The world's corporations produce so much climate change pollution, it could eat up about 44% of their profits if they had to pay damages for it
https://phys.org/news/2023-08-reveals-carbon-corporations-paid-emissions.htmlOpen linkView original on slrpnk.net650
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44% of PROFITS, not gross income.
Which means that even if companies were actually charged for the mess they made, they would be operating in the black AND their profits would still be 66% of normal.
I'll be that guy.. 56% of normal
I think you will find most companies expect 110% minimum….
What company are you with that makes 110% profit margin? Most I've worked at are between 10%-40% and that's including tech companies.
Think it was just a "always give 110% effort" joke.
So, they'd still be wildly profitable, then?
Huh.
'Wildly profitable' would not be enough to them.
'Extremely profitable' would not be enough to them.
'Insanely profitable' would not be enough to them.
Infinite growth is one hell of a drug.
See also: any other form of cancer.
The only time infinite growth would be possible is if we became a space faring species and colonized other planets. That would allow us to continue population growth.
Outside of that, infinite growth is impossible since there’s only so many people on this planet and even less who can afford their products.
They don't want infinite population growth. They want infinite growth in their wealth. Big difference. They just need enough uneducated masses to continue bearing the brunt until they Crack the code where they don't need people anymore.
Capitalism and infinite growth is a microcosm of an organisms drive for infinite growth, which is usually curtailed by all sorts of biological and evolutionsry processes. Like space limitations and scarcity of resources, and I'm trying to figure out what is different between the individuals that form these mega corps and the average organism.
I dunno. Is this a stupid train of thought?
Nah, it's a intelligently reasonable argument. The world would be saved if we could be rational like this.
Yeah it really drives home just how fucking cooked the situation is.
Sorry kids the biosphere is fucked and human society is an echo of what it once was but there were some rich people who didn't want to be slightly less rich than they already were.
No. Because some companies would make no profit and others would be unaffected. Who’s going to pay more, Shell or novo nordisk? Shell would simply cease to exist
Huh that's very reasonable actually. Generous even. Now let's see what they can pay workers.
As little as they can get away with. And then they'll brag about record profits.
So, 44% of their profits are in fact 100% of our futures? That money didn't come from nowhere. All of us will pay that debt. Reporting needs to start reflecting that, and legislation needs to be enacted to get restitution. Until then, it's all toothless.
So what are we waiting for? Fuck em
Oh no not 44% of profits! Won't somebody please think of the margins!
Sounds like a win win
So 44% of corporate profits are subsidized by the fact they don’t have to pay for waste disposal.
Boo fuckin' hoo. Pay up, shitbags.
Oh no, not 44% of the extra money that goes into the pockets of already obscenely wealthy people
So in other words, they can afford to pay damages for it. Make them pay!
Oh shit what will I do if a couple ceos don't get paid hundreds of millions of dollars?? Won't someone think of the billionaires and their profit margins???
Lol every single cent of profit above 250 million should be taken from them and that's being generous
Fossil fuels are the main actors in this. Corporations can only use the energy we provide them with.
Fossil fuel producers will never pay damages for climate change due to political donations. You may get the odd instance now and again, where there is selective scapegoating and that will be that. The tobacco industry (AFAIK) has never paid for the damages they have caused. They poured billions into politics and offset the argument against them for decades. Fossil fuel companies are doing exactly the same thing.
So rather than finger point towards specific actors, we should be sorting our political systems out. Political donations need to be banned. Campaigns should only be allowed to run through a single channel that is funded by the country. All other types of political advertising should be stopped. It is well known that the most successful campaigns have a price tag attached. Therefore it is easy to buy votes with campaigns. Moreso in a FPTP system. While we allow political donations we will never stop egregious profiteering without consequences.
Several companies have faced criticism for their environmental practices over the years. Here are some sectors and notable companies that have been highlighted for their environmental impact or poor environmental practices:
1 Fossil Fuel Industry:
This sector is the most significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. Major companies in this sector have historically downplayed or denied their role in climate change.
ExxonMobil: Accused of knowing about climate change as early as the 1970s but funding climate change denial for years.
Chevron, BP, Shell: All have faced criticism for their contributions to global CO2 emissions.
2 Mining:
Mining can lead to deforestation, habitat destruction, and water pollution.
Vale and BHP Billiton: Responsible for the Mariana dam disaster in Brazil in 2015.
Glencore: Faced allegations of polluting rivers and not handling toxic waste appropriately.
3 Fashion:
The fashion industry, especially fast fashion, is a major polluter due to its high water usage, waste, and carbon emissions.
H&M, Zara, and Forever 21: All have been criticized for promoting fast fashion, leading to enormous waste and questionable labor practices.
4 Agriculture:
Large-scale farming, especially meat and dairy production, contributes to deforestation, water consumption, and methane emissions.
Tyson Foods, JBS, and Cargill: Significant contributors to global methane emissions due to their meat production.
5 Technology:
While tech companies often promote sustainability, some have been criticized for their environmental impact.
Apple: Previously criticized for not making products that are easily repairable or recyclable, though they've made significant strides in recent years.
Amazon: Criticized for excessive packaging and its carbon footprint from deliveries, though it has also made pledges to become carbon neutral.
6 Automotive:
Many car companies have historically relied on fossil fuels, contributing to CO2 emissions.
Volkswagen: Caught in a major scandal for cheating emissions tests in 2015.
7 Palm Oil Producers:
Palm oil production has led to significant deforestation, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia.
Companies like Nestlé, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble have faced scrutiny for not ensuring their palm oil is sustainably sourced, though many have made commitments to improve.
8 Plastics and Packaging:
Companies that heavily rely on single-use plastics contribute to plastic pollution.
Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé: Have been named among the top plastic polluters several times in global audits.
I don't see your point. This does not alleviate the problem of political protections for party donors.
People need to make a conscious effort to buy less shit. It's easy to blame corpos but we create that demand.
If it doesn't solve a problem you have, you don't need it.
Or we could create enough green energy to satisfy that demand. I totally agree that we have a social problem with greed. This is not something any government will fix because more taxes makes their live easier. Fight the battles you can win, not the ones you can't.
We don't have time to spin up enough infrastructure to match current production with renewable energy. Consumption must come down until then, and only scale up once the new infrastructure can handle it.
Not according to some.
No you cannot do it overnight, but it will never happen at if we do not start. The first step is to stop giving money to fossil fuel companies so they can gouge us further with higher priced energy.
So it means we could start saving the world if corporations let go of less than half of their profits?
Yes please!
@theendismeh @silence7 @climate
The "business as usual" approach reminds me of the saying "when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
They would still be insanely wealthy, even with 44% less profit.
And what if everyone were honest about what these "damages" should be?
Even this fantasy scenario of consequences is an incredibly low-balled Cost of Doing Business of murder.
Even with the fine, their huge profits hardly change. This shows that the penalty isn't enough to discourage pollution. Stronger actions are necessary to make companies responsible.
Who gets paid the damages? Countries that will just keep subsidising these industries to the detriment of everyone?
It's called internalizing the externalities, and desperately needs to happen.
But don't forget, the climate crisis is a hoax, but if it isn't then it's your fault for not recycling hard enough
Good.
Corporate pollution and your pollution are the same thing
Say there is a manufactured necessity. One cannot reasonably make it themselves or go without it. The manufacturer chooses to skimp on pollution controls or illegally dump so that the owners can make more money. How is that my fault?
big oil literally destroyed public transit so we'd be dependent on their products. believe me, living without a car is hard and I'm lucky enough to make it work. and the situation is artificially created for the benefit of the oil and auto industries
Yep, I went without a car for several months in a large US city that theoretically is decent for public transit and my life became much more difficult. I was able to make it work, but it has seemed barely sustainable. Now I live somewhere (not by choice really) that is completely impossible without a car/delivery... unless I spend hours a day walking, which would be very hazardous due to everyone else's cars.
indeed. we need to dump money into transit construction in big cities
I mean this more literally than you think. What youre thinking of as pollution isnt as prevalent as you think. Its not a lot of ghg's emitting from factories themselves, and its not factory waste filling dumps. What you throw out as pollution is also the bulk of corporate pollution. Plastic packaging in plastic trash bags in their own packaging to throw out, all of it needing gas burning to ship around. The gas itself being another major "corporate" pollution that oil companies produced but is being burned in your car and the trucks delivering goods to you. You demand all of this pollution.
I don't agree with those metrics, and also the main response I could give is pretty much exactly the same as what I just said. Perhaps one of my problems is your phrasing: "You demand all of this pollution.". No, I sure as hell do not. If you were to say "consumers demand all of this pollution." that would be less confrontational, but still incredibly incorrect. Do individuals consume the products of industry? Yes, amazing conclusion you have there.
I personally didn't design the city in which I live to have no reasonable public transportation and it's fairly bizarre and insulting to say that the average person did. I was born into this insanity. Saying that I 'demand pollution' because the fossil fuel industry suppressed renewable energy while investing in polluting sources is similarly so wrong that it's insulting. I never at any time said "you know, rather than cloth diapers, people 40 years before I was born should start using weird plastic diapers they just throw away!" High-level people who operate companies absolutely choose to skimp on pollution control for their profits and convenience, not that of the public or their customers. Take mining waste for instance. Do consumers use the products? Yes. Do consumers choose personally to abandon mines and allow them to fill full of toxic acidic water and pollute the nearby waterways? Uh, no, the owners of the mines do.
I never at any time went to a grocery store and said "you know, when you sell a single banana, it sure would be nice if you put it on a styrofoam tray wrapped in plastic". I never at any time said "you know, rather than invest in solar, we should frack the shit out of eastern Colorado and SE New Mexico" or "tar sands oil is a really, really good idea!". And personally, i do seek to reduce my consumption and be efficient.
So for some reason you're blaming every individual for society being set up in such a way as to benefit oil and gas companies. Guess who arranged that: people who profit from and operate petroleum companies. Essentially your claim is that since all industry exists to benefit the end user (ignoring the owners/executives/employees benefits) that consumers are 100% responsible for everything. It's a ludicrous and highly confused way to view the world.
Alright, you might be more personally aware than others. You also gotta be aware of the responsibility of most consumers. Sales of large trucks and SUV's are on the rise. No one's electing people to design less car centric towns, most people want more car focused transportation. Renewable energy has not been supressed at all, in fact its cheaper and more efficient than ever and available for anyone to buy. I think consumers are the only ones that can stop this
I think you're wrong. Renewables were suppressed for a very long time by companies who stood to profit from them being suppressed. I think you're vastly underestimating the amount of political sway large corporations can have on politics.
Where I am we have two parties with near identical climate policies who both receive the majority of their funding from coal and gas companies and who both choose to debate about any other topic.
People have also been flooded with so much disinformation that even now some people still think climate change isn't real. Putting the responsibility on individuals instead of on the actual perpetrators of this mess is kind of ridiculous.
I do agree we're the only ones who can change it but we're not responsible for it.
https://www.eco-worthy.com/collections/100w-195w/products/100w-12v-monocrystalline-solar-panel
This doesnt look very suppressed to me. People just arent buying em.
We'll just forget all the misinformation and climate denialism these companies have funded for decades that stopped solar panels even being a thing until just recently.
But they're literally not. I have no way of controlling or even knowing about what corperations emit
Thats whats tripping everyone up, thinking these corporations are off isolated somewhere just producing climate change gases.
No, what theyre producing is what you're buying. When someone says an oil company is responsible for however much greenhouse gas emissions, what they mean is the greenhouse gas emissions when you the customer burn that gasoline in your vehicle. Plus gases emitted processing the oil and getting it to the store for you to buy it.
These companies "taking responsibility" for their emissions would mean halting production of most things you go and buy.
this is a systemic issue, not an individual one. I can't control what a company does, weather they choose to buy 100% renewable energy or not. and what about their suppliers? how could a consumer possible know about their business practices, let alone influence them? this isn't about people buying the wrong products. the rich are lighting the planet on fire for a buck, and they must be stopped.
How did you read what i wrote and get controlling companies? Its your own damn car, im accusing you yourself of emitting the greenhouse gases youre trying to pawn off on someone else.
my personal emissions are a flea's fart in the wind compared to the oil empire of BP or shell
They are literally the same emissions. If you ever see numbers associated with oil company emissions, the gas burned in your car makes up part of that number. Multiply that by everyone else burning gas in their cars, and you have the emissions associated with oil companies.
So, theres two ways to stop those emissions. If you think the oil companies themselves are responsible for those emissions, then they stop emitting, which means they stop producing gasoline, you go to the gas station and no one can get gas anymore. That's oil companies taking responsibility.
Or, the consumers take responsibility by no longer buying gas. Switching to electric cars or electing people to design less car centric towns.
I think a good way to look at this is to see just how many fingers are in how many different pies. You seem to be looking at the fossil fuel emissions problem 2-dimensionally when it is much more nuanced than that. Off the top of my head, you have to consider not just the consumers emissions or the manufacturing of the oil and gas, but the fracking, the constant construction of new oil pipelines, refineries, oil rigs, coal burning power plants, the emissions from all of those after completion, deforestation, then last, but probably the worst of all, the plastics industry which is intrinsically linked to the fossil fuel industry.
This is still probably missing a lot of components, but the point is, the individual pales in comparison to the amount of emissions that these companies are responsible for and it makes it worse when you consider that if they were to have a change of conscience and pivot to renewable they would still be mega profitable.
I haven't read the article, but it sounds fair that they should pay for it. Fuck em.
Here's a simple idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polluter_pays_principle
Speaking from experience, it can also make teens more responsible with alcohol if they know who will have to clean up in case of overdoing.
Stupidly click baity title. The only corporation that does not pollute is the one that doesn't produce anything. Sure, regulations such as carbon taxes are necessary to contain negative externalities, but if there's a demand for cheap products there will be a lowest bidder that will take all market share.
Lowering our consumption is unfortunately the way to make those companies pollute less.
People don't want to hear about their personal responsibility to consume less, but it's true. Corporations aren't run by Captain Planet villains polluting for the same of pollution. They sell what people buy.
You can buy a bag of bite sized croissants individually wrapped in plastic and wholey wrapped again. I'd like to think this was an isolated incident but the general census is this is what every one of those cunts does because it's cheaper and easier.
Sure consumers buy... But the producers bear the responsibility. There's only so much boycotting small groups can do. Others will still buy. The mentality of wrapping every fucking thing in plastic is what need to change.
It is true that corporations need to change, but when that happens it means you also will have to change. So why wait? Change now. Use less overall, and look for better alternatives for what you still use.
The sentiment here is good, but be careful not to fall into the "personal responsibility" trap that the fossil fuel and soda industry established back in the late 80s/early 90s. The sad truth is that personal responsibility in solving climate change is wishful thinking. The carbon footprint of all of the major corporations is so many orders of magnitude larger than any plausible percentage of individuals who do their part by being as environmentally conscious as possible that it doesn't matter unless we regulate them and to do that we have to redefine the laws of campaign financing and abolish Corporate Personhood aka, Citizen's United for a start.
It's pretty bleak. Source: was going to be an Enviornmental Scientist and I decided that was too depressing and life it too short.
If the taxes are accounting for the externalities well enough, even the lowest bidder will be sustainable.
Corporations make things either for consumers, governments (for consumers), or other corporations (for consumers). There is a lot to be said about what changes in consumption can change
What would that even do? Sure, you can tax the companies for their CO2 emissions, but they'd still be in profit, and monetary compensation to the state won't make the CO2 disappear. Money isn't some magical paper that will suddenly reduce carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere if you throw it in the air, it's just a currency, banked labor hours.
It would discourage CO2 emissions immensely. The tax money could also be used to promote green technology that do not emit nearly as much CO2 and also possibly plants that pull carbon out of the atmosphere.