Comment by bko
8 days ago
> The problems it raises - alignment, geopolitics, lack of societal safeguards - are all real, and happening now (just replace “AGI” with “corporations”, and voila, you have a story about the climate crisis and regulatory capture).
Can you point to the data that suggests these evil corporations are ruining the planet? Carbon emissions are down in every western country since 1990s. Not down per-capita, but down in absolute terms. And this holds even when adjusting for trade (i.e. we're not shipping our dirty work to foreign countries and trading with them). And this isn't because of some regulation or benevolence. It's a market system that says you should try to produce things at the lowest cost and carbon usage is usually associated with a cost. Get rid of costs, get rid of carbon.
Other measures for Western countries suggests the water is safer and overall environmental deaths have decreased considerably.
The rise in carbon emissions is due to Chine and India. Are you talking about evil Chinese and Indians corporations?
Emissions are trending downward because of shift from coal to natural gas, growth in renewable energy, energy efficiencies, among other things. Major oil and gas companies in the US like Chevron and ExxonMobil have spent millions on lobbying efforts to resist stricter climate regulations and fight against the changes that led to this trend, so I'd say they are the closest to these evil corporations OP described. Additionally, the current administration refers to doing anything about climate change a "climate religion", so this downward trend will likely slow.
The climate regulations are still quite weak. Without a proper carbon tax, a US company can externalize the costs of carbon emissions and get rich by maximizing their own emissions.
Thanks for letting us know everything is fine, just in case we get confused and think the opposite.
You're welcome. I know too many upper middle class educated people that don't want to have kids because they believe the earth will cease to be inhabitable in the next 10 years. It's really bizarre to see and they'll almost certainly regret it when they wake up one day alone in a nursing home, look around and realize that the world still exists.
And I think the neuroticism around this topic has led young people into some really dark places (anti-depressants, neurotic anti social behavior, general nihilism). So I think it's important to fight misinformation about end of world doomsday scenarios with both facts and common sense.
I think you're discrediting yourself by talking about dark places and opening your parentheses with anti-depressants.
Not all brains function like they're supposed to, people getting help they need shouldn't be stigmatized.
You also make no argument about your take on things being the right one, you just oppose their worldview to yours and call theirs wrong like you know it is rather than just you thinking yours is right.
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He must be talking about the good, benevolent Western corporations that have outsourced their carbon emissions to the evil and greedy Chinese and Indian corporations.
As addressed in my original comment, it's down even adjusting for trade
https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
> Can you point to the data that suggests these evil corporations are ruining the planet?
Can you point to data that this is 'because' of corporations rather than despite them.
Burden of proof lies on you, since you mentioned corporations first
Not me, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...
I think a healthy amount of skepticism is warranted when reading about the "reduction" of carbon emissions by companies. Why should we take them at their word when they have a vested interest in fudging the numbers?
Carbon emissions are monitored by dozens of independent agencies in many different ways over decades. It would be a giant scale coordination of suppression. Do you have a source that suggests carbon emissions from Western nations is rising?