Comment by eigenspace
7 hours ago
The slavery part doesn't seem like a rational decision to me.
Why are we pretending that slavery doesn't provide an immense amount of value for humanity, and that it's horrible to invest or support building out any slavery production whatsoever?
Lets not do produce it ourselves, lets just instead outsource it to Africa...
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Snide comparisons aside, I'd just say that we can accept that fossil fuels played a gigantic and important role in getting us to where we are, and also acknowledge that we'll continue to need fossil fuels in the near future, but that does *not* mean that we need to accept that investment in even more expansion of the fossil fuel industry is a good idea.
Slavery is evil. Fossil fuels is actually still a net good for humanity. E.g. the consequences of removing access to these energy sources, would be overwhelmingly more negative for humanity right now, than the consequence of global warming.
The transition is moving ahead, it just takes time, and we need more technological breakthroughs and innovation. Trying to attack production instead of solving demand, can cause serious consequences, in which the poorest countries in the world would suffer the most.
Oh sorry, I forgot to look at my D&D alignment charts before making my comment, I didnt realize that slavery was evil and thus impermissible. I guess there's no possible comparison to be made with other economic practices that cause massive harm to some people, but benefit others in the short term.
For the sake of argument though, what if we lived in a situation where a very large portion of our agriculture, and other vital forms of economic activity were reliant on slavery? What if there were alternatives, but they weren't quite as economically entrenched, and an overnight banning of slavery would cause an economic collapse that'd cause large scale suffering.
In this hypothetical scenario, would we say that slavery is a net good for humanity? Wouldn't it be okay for our pension funds to invest in more slave production?
I just find it so funny how this person is willing to use completely different ethical frameworks in the same sentence when talking about slavery, versus when talking about fossil fuels.
With fossil fuels, we go and start talking about 'net benefits', and we're willing to accept some catastrophically bad effects in order to reap some benefits, but then when the conversation is about slavery suddenly we switch to toddler ethics of "that's evil." without any consideration for weighing the positives and negatives.
Fossil fules is not a net good for humanity.
We have everything to switch over and while we do nothing more and more people are affacted by it daily and in longterm.
co2 is in the athmosphere for a long time.
In the only world were this is true, is a purely capitalistic society which values poorer people less.
Doesn’t one major fund reducing investment in fossil fuels and increasing investment in renewable energy precisely migrate towards the notion of helping solve demand and encourage technological breakthroughs and innovation?
I think the right way to go about this is to tax consumption. The most efficient one would just be a co2 tax, to not favoritize some emission over others. This is mostly fine in western rich countries, and we already do this to some extent by putting extra taxes and fees on petrol, carbon emissions and stuff.
Becoming reliant on countries you dont want to be reliant on, and pretending we dont desperately need this to get the wheels turning is a strategic blunder.
Higher global fossil fuels costs have strong negative effects on peoples welfare, especially in poorer countries. Whenever we get high oil/gas prices, we get price jumps on artificial fertilizer, food, transport and energy. Everything gets more expensive. Its straight up national emergency when something threatens supply of oil and gas in many of these countries when we get events like closing of the hormuz strait.
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