiding the problem altogether.
To transpose this idea into energy, we can:
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Identify the issue
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???
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The world is saved from the climate crisis.
Obesity is as much about personal choice as it is about the industry itself. You don’t have to eat at McDonald’s every day (as an easy example). You can buy ground beef and make your own burgers, with fresh lettuce, tomato, onion, etc (whatever you like). I’m not going to shame anyone for what they eat, it’s entirely your choice. Going back to energy… You are generally connected to the “grid” via one company. It’s the only option. You can get third party “wholesale”, but it’s still coming from the same source. The power company doesn’t want your opinion on how to generate the power you use, and even if they would listen to you, it doesn’t mean that they would act on anything you say, you have zero ability to force them to act any differently than they already do. If they only use coal, well then, go fuck yourself I guess.
Auto manufacturers, as demonstrated by Ford with the EV-1, have actively refused to sell electric vehicles. Even now, taking an example from Honda, they have not released an EV, at all. One of the most popular vehicle manufacturers with the civic, accord and other very popular vehicles, and zero of them are EVs. The closest they came was the Honda clarity, a plug in hybrid. It has enough battery range that unless you were commuting more than ~20 miles (one way), you could run in EV mode indefinitely. They discontinued the clarity in 2022 or with the 2023 model year, I’m not sure, but they’ve canned it. To their credit, almost all of their vehicles are some form of hybrid (the E-CVT they use is essentially a gas engine on a generator with an electric motor driving the wheels, 90% of the time), but none of their cars are even PHEV now. The story is much the same with Ford with the exception of the F-150 lighting. Chevy did the bolt and later the volt, discontinuing the bolt PHEV when the volt came out. Bearing on mind these cars make up very little of their overall market and sales, and the other many dozens of models are either hybrid (with no plug in option) or just straight ICE engines. Toyota stands out a bit with the Prius, but again, the same story.
There’s few, if any options for anything other than gas/diesel vehicles, and the oil industry has worked hard to keep it that way (IMO, one of their biggest sources of guilt). So most people are stuck buying ICE engine vehicles, or non-plugin hybrids, which are almost as bad.
Unless you’re swimming in money, you can’t exactly buy enough solar and battery to maintain your home energy needs. I’ve looked into it and a sol-ark 12k solar charger is nearly $10k, and alone will only put out 9000W. At 120v (North America) that’s around 75A. Less than most homes are wired for. So you need two or four to even get close the same amount of power you would from the grid (150-225A @120v, most homes have a max draw of 100-200A @240v, which is easily double). Four sol-ark 12k’s will put out a nominal 36kW, where 200A of 240v from the grid is 48kW. So you have a $40k investment for just the power management units and probably another $10-20k in solar panels and god knows how much more for batteries to keep you powered on while the sun is down, just to get away from these assclowns. Easily $50-100k cost for a 10-20 year system.
My point is, unless you have $100k+ to set on fire, your personal choice in the matter is next to zero.
Then they have the gall to say shit like this? Fuck you.
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It’s a climate conference in Dubai… What did you think would happen?
That they say this shit out loud with the hottest temperatures, biggest storms, and biggest wildfires in history is beyond incredible. It’s outright evil.
