What's the legal basis of this lawsuit? Are they violating some sort of law? Are they not violating any law, but just doing "bad"? The article isn't clear.
>"Shell is the biggest polluter in the Netherlands. The company emits nine times as much CO2 as the entire Netherlands combined.
Surely this is because shell is a multinational company and the netherlands is a small country?
>A court in The Hague will hear claims that Royal Dutch Shell has broken Dutch law by knowingly hampering the global phase-out of fossil fuels, in a case that could force the company to reduce its CO2 emissions.
Lawyers for a consortium led by Friends of the Earth Netherlands will argue on the first of four days of public hearings on Tuesday that Shell has been aware for decades of the damage it has inflicted and is acting unlawfully by expanding its fossil fuel operations.
It is claimed the Anglo-Dutch company is breaching article 6:162 of the Dutch civil code and violating articles 2 and 8 of the European convention on human rights – the right to life and the right to family life – by causing a danger to others when alternative measures could be be taken.
- 1. A person who commits a tortious act (unlawful act) against another person that can be attributed to him, must repair the damage that this other person has suffered as a result thereof.
- 2. As a tortious act is regarded a violation of someone else’s right (entitlement) and an act or omission in violation of a duty imposed by law or of what according to unwritten law has to be regarded as proper social conduct, always as far as there was no justification for this behaviour.
- 3. A tortious act can be attributed to the tortfeasor [the person committing the tortious act] if it results from his fault or from a cause for which he is accountable by virtue of law or generally accepted principles (common opinion).
Where does this leave other companies? If shell can be held liable for carbon emissions, then surely other companies/individuals can be held liable as well?
Shell was held liable because it is the largest emitter in the Netherlands.
Their defence "but if we don't deliver the fossil fuels other companies will", which was not taken over by the court. The Judge (paraphrased) said "Those other companies will also have to reduce their carbon emissions".
Yes, other companies should be held liable as well... I think that the situation is analogous to sueing asbestos manufacturers or cigarette companies.
Was it ok, from a legal or societal perspective, for these manufacturers to mount a disinformation program, in favor of their products, while knowingly causing direct harm to their customers? How does the fact that other companies will (potentially) step in and do the same thing change the situation?
CO2 emissions have massive externalities and the more we force companies to bear those costs (be it via court judgements, carbon taxes, or a CO2 credits market) the more they will adjust their behaviour.
If you want the drugs market to dry up you wean the users off drugs rather than combat the source of drugs because as we have learned from the Mexican drug cartels, when one goes down another one will emerge to fill the demand.
Again, good! We want more sources of energy to emerge to replace fossil fuels. If burning carbon becomes more expensive, then hydrogen, nuclear, wind, solar, etc. become more competitive.
When one cartel dies, there isn't immediately a beneficial alternative.
Much like in this case - if Shell leaves, there is nothing that automatically means the new actor who fills that role will offer hydrogen, solar, etc. Least friction means the new actor will just be another petroleum company.
Viable alternatives need to be in place and/or ready to immediately deploy, I think was OP's point.
Due to their size and reach, the oil giants have massive political clout. A major reason we do not have carbon taxes yet is because of their ability to lobby (bribe) politicians across the globe. These lawsuits matter because they hinder the companies ability to wield influence. Every dollar they spend on lawsuits and settlements is one less dollar they can spend on lobbyists, climate denial "research", etc...
Additionally, these lawsuits raise the cost of being in the oil business compared to renewables. So the "new actor" is much more likely to be a renewable company, simply due to the fact that investors do not like regulatory uncertainty.
It is worth mentioning that the oil industry is now in support of a carbon tax. On paper, this sounds good. But what really is going on is that they realize that the writing is on the wall and that after decades of opposing a carbon tax, their best chance of survival moving forward is to try to move the conversation away from regulations and towards "free market solutions". But this is cynical for a few reasons, the primary one being that it is much easier to convince a future Republican administration to retroactively lower the carbon tax (under the guise of "job creation" or some other nonsense) than it would be to repeal strict environmental regulations. And the other primary reason is that a carbon tax essentially "kicks the can down the road", i.e. it doesn't actually solve climate change or prevent the fossil fuel industry from continuing to do business as usual. It just makes the price of fossil fuel based products a little higher. Where as a regulatory approach would likely significantly hinder the companies ability to operate and likely significantly reduce the size and scope of the fossil fuel market
This is important, because in the next few years we are likely going to see the oil companies try to get a "seat at the negotiating table" so to speak. So these lawsuits are important because it puts these companies on the defensive, and potentially cuts them off at the knees, hindering their ability to water down future climate change legislation.
> Much like in this case - if Shell leaves, there is nothing that automatically means the new actor who fills that role will offer hydrogen, solar, etc. Least friction means the new actor will just be another petroleum company.
Emission Trading Schemes put friction on another petroleum company.
And if the government can reach as far into your life as putting limits and fining you for carbon emissions, is there anything in your private life they can't touch?
Perhaps some people agree with the tool now, but wait until you see how they use it later. Eventually, you will get someone with the power who will use it for something you disagree with, in a big way.
> And if the government can reach as far into your life as putting limits and fining you for carbon emissions, is there anything in your private life they can't touch
I know corporations are people in the US but since when do they have a private live?
And i guess it's already illegal to harm others by polluting the environment in most juristictions.
Ironically, Shell is often mentioned in business studies and books as having a famous 'Futures group' that tries to predict what the future might be so they can base their strategy on it. Looks like they screwed up either the prediction or what to do about climate change.
Looks like they are now called the scenarios group:
Also ironically, one of the members of that group joined Shell in 1980 and is "a board member of the International Emissions Trading Association and was its Chairman from 2011-13. He is a board member of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions in Washington, USA, and the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute in Melbourne, Australia."
Why not go after them for the damage caused by their sale of plastic pellets as well. Through the idea of "recycling" they created, they knowingly hampered the public's discovery of the truth about plastics.
This is a weird legal angle. Some amount of hampering competing products is to be expected, this is just different because it's oil. Governments need to either pass laws that make it clear how they're favoring renewables and not oil or stop caring about oil altogether. Courts ruling on production of oil violating rights to family and life is just too vague of an interpretation.
Why are they sticking it on Shell? Blame drivers. And anyway, even if Shell did hamper the global phasing out of fossils in the past we still need their oil. It's unfair to the public. And also, "knowingly hampering the global phase-out of fossil fuels" sounds like it deserves a fine, not a demand that to my ears at least sounds unreasonable. One more point, if renewables are actually viable then fossils should anyway be dying a natural death. Governments should be working harder. Fine Shell and let it die slowly i say.
They’re sticking it to shell because they’re trying to reduce carbon emissions as a nation and shell accounts for 90% of total carbon emissions (according to another comment here). So if they want to make an impact nationally, it basically has to be against shell.
It's really weird to me how CO2 emissions are casually justified, and so many people resist the idea that companies could be held legally liable for knowingly causing harm. For pretty much any other situation, a business based on those terms would be heavily chastised and scorned, but for some reason companies like Shell get a pass for 1) doing research to discover that they are doing harm, 2) lying about that research and what they know, 3) conducting public misinformation campaigns to deceive people, and 4) deceptively influencing government policy to allow their continued harm.
It’s not that weird if you consider that despite the negative externalities all the CO2 producing processes delivered huge upsides to literally everybody.
It’s not just Shell to blame, it’s all of us. We did this, we had good reasons to do so and now we should probably dial back.
The difference is that Shell, and other petroleum companies, knew the harm of CO2 for 50 years, consumers only half of that roughly.
They could have start investing and do R&D on alternative and mitigation and help us move forward. But no, they just buried it under the rugs to get our money.
That is deception, especially when they will not be the ones responsible for cleaning up the mess.
An especially key part was the way denialism cut against economy measures: the average vehicle sold in the United States today has mileage which is substantially worse than you saw in the 1980s because there's been a multi-decade push towards much heavier vehicles with sportier engines, special subsidies for trucks and SUVs, successful attempts to exempt various industries from stricter emissions controls, etc.
Had CO2 emissions been taken seriously — and given that successful predictions of the problem go back over a century we had plenty of time to plan — we could have bought additional decades to work on alternatives by continuing improvements in efficiency. Procrastinating means that we'll see more disruptive changes and worse climate impacts.
> blaming them because they sold a product happily used to improved our quality of life seems silly.
"Blame" isn't really the important part here, the important part is enacting corrective action for harm done.
Even if they hadn't conducted a misinformation campaign, Shell profited by causing great harm. As a purely financial entity, without introducing any morality or ethics, they owe the financial damages they have incurred, and perhaps their customers too. Though it's somewhat rare for a customer to be responsible for a product's negative effects, especially when the company profitting off the sale vociferously denies that the harm exists!
But it's important to note that Shell isn't even being asked to pay back the debt they have incurred. They are simply asked to reduce the harm they are enacting, with nine years to change.
This is such a trivial ask in light of the economic harm that Shell has wrought upon their customers, and more importantly, the entire world.
If you take every super major oil producer today and say they have to produce half as much oil what happens?
They sell off half their assets to smaller oil companies. But you still have the same number of wells pumping oil/gas.
I just don't see how this helps anyone, it's a silly PR win.
Shell didn't wrought any economic harm on their customers. We as a society have failed to regulate the consumption of oil/gas (as well as all other sources of CO2 emission), this is not directly the oil/gas companies fault, we're just using them as a scape goat. We might as well blame car companies, construction companies, power companies, steel manufacturing companies who are all just as if not more responsible for CO2 emissions.
The underlying assumption in this scenario is that global demand for fossil fuels without carbon capture and sequestration will remain constant. This is certainly not the case.
Shell can either start capturing carbon to lower their emissions, or perhaps they can sell to smaller firms. But those smaller firms are now under the same gun that Shell currently is. So investors in these smaller firms risk losing everything as well.
Already it is getting far far more difficult for fossil fuel companies to raise money for new extraction. Their stock prices have already taken massive hits.
Capital sees the writing on the wall, as does every single fossil fuel exec. It's not a matter of if extraction stops, but when. Many thought that there could be one more round of exploration, but this court decision is just one more huge hurdle for actually extracting anything from new exploration.
The tides are turning, we have alternatives to emissions now, the only question is if when we switch.
You are arguing the very long term prospects for oil and gas aren't great. I agree.
But that has little to do with whether or not this case will have any impact on oil and gas extraction. It's just a PR move, which won't affect the number of barrels pumped out of the ground each year.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by "just a PR move" since this has strong legal implications with a timeline for one of the big players. Shell has been dealt a major legal blow, and precedent has been set for all the smaller players.
This will have big impacts for financing future fossil fuel extraction, because all the financiers see what's happened here.
This has major implications, there's no PR anywhere near this.
we all know the dangers of plastics, they found micro-plastics in all living things, and huge concentrations in mothers' milk. Are we going to sue dupont in 2 decades as well?
I don't see how this is controversial at all. If you provide something that causes damages and make a profit, why shouldn't you also be liable for the economic harms you incur in addition to the economic gains you enjoy?
Nobody is forcing these companies to continue doing what they are doing, they do it voluntarily, for money.
I call bullshit. There are only two choices withing the control of an individual:
1 - get a green energy supplier, if one is avaliable and you can afford it
2 - stop eating meat
That's it. Majority of emissions are from industry and transport, we get no choice in that matter and the only way I can reduce them individually is to live in a cave.
I am glad you asked this question because this is what is missing in these situations.
Where does the individual bear responsibility in any of this?
Instead the public tends to focus on the huge evil corporation who struggles to even keep up with our demand for the very product we are damning them for.
There are 1.4 Billion cars on the road.[0] Somehow that is Shells fault? Really?
I'm not saying Shell has not committed any sins but we will need to do something about the 1.4 Billion cars before anything changes. All of those cars need to be fed. Someone will feed them.
Does individual bear responsebility for lack of public transport, the fact that electric cars didnt even exist not long ago, and for living in a house that was build emitting CO2 and opposed to living in a cave?
But lets go with that argument - i am 100% responsible for my CO2. If I am choosing a washing machine, are they labelled with amount of CO2 emitted in production of each? If the company lies to me about this, does anyone go to jail?
Are you aware that carbon credits market ia one big fraud, with "overestimates" averaging 50x?
> Are you aware that carbon credits market ia one big fraud, with "overestimates" averaging 50x?
Carbon credits were a scam from the beginning. ( The same guy promoting them pointed to the market he owned as the solution, Al Gore ) Don't get me wrong they have huge potential but are really a false market at the moment. More like protection money or wealth transfer.
> If I am choosing a washing machine, are they labelled with amount of CO2 emitted in production of each? If the company lies to me about this, does anyone go to jail?
I think arguments like this let the individual again place blame on the manufacturer and not that they are an uneducated consumer ( caveat emptor ). Of course if you purchase a washing machine you must understand it took carbon for the entire production of the machine starting with the excavator that pulled the iron out of the ground to the truck that delivered it. The one that takes 'less' carbon is easy, fix the old one, or don't buy one and go the the coin laundry. But blaming the manufacturer who is currently operating within the governing authorities guidelines is disingenuous.
"The one that takes 'less' carbon is easy ... go the the coin laundry. "
Thank you for providing exibit A - blaming the consumer for being uneducated and yet getting it all wrong yourself -> Your frequent trips to the laundry will produce much more carbon than you could ever save by not buying an appliance that serves for 10 years on average.
"But blaming the manufacturer who is currently operating within the governing authorities guidelines is disingenuous."
But blamind the consumer who is currently operating withing governing authorities guidelines is fair game. HN morality at it's finest, when corporations have more rights than people do.
> Your frequent trips to the laundry will produce much more carbon than you could ever save by not buying an appliance that serves for 10 years on average.
Not if you go to the laundry next to the grocery. Why would you spend more money on fuel when you could combine a trip?
> But blamind the consumer who is currently operating withing governing authorities guidelines is fair game.
The consumer is the one that influences the market and has the power to remove or advance politicians. If there is no market to fill the producer will no longer produce. Do you think manufacturing moved to China because the corporations liked China and the logistics or because people would actually buy cheeper products made in China?
"Why would you spend more money on fuel when you could combine a trip?"
Because there is no laundry next to my grocery store?
Or Because you have to wait for hours for the laundry to finish, so for some people it's two trips, or because there are queues. There are no carbon savings in using a laundry, and this discourse in carbon accounting illustrates the problem perfectly - it is not possible for a consumer to trace the supply chain used by some megacorp which combines 150 minerals from 50 countries over 6 modes of transport to conclude anything accurate about carbon footprint.
You mention politicians, but thats only coming round to politicians and regulation because the market has failed.
We are not innocents, but we are not the perpetuators either. We should bare the responsibility by paying a premium for any surplus CO2 emitted during the production and transfer of any product we buy. But it will only happen with sane, international laws that take into account the environmental impact of all products.
Also, a large populace is easily manipulated and democracy is not that direct for the average person to have a proper say. And “the market will solve it” mentality never ever worked, not even thought to work by Adam Smith generally — only in very regulated markets.
>We are not innocents, but we are not the perpetuators either.
Of course you are perpetuators. Where did your computer come from? For most it came from the largest polluter on the planet by nearly double.[0] Most likely your shoes came from there as well. The point is the consumer is buying the stuff that basically outsources the pollution.
Creating strong environmental regulation locally but allowing products from polluting countries just displaces the problem ( and jobs btw ). Tariffs solve this, quickly. I think this is where your democracy comment comes in. The mob doesn't want to pay more so they fight this type of legislation or executive order and thus are perpetuators of the problem.
> There are 1.4 Billion cars on the road.[0] Somehow that is Shells fault? Really?
Shell is at fault for providing a product that causes harms and not rectifying that harm.
Cars? Who cares, that's not what Shell sells.
I would love to shift some liability to city planners that have made so much of the population dependent on cars, and some liability to car manufacturers, and maybe even to the advocates that make it nearly impossible to build homes and workplaces that don't depend on cars. But the legal ground is much shakier.
And it's even possible to build cars that don't depend on carbon emissions, much of the liability that I would like to see shifted to car manufacturers is because they have actively foiled attempts to move off emitting power sources. But I wouldn't want to invest in a new ICE in this day and age. It's likely that it will be off the road long before its lifetime is over. Natural fleet turnover for our vehicles is not quick enough to solve the problem.
And if somebody else is going to "feed" our cars, they will be just as liable for the damage they cause.
A lot of people are going to have a HARD awakening in the coming decade. They have been believing the bullshit from fossil fuel companies, BS that even the fossil fuel companies didn't believe, but spread to eke out just another few years of profits before having to change their strategy. And the companies that refuse to disrupt themselves are the ones who will be forcefully disrupted.
This moment in time is like when the iPhone was released and Blackberry had no idea what was coming. Renewables are cheaper than natural gas right now, and by the time we need massive amounts of storage, renewables plus lithium ion batteries will be cheaper than combined cycle gas turbines. Every new natural gas asset will be stranded within the next decade, as new renewables+storage will be cheaper than the opex for continuing to burn gas.
The only reason Shell truly exists is because all of those gas tanks.
>And it's even possible to build cars that don't depend on carbon emissions,
Sure, really only in the past 5-8 years. ( what about those Tesla stations ran by diesel generators? )
>Renewables are cheaper than natural gas right now, and by the time we need massive amounts of storage, renewables plus lithium ion batteries will be cheaper than combined cycle gas turbines.
Every time, I mean every time this threshold is crossed the cost of fossil fuels plummets way below the threshold. 1.4 billion cars are on the road a little over 1 million are electric in any way. I don't see how this is the gas companies fault.
They have provided a product to 1.4 billion gas tanks ( a lot of those weekly ) on a consistently reliable basis. If there is ever a threat of a shortage people start lining up for miles to buy the product Shell is 'forcing' them to buy? Perhaps we need to hold the gas tank companies responsible for making a product that holds fuel.
This is a culture and economy problem not the fault of a fuel company. Our entire economy is dependent on fossil fuel.
PS. It would be nice if you provided at least on reference for the last two paragraphs of your post. Way too many claims with no resources.
Two apologies are in order 1) I disagree with a lot of your comment but don't really know how to proceed productively, and 2) for not providing any sources, as I've come to think of these things as common knowledge the past few years.
A link dump is never convincing, but in case you find my thinking so strange that you're intrigued how I got to where I am, here's some of the key bits of info:
1) Ramez Naam's summary of solar/storage costs (2020) -- He's a science fiction author, but has really brought together the best resources. Academic and industry energy models use old cost estimates for renewables and it gets them into huge problems. Naam's estimates have been far too conservative, but at least they've been less conservative than the pros' estimates: https://rameznaam.com/2020/05/14/solars-future-is-insanely-c...
2) Lazard's levelized cost of storage/energy (2020, comes out annually) -- best free estimates of costs, IMHO. (note that the LCOE doesn't take into account the price of dispatchability, but storage fixes that)
3) RMI's analysis of stranded natural gas plants (2019) -- a bit dated, but shocked people when it came out, and even most utility IRPs don't consider this possibility yet, which means utility customers are going to get bilked for billions of dollars https://rmi.org/a-bridge-backward-the-risky-economics-of-new...
4) RMI's analysis of low NG deployments and high storage, solar, and wind deployments in open markets (2020) -- a follow on to the prior year's analysis, documenting that the open market realizes that new natural gas will likely become a stranded asset. Regulated utilities generally bear no risk of competition, so only regulatory bodies can reign in the bad economic decisions of utilities that are still deploying natural gas. https://rmi.org/clean-energy-is-canceling-gas-plants/
5) The IEA's recently released global energy transition pathway to keep to 1.5C of warming (2021) -- The IEA has been hopelessly wrong about our energy path, and they are here too, IMHO, estimating absolutely ridiculous hydrogen production capacity by 2030 (3TW!), and far too low renewables and storage. But even the IEA is now plotting a pathway with a very quick transition away from any fossil fuel that doesn't have it's CO2 emissions captured https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/all-fossil-fuel-...
This kind of question is literally determined in such court cases. There are laws about polluting, causing harm to people, the environment and such. Giving these laws meaning in practice is what courts do.
Of course, any legal system "pretends" that they're actually just interpreting... but this is never really true. If you gave an alien lawyer a book of laws, without the accompanying book of precedents (even in civil law systems), they would not know what is and isn't legal.
It is pretty interesting that there's no fine or punishment. A recognition-not-recognition that this is a pivot point. Hopefully, antitrust courts will adopt the same approach. Fining Google or Amazon has been a bust.
Laws don't come from gods, not even the gods or pure reason. The come from people. Courts, parliaments, polities, regulators, etc.
Do you believe it? I wasn't making a normative point really. I was just describing where laws come from. A parliament (or god king) says reckless endangerment is a crime. Police, prosecutors, judges, and such put meat on this skeleton.
Also, I think the prevalent medieval european tradition was more focused on the "divine right of kings" to rule than the divinity of kings per se.
About the legal basis: "RDS’ [Royal Dutch Shell] reduction obligation ensues from the unwritten standard of care laid down in Book 6 Section 162 Dutch Civil Code, which means that acting in conflict with what is generally accepted according to unwritten law is unlawful. From this standard of care ensues that when determining the Shell group’s corporate policy, RDS must observe the due care exercised in society. The interpretation of the unwritten standard of care calls for an assessment of all circumstances of the case in question."
Excerpt from the court sentence: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:...
> What's the legal basis of this lawsuit? Are they violating some sort of law? Are they not violating any law, but just doing "bad"? The article isn't clear.
Apparently the are not violating the law, but they will soon violate 'obligagtions'. From the WSJ...
'The court said that Shell wasn’t in breach of its obligation to reduce carbon emissions, but that there was an “imminent breach” and therefore set the reduction requirement. It said its ruling covered the emissions of the company’s own operations and also those of its suppliers and customers.'
When shell pumps oil out of the ground who emits it? Shell? The person who burns the oil? If a person in the Netherlands buys a car what fraction of the emissions are they "responsible" for? How about if they use the car to produce some good or service that they sell? Does the responsibility for all or some of the emissions passed on?
I get the point that at some point you just need to pick a party to pay for an externality.
"Blacklisting" the Netherlands from receiving any oil or oil products? A member state of the European Union with Borders to Germany and Belgium and with access to the North Sea? Who should do this "blacklisting", Royal Dutch Shell, headquartered in The Hague, NL? And who is supposed to enforce it? Even if there was a case for such a thing, which there isn't, no member state of the EU ever would dream of doing any such thing, since that would violate the Four Freedoms doctrine of the EU, and also because the neighbors get a sizable part of their oil and oil products through Rotterdam.
Shell has always countered the argument that they should to more to reduce CO2 emissions by making the government responsible for forcing them. They say they even asked the government to intervene, as it's unrealistic to expect a company to do so of it's own accord. Of course, they don't mean that, but it is an integral part of their greenwashing campaigns.
The proper response would be to rejoice that they finally got what they wanted and lobby for the same judgement for their competitors, then get on with it and finally reduce their emissions.
> The proper response would be to rejoice that they finally got what they wanted and lobby for the same judgement for their competitors, then get on with it and finally reduce their emissions.
Because they didn't get what they want.
Imagine you make widgets and you pay your employees $5/hr. You want to pay your employees $10/hr but you can't because your widgets would then be too expensive, you'd be driven out of business and your employees would have to get jobs elsewhere for $5/hr. But if a the government enforced a $10/hr minimum wage then you can pay your employees $10/hr, you don't go out of business, and your employees can keep their jobs.
It's a collective action problem and the government is uniquely good at solving them while businesses are uniquely bad.
(Royal Dutch) Shell is based in the Netherlands. I doubt they'd "blacklist" themselves.
The Netherlands is part of the European Union, whose members can trade freely between each other. Trying to cut off oil from the Netherlands would also require cutting it off to France, Germany, Spain, etc.
Who would enforce such a silly action in any case? Presumably the government and army of the Netherlands wouldn't want to cut itself off; in which case, what would prevent anyone with lorries, boats or planes from bringing in "oil or oil based products" (at a hefty markup)?
It would be weird if Royal Dutch Shell blacklisted the Netherlands. They might very well do a Unilever [1] and re-register as a UK only business.
But since this is also based on EU law they'd basically have to leave all their business in the EU. Which would probably reduce their carbon footprint by the requested amount. ;-)
Also BP, Exxon, Mobile and other petro companies: Better watch out since the chance of lawsuits like this agains them is pretty big.
An in an other also:
EU is struggling [2] to reach reductions in CO2 emissions. This can help a little.
It would be very disruptive given that Shell is headquartered in The Hague, and NL has small but not insignificant oil reserves of its own on both land and sea.
> Milieudefensie voor Veranderaars (Friends of the Earth Netherlands)
For anyone wondering "Friends of the Earth Netherlands" is not a translation of "Milieudefensie voor Veranderaars" (the name of the organisation). It's apparently the name of a larger alliance they just happen to be part of.
The literal translation of their Dutch name "Milieudefensie" is basically "Environmental Defense".
The "voor Veranderaars" part is their slogan which translates to something like "for changers".
Fossil fuel companies aren't greedy monopoly men burning oil for no reason. Oil companies sell oil to consumers.
Imagine if US gas prices went up overnight to $10/gallon. There would be riots. Jan 6th would look like a warm-up.
But does anybody realistically think that they can carbon-capture 1 gallon of gas's worth of carbon emissions for $7? How much would it realistically cost?
It's willful ignorance to think that we can continue to use the same amount of energy while waiting for technology to improve and become greener. We have the choice between immediate, painful cuts to energy usage ($20/gal gas), or doing irreparable harm to our planet. We are choosing the latter.
I think this is too fatalistic. There are tons of things which can be done to reduce CO2 and the sooner we do the more time we gain for bigger transformations.
The big thing would be sending a strong public message that gas will only get more expensive every year: that discourages sales of inefficient vehicles which will be polluting for a couple of decades, pushes businesses to invest in major capital investments now, etc. Every time that’s happened, the cost to industry has been far less than the naysayers predicted.
The best way to cut down on oil use is to personally use less electricity and enjoy a lower standard of living.... suing people will mot help... only solution is accepting a lower stanndard of living.
This is the personal responsibility narrative which is pushed by industry because it conveniently absolves them of responsibility for setting up a system which locks in high carbon usage.
Most of the necessary changes are too big for individual people: we don’t have direct control over heavy polluting companies, a large fraction of our personal energy footprints are things like inefficient transportation and housing designs which are strongly encouraged if not required by public policy, etc. For businesses, there’s a prisoner’s dilemma where nobody wants to take on the cost of rearchitecting ahead of their competitors.
This is especially important with the fossil fuel companies who don’t just sell materials but actively work to prevent alternatives. Companies like Exxon have known about the risks since the 1970s, when their own scientists concluded global warming would happen, and their response was to lobby hard against efforts to use less CO2 and astroturf an entire network of faux-experts whose talking points are all over the news. Just as with the tobacco companies, suing is appropriate and effective.
There is no need to accept anything. Can you imagine how much energy would be generated if we somehow replaced every roof with solar panels? I doubt there are enough batteries around to store it all.
Shell could just shutdown for a week and I bet that court will revoke their decision in no time.
Seriously, such verdicts are completely pointless and achieve absolutely nothing.
The court can’t blame Shell for decisions that are made by politicians, especially in the energy sector.
If an industrial country wants to reduce emissions, it must build nuclear power plants unless it has the potential for large hydro or geothermal installations per capita.
For reference, compare the emissions of France and Germany and you realize the highest potential for decarbonization lies in the energy sector and nuclear is extremely efficient in achieving that - while renewables are not:
Shell could certainly shut down to force their will upon the Dutch people...for about 10 minutes or so; after that, the entire board will be behind bars and the company nationalised.
Don’t be silly. Energy is a national interest.
Secondly, one of the reasons for this verdict (see 2.5.9 and 4.4.20 in the judgement) is that Shell has known about the dangers of excessive CO₂ emissions since the 1980s. If this wasn’t about CO₂ but H₂S (a foul smelling and poisonous gas) they’d have to have stopped already.
This could be the equivalent to price fixing, which is not productive and makes the whole system operate less efficiently, generally resulting in the opposite of what you want. Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can just force it to go away by law.
> Just because you don't like something doesn't mean you can just force it to go away by law.
Of course you can. See tobacco industry. My country made it illegal for them to advertise their product and to openly smoke in public spaces, imposed taxes to make it more expensive for consumers and also required them to add shocking images to the packs to remind people of the consequences. It was incredibly successful, very few young people smoke these days.
Sometimes you just gotta tell certain people to fuck off.
Is that relative (e.g. to total production)? Is it an absolute number (e.g. N tons CO2)?
Does this take company growth into account?
What if Shell split off their CO2 production business in another company (e.g. Shell RED), does the original company now have 100% less CO2 production (e.g. Shell GREEN)?
"The assessment culminates in the conclusion that RDS is obliged to reduce the CO2 emissions of the Shell group’s activities by net 45% at end 2030 relative to 2019 through the Shell group’s corporate policy. This reduction obligation relates to the Shell group’s entire energy portfolio and to the aggregate volume of all emissions (Scope 1 through to 3). It is up to RDS to design the reduction obligation, taking account of its current obligations and other relevant circumstances. The reduction obligation is an obligation of result for the activities of the Shell group, with respect to which RDS may be expected to ensure that the CO2 emissions of the Shell group are reduced to this level. This is a significant best-efforts obligation with respect to the business relations of the Shell group, including the end-users, in which context RDS may be expected to take the necessary steps to remove or prevent the serious risks ensuing from the CO2 emissions generated by the business relations, and to use its influence to limit any lasting consequences as much as possible." Excerpt from the court sentence: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:...
Sounds like this could push Shell to fund a beachhead market to get carbon removal companies started up. Note: folks seriously interested in carbon removal or starting a carbon removal company should check out http://airminers.org
Carbon capture is such an red herring it's not even funny. For years carbon dioxide intense industries have been talking about it in order to avoid clamp downs on their factories/power plants. When it comes down to it, it just isn't a fiscally viable technology.
It will always be more expensive to remove a trace gas, economically and on an energy basis, than emitting it in the first place. We would need MORE renewables to remove the CO2 from the air. It is just ridiculous to spend more energy than what was generated from burning fuel to remove its CO2 from the air.
100%. A common misconception with carbon removal is that it's somehow an alternative for reducing emissions.
It's not. The planet needs to go carbon neutral full stop. We need tons of work to be done there. And....even when we do, there's still way too much carbon dioxide already on the air. That's where carbon removal comes in.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
You could have said:
"Punishing supply would not do much without decreasing demand, it will just redistribute the profits. Moreover, the profits might go to less morally sound places."
1) Supply tends to meet demand at the cost of the marginal supplier. 2) If the West is not willing to, the rest of the folks will be happy to do so.
Btw more than 50% of the global liquids demand is for diesel, jet fuel and bunker fuel for ships. At the time of writing we do not have any viable alternatives for these, and we do not expect to have them ready and scaled up in the next 8 years.
So to be clear, the viable path you refer to includes complete elimination of gasoline usage globally, 100% conversion to biojet fuel and biodiesel from jet and diesel respectively, and ~ 50% of the world vessel fleet to be converted to nuclear. In 8 years.
Alternatively we are in a massive carbon bubble, because valuation of these companies is based on their reserves, by the time we'll get to the last drops of oil they'll have to deal with famine and roving tribes of technobarbarians.
Thats not a risk, it's a certainty.
When this buble pops it will make 2008 look like a frat party.
Maybe people don't expect the ruling to stand. Shell is 11% of the AEX stock index. If they were forced to halve their operations just because of a change in the courts interpretation it would create a significant lack of confidence in the business legal environment. The Dutch government is more business friendly than that.
The article states that this is only legally binding in the Netherlands. Shell can easily cut their CO2 emissions in the Netherlands by 45% till 2030 as per the ruling. Worse case they will shut down their operations.
How much will this affect average oil/gas consumers in the EU? Weren't the Yellow Vest Protests[1] started in response to increased fuel prices (in that case, in the form of a tax).
Presumably this will increase prices? Or will we only see a decline in Shell's emissions, but an increase in those of every other oil/gas producer? Is there an alternative outcome?
This doesn’t seem fair. Sure, Shell is the largest emitter, but what about other emitters? We need a carbon tax that would distribute the responsibility evenly.
I'll be curious to see when nations like Norway or Canada, which are hyper polluters per capita when you include their fossil fuel production and trade, will be forced to cut their lucrative oil industries in half or worse.
> The case, while not the first climate change litigation,[16] the original 2015 ruling against the Netherlands was heralded worldwide as the first successful tort action against a government to address climate change to protect human rights, an area otherwise known as climate justice.[7] The ruling on the Netherlands case led to similar climate justice lawsuits in other countries, including Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, New Zealand, Britain, Switzerland and Norway. [11]
Hopefully there are ongoing litigations that will hold Norway liable as well.
I agree with the sentiment. That's always the environmental challenge. Who's going to enforce/stop/change any of it?
The most likely answer, rooted in reason, logic and an understanding of human nature, is: absolutely nobody is going to stop any of it in a way that is going to matter.
We've far since crossed the point of no return. You can take all emissions to zero in the developed world and it won't matter at all now, it won't stop anything. It's game over.
If the climate change experts are correct about how it all works, then the house is going to burn down and nothing can or will stop it, realistically. And that's a super simple - hilariously easy - extrapolation just based on one nation's hyper expanding greenhouse gas emissions alone.
It won't stop the virtue signalers however; virtue signaling is all they really have. When the plan is to not actually do anything about what's happening, then the comfort remaining is to virtue signal while you watch it all burn, because it makes one feel better.
So now Shell will presumably move their headquarters out of the Netherlands. Their global emissions will then no longer count as Dutch and as a result they'll comply with the judgement for reducing Dutch emissions.
Netherlands is actually one of the most attractive countries to have HQ in, due to low tax rates. Sure, if they look around they could find something similar but the bad publicity from this would be really huge IMO.
The bad publicity will probably be mostly confined to the Netherlands. So presumably they'll figure out the expected costs of that, vs the cost to their global business model of 45% reduction in production. Pretty sure which way that maths will work out.
If they've got any sense, they'll also start to ramp up their investments in renewables, as I'm sure they can see the writing is on the wall for their current business model. But I doubt they'll be willing or able to change fast enough for 2030.
Ok, I think I have found the answer. The number is from Shell itself - 45% is its target CO2 emissions reduction by 2035. The court seems to have moved the deadline by five years and made it legally binding.
Incorrect. It comes from an IPCC report:
"In model pathways with no or limited overshoot of 1.5°C, global net anthropogenic CO2 emissions decline by about 45% from 2010 levels by 2030 (40–60% interquartile range), reaching net zero around 2050 (2045–2055 interquartile range)." Excerpt from paragraph 2.3.5.2 of the court sentence: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:...
Why is climate change the only global risk that gets that kind of treatment? We have no asteroid defense, for example. And that is without a doubt an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it risk.
How do we tackle super volcanoes? How are we planning for climates more similar to other geological periods, where it was much warmer or colder without human intervention?
Is it even clear that climate change is the biggest risk to address now? Why don't we have similar movements to mitigate other large risk?
> Is it even clear that climate change is the biggest risk to address now?
Did you know: more than one thing can happen in the world at once!
Fighting climate change doesn't prevent us spotting or stopping asteroids, or supervolcanoes, or whatever. Where in the world did you get such zero-sum nonsense from?
The satellites we use to monitor CO2 levels in the atmosphere are great at spotting volcanic activity.
Building those satellites and getting them into orbit hasn't 'depleted our allocated space launches'; it's made us better at getting to space; which makes us more prepared for sending asteroid intercept/divert missions.
That is precisely my concern! Where in the world did you get that nonsense that capacity for chance and production is unlimited? So if an asteroid defense were(!) to be more urgent (don't say it is) than that might need the resources first.
Btw. spotting volcanic activity will not help you on a big eruption that changes the climate for millions of years (Deccan Traps anyone?). No sure anything will help us in such a scenario, to be honest
I think because it is clear that climate change is done by humans. It's also something we can stop by stopping the way we consume energy. This makes us responsible.
This seems like a slippery slope. Should the makers of junk food also be held liable for impacting the health of countless individuals? The research has been out there for decades. What about social media companies? Where do we draw the line between personal responsibility and shifting blame on to suppliers for not taking action sooner? It’s hard to judge them for making money while operating within the laws we design.
I honestly can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or you think you're making a salient point. Poe's law, I guess.
What is wrong with junk food providers considering the impact on the health of their customers? Why should social media companies not worry about the mental health of the user?
The argument is that junk food providers and social media companies should not be held responsible for misuse of their products. The question is whether there is a "safe dosage" of junk food or social media, and whether if people go beyond that dosage they do it at their own risk. If the serving size is one cookie, and I eat 25 cookies, should the baker be held accountable?
Well, I think it's important whether the company encourages unsafe behaviour. If you only have gigantic menus with no incentive to take the small soda, or if social media is engineered to be as addictive way beyond the healthy amount, then I think the companies take some of the blame. I think this analogy holds for shell.
First of all, it should be regulated one level above, like not having Big Sugar/Corn syrup put into every single edible thing, to a point where the population is literally addicted and feels food without it bland. That is a crime against a whole nation.
Second of all, yeah, cheaper product at the expense of the consumer’s health is not an okay step. But yet again it is supposed to be the government’s job to blacklist some ingredients, mandate proper labeling of them, as well as the amount of energy/minerals contained.
>It depends on the product and people's needs for it.
And what the available alternatives are.
Paints (other than interior house paints and other stuff that was already bottom of the barrel) were pretty crappy (or insanely expensive) for 20yr after they banned lead. It had its costs but paint isn't thaaaaat big of a deal to the world so it was fine.
Taxes appear to have a proportional effect on consumption in several categories (alcohol, tobacco, etc.), so they're a good policy tool. Much better than trying to prohibit.
Good news, we don't have to! We just need to tax harmful things to cover the cost of their externalities, e.g. junk food should be taxed to pay for the burden it places on the healthcare system; the same goes for cigarettes; carbon emissions should be taxed to cover the cost of subsequent extraction; and so on.
> It’s hard to judge them for making money while operating within the laws we design.
Erm, what? You started by arguing against stricter laws (framed in a JAQing off manner); then blame weak laws for not preventing the damage. How does that make any sense?
It's called Royal Dutch Shell since it sprung from a merger between a dutch and a britsh company (Royal Dutch Oil and Shell). It's meant to reflect the names of the former companies more than indicate some deep ties with the Netherlands. Not too long ago they changed the dual Dutch/British legal structure that was in place before and become a company fully under british law.
"Ruling will only hold in the Netherlands".
I can see Shell just exiting the Netherlands rather than lowering emissions by 45% globally.
Another weak, symbolic ruling from a European court.
If Shell refuses to meet market needs, there's plenty of capital out there for others to do it.
There's nothing that Shell offers that is unique, and we have all sorts of other options. (I say "we" even though I'm not in the Netherlands, but we in the US are just as independent as NL is.)
No, Shell is going to just take its thousands of high paying jobs from their headquarters to a more favorable regulatory regime. Very little else will change.
Hopefully we can force similar rulings in other countries and on the EU level. This ruling may be a precedent since it is partially based on the European law.
The same could be attempted across the whole world where judicial branch holds actual power.
There's a line in The Wire where an honest hard working security guard asks Marlo to not disrespect him by stealing in front of him. Marlo says, "you want it to be one way, but it's the other way," then Marlo kills him.
You can downvote me all you want. You can "hope" to do whatever in your crusade. You can tell me all about what "could" happen if the world weren't the way is. But it's not that way. It's the other way.
It's not only my crusade. It's also increasingly companies stakeholders. There are trillions dollar investor groups pushing for addressing risks and opportunities of climate emergency. Court cases give a lot of leverage to people inside these groups to apply pressure on companies like Shell.
Investor Group on Climate Change (IGCC) manages over $2 trillions
The Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change (IIGCC) with over €23 trillion in assets under management
Go against states like Netherlands, states unions like European Union, and institutional investors managing tens of trillions worth of assets at your own peril.
And the pressure will only keep increasing as the old generations die and the new take power.
In this analogy, one might think that Shell is Marlo and society is the security guard, but the reality is that the roles are reversed. If Shell does not change their game, they will die.
Global capital is coming to terms with this, though there are still a few executives in power at banks that don't realize it.
Fossil fuel companies skate by because they have access to cheap loans right now. But as that dries up, so will their extraction of fossil fuels. This is happening far more quickly than most people realize, since most people aren't following that side of financial markets. Everything is shifting day by day.
That isn’t at all the analogy. Quit reducing this to a war on climate. The “way the world is” corporations are highly mobile, and they engage in regulatory arbitrage. If RDS’s home country wants to put an onerous requirement on them, they will leave to a country that won’t. If landing a tiny little punch on RDS in order to lose hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in import revenue to their country, then sure, this is a win.
But this won’t materially affect climate change. This won’t even materially affect RDS. It will materially affect the Dutch people who have come to depend on the economic benefits of having RDS headquartered in their town/country.
Not really sure how what you describe here relates to the story from The Wire.
But in any case, this will materially affect climate change in as far as NL is going to be reducing their carbon footprint. It will materially affect climate change in that it will embolden further lawsuits, in other countries.
It will materially benefit the Dutch people in that either Shell will switch away from fossil fuels to more economically efficient carbon free economic activity, or Shell will leave and the Dutch will have some other business take the place that it better suited to the future.
Today, activist investors took over 2-3 seats on Exxon's board to push Exxon to a lower carbon future.
Finance is already fleeing from exploration of new fossil fuel. Fossil fuel companies are taking out loans to pay dividends, to trick investors into thinking that nothing is wrong. Their stock prices are taking a nose dive.
Shell, and all the oil majors, have a very short time period to change their ways, or they will be abandoned by investors as they have destroyed their future earnings potential, and acquire massive liability for their externalities.
Hopefully other courts will follow. There's talk in France of making ecocide a crime against humanity, this judgement is also partly based on a humans rights arguments.
I know we still enjoy our chocolate icecream with slave labour from African children and consume our tech gadgets built on the blood of an Uyghur genocide - but hey you got to start somewhere!
> Coal, oil and gas need to stay in the ground. People around the world are demanding climate justice
I look forward to seeing an EV battery manufactured entirely using renewable energy, instead of the current situation where developing countries burn huge amounts of brown coal to power their manufacture.
In my opinion, this is just mandated destruction of Western industry, and completely meaningless until we demand that all of the energy-intensive products we import from developing countries are also not made using fossil fuels.
It's absolutely meaningless. It's a sick joke. China recently overtook the entire developed world combined in greenhouse gas emissions [1] and their output is still set to keep climbing for decades yet. Very soon they'll be at three times the emissions of the US. And meanwhile they're building new coal power plants as fast as they can put them up.
None of this Shell type stuff matters. Not one bit. It's fake, laughable green theater until you stop the extreme and growing emissions output coming from China (which isn't going to happen under any circumstances and everyone knows it). It's a bunch of childish rich people in the developed world virtue signaling while the planet burns down regardless because their actions don't amount to mattering what-so-ever back in reality. Let's see the EU stand up to China and start shutting down their trade with China until they reverse on emissions; right, nobody, absolutely nobody, dares to even discuss such actions. Which is another way of saying they have no intention of actually ever doing anything about climate change.
And that fact of reality is the one the green virtue signaling crowd is too cowardly to ever face up to. They run away or try to shout you down if you point out the reality of the situation: you can now take emissions to zero in the developed world and it won't matter at all unless you stop China's runaway output. And that's before Africa adds another billion people in the coming decades and seeks a similar pattern of development (again, the green theater is all a bullshit fraud unless the plan is to stop all of this development across the board immediately, otherwise none of it matters).
> China recently overtook the entire developed world combined in greenhouse gas emissions [1] and their output is still set to keep climbing for decades yet. Very soon they'll be at three times the emissions of the US.
Is that meant to be some sort of argument against reducing emissions? If the US managed to reach zero-emissions ahead of China, then China would be releasing infinity times more greenhouse gasses than the US! Is this meant to be some sort of argument against decarbonising, since all it tells me is that even more needs to be done.
> you can now take emissions to zero in the developed world and it won't matter at all unless you stop China's runaway output. And that's before Africa adds another billion people in the coming decades and seeks a similar pattern of development (again, the green theater is all a bullshit fraud unless the plan is to stop all of this development across the board immediately, otherwise none of it matters).
Why do you think "the developed world" isn't zero emissions already? I'll give you a clue: it's the same reason countries like China continue to build up their fossil fuel infrastructure (alongside some of the largest rollouts of nuclear and renewable energy, I might add!)
It's because we, as a species, don't have the technology and manufacturing throughput to easily switch over completely to renewables (although we can get pretty far already, and should not wait if there are existing solutions). That needs a lot more investment, in time and money. That is simply unafforable to many developing countries, who need to lift their populations out of poverty right now.
Many developed countries do have the time and money; their populations aren't dying off from preventable diseases, so they can afford to invest heavily in this tech. Once we do have sufficient technology and manufacturing capability, it can be sold to the developing world. It's a sound business investment, but the startup capital is simply too high for many countries like those in Africa to cover. (Note that China is a huge investor in technology and manufacturing too)
The relative emissions of China and the developed world are linked. Every time we mandate some new energy-intensive technology (eg, EVs, solar, etc), and also ban the methods of manufacture in the developed world, it's China that gladly digs up some more brown coal and makes the stuff for us.
Until we also mandate the complete CO2 lifecycle of all the products we import, this is a completely meaningless move (by the Dutch court). Saying that we are currently "switching over to renewables", while ignoring exactly how that is happening (that is, by importing everything, with the aforementioned issues), is just self-delusional.
How is it a hypothetical? You've already said that China has slipped on its carbon neutrality goals, all while we continue to import ever more manufactured goods from that country. Now would be the time to start taxing those, which as I pointed out, we would never do.
>"Shell will adjust its policy so that it will also emit less CO2 in real-time."
Yes, they will just dust off their magic wands and wave them round a bit and poof! No more CO2! Because up until now they have just been ignoring all the calls for climate change.
I'm incredibly cynical about this. Not because of the naive sounding statement, nor because i care too much about Shells bottom line. It's simply because this will most probably affect not Shell, but drivers at the petrol stations.
Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it. Especially when it's extremely necessary.
But wait! The litigant actually says this!
>but the company will not be able to continue pumping as much oil and gas as they do now.
Imagine this. You need some wooden shelves, you go to IKEA and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling so much wooden furniture, so no more shelves for you. I'm not sure people would accept that. I'm very, very cynical about this ruling.
> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it
No, it's not unreasonable. And it's far less unreasonable to demand damages for the harm they've done through lying about what they know and the damage it causes.
Companies like Shell have been saying that they can perform CO2 capture and sequestration to reduce emissions. But they haven't actually done it. It's time for them to perhaps try that.
We have a clear path to making Shell's products completer unnecessary while maintaining current lifestyles, we no longer need fossil fuels. Even extremely conservative, fossil fuel-friendly, and renewables-hostile groups like the International Energy Agency have now published pathways that show that fossil fuels are not necessary.
It's time to move on, and Shell can either adapt their workforce and knowledge to a disrupted economy, via offshore wind turbines or underground sequestration of CO2, or they can die out. We don't have many other options as a society.
> Shell can either adapt their workforce and knowledge to a disrupted economy
While this may sound "unreasonable" or "bad for profits" to many, the Finnish Neste does exactly this[1]. Pooring all their investments in not just "lowering carbon emissions" but becoming carbon-negative really fast.
Scientists have been talking about the need to draw down carbon emissions for DECADES. Four decades, in fact. We had a report just 3 years ago that gave us a very clear timeline for the need to draw down.
If companies have failed to respond to that, they have only themselves to blame at this point. When we've asked, and asked, and asked and made clear the necessary timeline, at some point, we have to put force behind that.
If governments had put that force behind it earlier, then that force could have come with a gentler timeline. But at this point, we don't have time for that. We have to rip off the bandaid. And the longer we wait, the worse that rip is going to be.
I get it. Humans are selfish and greedy. But we’ve also exceeded our carbon budget as a species, so here we are. The state could always nationalize Shell and dismantle its production capacity. This outcome seems pretty tame compared to what could’ve (and still might be) mandated. We have the technology to rapidly decarbonize, how fast we move is a choice.
The longer we wait, the more severe the consequences awaiting businesses who emit vast quantities of CO2 in the course of business. Some will adapt, some will receive a legislated or legal ruling death sentence. It is what it is.
>But we’ve also exceeded our carbon budget as a species
So what do you suggest. From yesterday, every truck, ship factory etc should stop working because our carbon limit has been exceeded. I mean, if you think orders such as these are the way forward, that is very going to happen. Haling global fossil production= halving global energy consumption= half of all industry shutting down. I think my sums are right.
Institute a carbon tax that increases at a linear rate and use the revenue to subsidize clean electrical generation and storage mechanisms (battery and pumped storage), EV subsidies, EV charging infra (both for light and heavy vehicles), and invest in ammonia production from renewables for marine applications. Air travel should be disincentivized whenever possible with a similar tax until cleaner alternatives are developed. Support robust building energy efficiency improvement measures (heat pumps, insulation, and similar). Require carbon neutral or negative concrete production. Rapidly scale up polysilicon production to meet solar PV manufacturing needs (we need ~600GW of solar PV produced and installed annually to meet climate targets, a 4x increase from current production capacity).
There will be some petroleum consumption remaining, and in the short term we’ll need to tax that at a rate that pays for the removal of the resulting carbon using air source carbon capture (Climeworks and similar). I believe the current cost of that is $600 per ton of CO2 based on Climeworks’ letter to Stripe notifying they completed their initial removal objective they were contracted for.
With all that said, the planetary climate doesn’t really consider GDP as a worthwhile metric, so perhaps we should revisit it as well (compared to having a functioning, stable ecosystem to exist in).
> if you think orders such as these are the way forward, that is very literally going to happen.
No, that's hyperbole. Rulings like this will cause damage, disruption, harm, etc. but nowhere near the amount of damage, disruption, harm, etc. as a 'business as usual'. The former is a short-term blow to the economy, which will rebound by transitioning to renewables (and perhaps even be stronger). The latter is less immediate, but will flood coastal cities, cause droughts and famines, and lead to mass migration, civil unrest and international conflict. We've arguably seen this already, with historic droughts in Syria contributing to its civil war, the resulting migrants causing a political crisis in Europe, culminating in the UK leaving the EU.
The short-term pain of having to wean ourselves off fossil fuels is far better than the alternative (at least, for those who plan to live another few decades and/or care about others). Still, it does not have to happen overnight.
Agreed. I think I came across slightly hyperbolic. The use of the word literally was a poor choice and i edited it out. I would like to point that i did caveat my comment with an "if you follow that through" but maybe that wasn't enough. Though i still don't necessarily agree with the rest of your comment.
I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!
Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here?
I would say that like many things in life, it's a tradeoff. There're costs and benefits to using these things. Talking about one side but not the other doesn't make sense.
Quick personal example - I lived through energy shortages as a kid in the Soviet Union. Situations where there was no heat in the winter and/or no fuel for cars and public transport.
From pure fossil fuel consumption standpoint, these were great times, as we weren't using any. From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times.
At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this.
None of this is to say that we shouldn't move towards primarily nuclear in the long term - we should but we need to talk about this in a mature way.
Most people equate reducing fossil fuels with buying an electric car or public transport. They are woefully oblivous to the impact on food production, bulk transport and shelter & heating impacts.
> From a quality and sustainability of human life, these were terrible times.
Unchecked, climate change will ALSO lead to terrible times for humans. Just because it's not immediately impactful, does not make it ignorable.
From that perspective, it's arguable that our options are "Some amount of near-term lowering of quality of life" or "A large amount of long-term, in the future, loss of quality of life." Continuing to burn the levels of fossil fuels we currently do is borrowing against a debt that may be literally impossible to repay.
I think you're saying essentially the same thing as the last paragraph of my post, so not sure why there's an argument.
But sure, there's a long run place we want to get to. Today, we're not at that place and we're depending on fossil fuels. So why are we vilifying them and the companies that provide them? Sounds like we should simply work on replacements, like nuclear.
> At the very least "burning fossil fuels is bad" is a statement of privilege. A person who's cold or unable to travel or get necessities delivered would never say this.
You could extend this argument "Slavery is bad", "Genocide is bad", "War is bad" etc. are all statements of "privilege".
Completely ignoring climate change, particulate pollution from fossil fuels has killed a terrible amount of people and will continue to do so for some time. Currently its around 13,000 per year in the US.
How many people would have died if they didn't have affordable access to power, heat, and transportation from fossil fuels? Particulate emissions are a risk but tighter emissions standards have done a lot to mitigate that problem.
Isn't there a difference between tradeoff's in the 1800's and 2021?
The benefits of fossil fuels is not the issue, the cost is. If today we in fact have alternative's that do not inflict such a terrible cost on human life, is it incorrect to say the choice is "bad".
It could be argued that CO2 emitting fuels have propelled most world advancement we account to pulling countries into prosperity.
It is necessary for any trade of goods with other countries for instance. Think ships for a minute, huge fuel consumers. Without them you wouldn't even have the computer you are reading this on.
The course is to change culture so it collectively seeks alternative fuels not damn the corporation that has done the very thing we have asked them to do.
> I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!
I'd be pretty pissed off too if one day [item] were legal and the next day the courts declared them to be illegal because of some vague law (ie. because of a tort or "the right to life and the right to family life"). In your comment the [item] was something most people would find objectionable (slaves), but you can very well substitute this for other stuff you enjoy, eg. beef, coffee, chocolate, etc.
Do you have any citation? This is a common claim by deniers, many of whom are paid to create the illusion of scientific disagreement, but it's not true.
If you look at, for example, the 1990 IPCC report the subsequent 3 decades were within the report's estimated ranges:
Similarly, while certain people like to repeat the claim that scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970s it's grossly overstating the degree to which that was taken seriously by the academic community back then and how quickly it was conclusively rejected long before the turn of the century.
Also worth noting about cooling predictions was that the models that predicted cooling still predicted warming from greenhouse gases.
They predicted net cooling because smog and other particulate emissions were also rising, and those have a cooling effect. They were assuming that smog levels would continue to rise faster than greenhouse gas levels, and so the cooling effect would beat the warming effect.
Around that time people get serious in the US and much of the rest of the world about air quality, and smog not only stopped increasing in many places actually decreased significantly.
Firstly, I think there’s a pretty clear difference between enslavement, which is a practice that intentionally deprives human beings of their rights, often violently and often en masse, and beef, coffee, and chocolate, which are food products that are enjoyed by consumers around the world.
Secondly, neither slavery nor the use of CO2-generating industrial processes were suddenly found to be objectionable overnight. Both have been the subject of intense attention across the globe and over decades. Nobody at Shell is surprised that carbon dioxide is a problem. They have made the choice to continue to invest in and defend their business model for many years.
>Firstly, I think there’s a pretty clear difference between enslavement, which is a practice that intentionally deprives human beings of their rights, often violently and often en masse, and beef, coffee, and chocolate, which are food products that are enjoyed by consumers around the world.
But which one is fossil fuels closer to? I think it's clear that fossil fuels is closer to beef, coffee, and chocolate than slavery.
>Secondly, neither slavery nor the use of CO2-generating industrial processes were suddenly found to be objectionable overnight. Both have been the subject of intense attention across the globe and over decades. Nobody at Shell is surprised that carbon dioxide is a problem. They have made the choice to continue to invest in and defend their business model for many years.
Should beef, coffee, and chocolate producers also watch their back? They all have issues as well. eg. beef: cow farts, deforestation for pastures/soy production, negative health effects of red meat.
Beef, at least, contributes in an outsized way (per kilogram, say) to climate change-related disasters and water shortages. While there are many causes of these harmful effects, it makes sense to address the biggest ones, including banning them.
The problem is that this ruling was unequivocally outside the rule of law in my estimate. You want to stop climate change? Great! Pass some laws via the legislature, enforce them via fines and jail through action initiated by the executive branch under the oversight of an impartial judicial system. Exactly which law could not be enacted by a judge under this precedent/newly found tort? Why are we foisting our collective guilt as a society onto a single hate-able company as if ordinary people making quotidian decisions lack fault, agency, and responsibility?
>I mean, just imagine, you go the the slave market and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling slaves on the basis that some laws say that you cannot do so!
Last time they tried this the United States rent itself apart in its bloodiest war.
They just reinvented slavery with prison labor of blacks under Jim Crow laws (and plea bargain scammery) that are still used in the worlds largest concentration camps ever:
It's a mischaracterization to say that Jim Crow made emancipation pointless. It may have been an attempt to reduce its practical importance, but it didn't come close to reversing it in the vast majority of cases.
Surprisingly, there's a connection to the topic at hand if you look at the parallel of prohibition and economic situations resulting from highly regulated markets.
The problem is that this is one company in the EU. It won't change how America, Russia, the middle east, or anyone else produces fossil fuels. Shell will desiccate from this action. And people will declare victory. But EU member states will simply import more fossil fuels from elsewhere. And the environment will not be helped.
I agree that we need to cut CO2 emissions. But we need global solutions to these problems. Not one-off court victories in small municipalities with liberal trade policies.
Did you hear that? All the other oil companies just cheered! What a great day when a huge competitor is taken down by the very government it supports.
( sarcasm intended )
The other opportunity was to find a way to work with Shell to change the world. They are a huge power. Not make room for the others listed above to fill the void.
Nonetheless, have the plaintiffs proved that Shell is responsible for plastic that is burned or thrown in the ocean, as opposed to those that burn, dispose or produce plastics? Have they proven that there is NO legitimate and lawful use of oil?
This is most likely a vacuous decision of one trigger happy judge with an ax to grind. The idea that global climate change is "tort" is absurd, the phenomenon is a defining feature of the Anthropocene.
Best case is likely putting it back in the ground. Burning it results in a release of it's stored carbon to the atmosphere.
Still not a perfect solution, since many plastics will leach harmful substances into the ground without robust containment measures, but of the outcomes realistically available to us, plastic ending up in properly-run landfills is probably the best case.
Is the issue that the comparison is bad and/or doesn't add much value - or just that we should generally avoid discussing that topic unless directly related?
as it devalues the actual event you’re comparing it to. i get that it’s just meant to make a point but even over using the comparison in everyday speech devalues it
>> Burning fossil fuels is bad. Shell is in the business of producing fossil fuels to burn. Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term. What's the problem here?
Shell doesn't burn fossil fuels. As you note they produce them (or pump them out of the ground and refine them). Telling Shell to produces less in one country means the people buying those fuels will simply get them from somewhere else, probably at higher price.
What is more, Shell already planned to divert investments from fossil fuel to renewables.
The court ordered them to do this earlier and in larger numbers.
That would be like IKEA telling you "we don't have those shelves. See, were already working on selling less wooden furniture over the coming ten years, but the court ordered us to this now. So we now already have these awesome cardboard shelves for you. And next year we'll have plastic and metal ones too".
I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line. I think it would be wiser to work with Shell to see if their timeline can be compressed, their investments expanded etc. rather then throwing out unreasonable demands.
> I don't think anyone can churn out, overnight an entire new line of products, while simultaneously scrapping their old line.
If you cannot adjust to clearly visible, external requirements or demands, you honestly don't deserve to be kept in business.
Everyone knows fossils are at a dead end. Shell has known this for over 60 years now; they acknowledge that themselves!
Requiring the change that apparently a corporate moloch is not able to make themselves is neither unreasonable nor overnight. As I point out elsewhere in this thread: competition manages fine to pivot to renewable fuels (diesel, ethanol, kerozine etc) and beyond that, in far less time, as can be seen in action with e.g. Neste Oyi
If that is true Shell should die naturally. Images of stranded fish, flopping and gasping for breath springs to mind. This court order indicates otherwise. I'm under no illusions that orders like this won't hurt me in a real way. And i am not a fan at all of EV's in their current format. Despite (what i perceive) propaganda (NOT a negative connotation, mind you) to the contrary, i don't think they are mature enough to replace ICE.
Slightly off topic but i'm a huge fan of those electric scooters and bikes. I think they are the way forward, not some huge EV. They should definitely be made legal, anyway everyone uses them. I just have a depressing feeling that they shall be slaughtered, hamstrung and/ or castrated on the altar of pedestrian safety.
Don't be daft. His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
> Burning fossil fuels is bad.
Why is it bad? Becuase the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers and we build solutions to adapt to an ever-changing world. We don't make progress by stifling productivity.
> Shell needs to leave that business in the very long term.
No, they don't NEED to do that. Well, not until the government mandates it anyway. And that's the problem. Perhaps they will leave the business, but they shouldn't until renewable energy becomes more economical than producing fossil fuels. In the meantime, it makes more sense to move production to developing countries so they have the same opportunity we had here to benefit from cheap energy.
> the temperature will go up a couple degrees. Who cares! We're engineers
Sorry, this is one of the worst takes on climate I've ever seen on HN, and the bar here is very low...
Take time to actually study the problem and you will come to the same conclusion: it can only be solved with government intervention. The most efficient government intervention would be a carbon tax set at the estimated social cost of carbon, but that (being a tax) is also extremely politically unpopular.
So we are left with less efficient policies, like outright bans, court orders, expensive subsidies, and emissions caps.
> trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
What the hell? Trees grow using CO2 from the air, and then release that same carbon back when the wood is burned or rots in a forest somewhere. Conserving trees does nothing for climate except for a very small amount of carbon sequestered by tropical forests in their soil.
Meanwhile, oil is 100% carbon that has not been in atmosphere since Jurasic times. If you like Jurasic climates, I guess that's perfectly fine.
To add to this... the government killed the alternative which was nuclear. If the government were serious about ending CO2 emissions they should start building a massive number of nuclear. Hitting Shell like this is a disaster of policy.
>His comparison to wood is legitimate as trees are a natural resource and their conservation has a similar effect on climate change compared to reducing the burning of fossil fuels.
Thanks for that! I do try and pick my comparisons and words carefully. I sometimes fail miserably but i'm glad you picked up on it.
But that was not even a tangential side point of mine. To my mind it was just a pertinent comparison. I'll bear in mind what you said but i'm slightly disappointed.
> you go to IKEA and they tell you that the court ordered them to stop selling so much wooden furniture, so no more shelves for you
They’d either tell me they’re not selling wooden shelves anymore and offer me an alternative or lose my business to someone who does. This is happening to car makers.
> I'm not sure people would accept that. I'm very, very cynical about this ruling.
Change takes a bit of time to get used to, especially if it’s abrupt. Necessary (i. e. without an alternative) things going away or becoming more expensive is unpopular (and some people just irrationally rage at any new responsibility affecting them), but subsidies a free market & regulation are quite efficient at creating those.
I'm sorry, but comparing this issue to IKEA shelving makes me incredibly cynical towards your comment.
A closer analogy might be if IKEA were painting their shelving with cheap, toxic substances, and ordered to stop that and to use non-harmful substances which may be more expensive.
The regulation may cause IKEA's costs to increase, in which case I would expect IKEA to innovate to overcome this regulation.
People love burning regulations, but maybe, just maybe, some are actually a "good thing".
Internally there was a battle in Shell between execs arguing that the company needed to double down on its green investments and the old school faction arguing that they should double down on traditional (i.e. oil/gas/lubricants/plastics/etc.) investments.
From what I heard the former group kind of lost. Shell is still making green investments - just way fewer.
You might argue that I'm being a hopeless optimist and selfishly ignoring the needs of drivers here but I'm hoping the outcome of this lawsuit will add some power to the "green" faction (already responsible for the world's biggest wind farm) in future arguments about upcoming investment decisions.
Affecting drivers at the petrol station is exactly what needs to happen. Pricing in externalities is how free markets deal with the effects of behavior.
If prices increase, demand will fall, and the price will fall, and a new equilibrium will be arrived at.
I'd like to recommend taking a look at The Undercover Economist. It can be had for cheap.
So if you are a judge when you decide if there is a law breaking you also first check who is the criminal and let him free is is someone important?
In this case I think the judges did the right thing, people can demand the government to create a new law where some special companies can get exceptions for the damages they cause.
I am wondering if there are ways to reduce pollution, I am thinking at those gases that are just burned because is not profitable to use them... I imagine some rich dudes deciding if they should
A invest in better tech to reduce CO2
B use money from A to buy some bigger yachts so they can go to some private islands to enjoy some crazy parties.
We can start cleaning up or local air and waters and if we really care we can stop importing products that are made with dirty resources... we need to start somewhere and we can find a way to help the poor if needed (maybe we figureout how to get the money the giants owe the society by avoiding taxes)
> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it.
It's not saying that. The primary thing the court order does is move up the timeline from Shell's own stated goal of reducing CO2 emissions by 45% by 2035. It moves the deadline to 2030 and makes it legally binding instead of pinky-swear.
> Also, it sounds unreasonable to tell a company whose principal product produces CO2 to stop making it. Especially when it's extremely necessary.
Something something war of northern aggression, grumble southern way of life, indignant dispossession of rightful property, incoherent state's rights...
This kind of supply destruction is going to be very bullish for oil prices and oil company stocks in countries not looking to handicap their own companies.
China creates more CO2 than the rest of the world combined. Destroying a company like this while giving China a free pass is essentially killing competition on China’s behalf.
Also, there is no live experiment showing CO2 is the source of global warming. All the models are in silica and the IPCC has been hit with a major email breach showing major manipulation of the data to hide the decline of temperature data.
> China creates more CO2 than the rest of the world combined
China emits about 30% of world-wide CO2 emissions, so less than the rest of the world combined.[1]
> Also, there is no live experiment showing CO2 is the source of global warming. All the models are in silica and the IPCC has been hit with a major email breach showing major manipulation of the data to hide the decline of temperature data.
This is typical FUD repeated ad nauseam by science deniers. The scientific consensus is that global warming is caused by human activity.
We gladly buy almost everything from China (lithium batteries, electronics, wind turbines, solar panels, all of which take a tremendous amount of energy to manufacture), without ever asking if they were made in a "CO2 neutral" way.
Oops, sorry I forgot that there's no such thing as life-cycle assessment, amortised cost analysis, payback periods or any of the similar analyses performed every day by engineers, purchasers, operators, accountants, companies and governments. I guess they haven't been invented yet. Sounds like you've found a gap in the market; why not pitch it to YC?
Oddly enough, I don't see a "carbon-neutral" lifecycle assesment done for all the solar panels on the market. Or on an EV, discounting the ridiculous "carbon exchange" system.
It's really not free... there is a tremendous cost to their population's health and their environment (air, water). It's shocking and tragic to see but their hospitals are full of children dealing with respiratory problems from pollution.
Sure, except that rulings like the one in this article hinder western countries from being able to do the same (that is, manufacture their own solar panels and other energy-intensive "renewable" products).
Have you looked at CO2 emitted per capita? Isn’t that a fairer metric? (I’m not saying that their emission is okay, but at least measure it per capita, and remember that the West likes to outsource the environmentally problematic parts of manufacturing to China, other parts of Asia)
When the neighborhood is burning and your house, along with your neighbors', is on fire, it is reasonable to address your own fire, perhaps at the same time as extending support to others.
There are plenty of reasons to believe that CO_2 is the major driver of global warming. It has been the leading proposed cause for decades and is generally consistent with known evidence.
Every time we mandate that some product can't be produced in the West, China gladly fills the gap, burning huge amounts of brown coal in the process. Why do you think they have a global monopoly on solar cell and lithium battery production? They are incredibly energy-intensive processes.
It would be like, in your analogy, somehow by putting out your own fire, someone else's house started burning.
Since the industrial revolution, a human being's quality of life has vastly improved. Modern agriculture (harvesters, fertilizers, food processing), transportation(cars, planes, rail, ships), day to day goods (plastics, steel, concrete), medicine (chemicals), even clean water in a city, all of these are predicated on one thing, the use of energy. And more importantly, the price of energy, the cheaper the better. And given the technology that humanity could master in the past and present, the vast majority of affordable energy comes from fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, and coal). Hence, quality of life and wealth is also predicated on the use of energy and emission of co2.
Given this context, if you look at the total amount of co2 emitted by a country throughout history, china is not the highest all, the western world is. And this emission has allowed the western world to gain great amount of wealth. Second, even today, china's co2 per captia is still lower than some western countries, for example, the US. China also produces a lot of world's industrial goods, like metal, chemicals, etc. In china, industrial electricity use accounts for 65% of the total electricity use. Of course, there could be inefficient use of energy in the industrial sectors, but increasingly, China's manufacturing is showing high levels of efficiency and the power efficiency is continue to improve.
I am not saying these to be anti-west. In fact, I am pro west and critical of china on many things. But in terms of energy and co2 emission, I am advocating for analyzing the situation with objectivity. If you view people are equal regardless of race, ethnicity, nationality and beliefs, I hope you understand that people should also have equal access to energy, and in the past, equal rights to release co2. When most of Chinese people can't even have enough food on the table, and I think its fair to allow them to develop first. While rich and well off nations who can afford to invest and reduce co2 footprint should do so.
I am not saying china should get a free pass. As China is becoming developed and people are being better off, it should be accountable to its co2 footprint too. And today we are doing that. We are working heavily to add clean sources of electricity(wind, solar, hydro, nuclear) and heavily promoting electrified transports (EVs, high speed trains, subways). We are implementing carbon trading system and that will have significant cost on co2 emission industries (oil gas, metal). Chinese government is actively shutting down or forcing upgrades emission and energy intensive companies and factories (steel, paper, textile, most recently bitcoin mining, and more). As you can imagine, there are a lot of PR backlash from the workers and business owners here, and the government is spending a lot of effort to minimize the push back and damage, for example, doing jobs transition program, re-training programs, compensations etc. We having been actively treating the ecosystem by 1) foresting, our forest coverage grew by a lot 2) fighting desertification, we actually reduced the desert area by reversing desertification. If you know what this takes, you know it's insanely difficult. 3) building water projects to increase water use efficiency, alleviate drought induced ecosystem collapse. For example, south to north water diversion project played a critical role in restoring wetlands and ground water in the water-lacking north. By planting trees and grass on 10s of thousands square kilometers of barren Loess Plateau and heavily managing agriculture on nearby banks, the yellow river is less yellow now because sediment is held in place and less is running off into the river. We have been doing all of these for the past 50 years.
Special call out for treating deserts. Many people dedicated their lives to live nearby the desserts and planting grass and vegetation to reverse desertification. In the desert, there is nothing but sand and wind. The wind blew up the sand and they hit your face like knives. The wind also blew up anything you plant in it. Yet these people kept trying, kept experimenting with methods to treat the deserts. Today, they have found ways to do exactly that and the results speak for themselves. These people could have easily found something more comfortable to do, yet, they chose to do the hard thing. And they did it for decades. Try imagine that. Their dedication and selflessness is utterly mind blowing. Its amazing feet of human achievement. But these stories are never ever been told to the world, let alone celebrated, because its from China. We don't want to talk about anything positive about China right?
We still have so much to do, all of our current efforts are of course not enough. But we know that, know our place, know the reality. Chinese government pledged peak carbon by 2030. Given all the current signs and activities, I think we are on the right track. I think we will continue to tackle this challenge, stepping harder on the gas peddle, and execute step by step. A steady, continuous, and unrelenting execution is ultimately what it takes to get anything done. I am a skeptic hopeful.
>"Shell is the biggest polluter in the Netherlands. The company emits nine times as much CO2 as the entire Netherlands combined.
Surely this is because shell is a multinational company and the netherlands is a small country?