It's easy to blame the oil companies, but in fact, the governments around the world did not care or do anything about it. Car manufacturers did nothing to decrease size of their cars or fuel efficiency (certainly not the last 20 years). And consumers did not bother to buy smaller and more fuel efficient cars.
Everyone has known about global warming for 40 years. Everyone blames oil companies and not themselves.
If we completely stopped to use or at least massively reduced the usage of oil then there would be no rich oil companies.
It's easy to blame someone else.
[1] Carl Sagan testifying before congress in 1985.
I blame government AND fossil fuel companies. Harder to blame individuals when they're just trying to survive in a system they didn't build and have little power to change and they happen to be targets of PR campaigns to make them doubt reality. Funded by fossil fuel money.
Government does what the voters want so the get elected/re-elected. Unfortunately voters don't seem to want to pay more tax for fuel and electricity. They don't seem to want to pay additional taxes for their flights etc.
Politicians are slowly phasing in these kind of policies, but it is not fast and drastic enough.
Maybe soon with a bit more forest fires and heat waves and water scarcity the population will ask and show in the polls that they want more and more drastic measures.
Once the majority of the population decides we cannot continue as we have done, then things will happen, but it goes to slow unfortunately.
Just look at everyone who without blinking takes a long flight for their holiday. In one swoop they spend as much energy as they use in one year on commuting with car, cooking, heating house, warming water, household machines etc.
Al Gore won the US popular vote and lost the electoral college vote by a whisker (and a recount.) The average voter was not opposed to his pro-climate agenda. If anything, the narrow nature of Bush’s win was due to his very pro-business agenda (which was huge on benefits for fossil fuel drillers). The idea of a candidate winning the popular vote and losing the electoral college may not seem surprising today, as politicians have optimized their pitch to appeal to the narrowest slice of the electorate they can win with — but it was extremely unusual back then (in fact Gore was the first Presidential candidate since the 1800s to lose this way.) The partisan Bush v. Gore Supreme Court decision that decided the recount is also one of the most shameful partisan episodes in our country’s history.
My point is, Al Gore ran on climate change first and foremost and he did NOT win by a landslide.
If the US population actually cared, and and was willing to pay the price for taking action, then the nextbest presidential candidate could just run with it; voters would simply disregard how that candidate would interpret the second amendment, or his faith, or his view on gender/race representation, or healthcare or police-- he could simply win on a climate preservation platform.
But you very obviously can't, not 20 years ago and not now, because people care about other things more.
In 2000 climate change was mainly a theoretical issue, one that seemed mostly cost and little (immediate) upside. I remember viewing this as a problem that would mostly affect our children and grandchildren (a view that looks increasingly stupid in hindsight.) And despite all of this a majority of the US electorate still voted for Gore in 2000. Something that is completely at odds with the same party's platform during the entire 20th century.
While the US screwed around in the Middle East, European politicans went ahead and created a cap-and-trade regime in 2003. With a different election outcome the US might have done the same. Instead, one side of the US political landscape fought like goblins to prevent this -- and one result of this strategy is a platform that has failed to win the popular vote in 5 out of the last 6 elections.
The view that climate action isn't possible is a manufactured opinion, one that isn't supported by the 2000 election.
> In 2000 climate change was mainly a theoretical issue, one that seemed mostly cost and little (immediate) upside. I remember viewing this as a problem that would mostly affect our children and grandchildren (a view that looks increasingly stupid in hindsight.)
That is interesting to hear, because this sounds like an accurate classification to me (even if it is a bit mercenary). How did your view on this change, and why?
> The view that climate action isn't possible is a manufactured opinion, one that isn't supported by the 2000 election.
That is NOT my view: my view is that the electorate is mostly still unwilling to make sacrifices in favor of climate action, and all "free" climate change mitigations are slow and inconsequential.
Thought experiment: Biden takes drastic action to bring US Co2 emissions in line with Europe/China within a decade or less-- prices for gas and electricity rise by, say, 80%. Taxes are also additionally increased to subsidise green energy in India/other developing nations.
Do you honestly think he gets re-elected? Note how that is still insufficient, 8tons Co2/person/year are not sustainable globally...
I also think the problems are the exact same in Europe, emissions are just lower there because less fossil fuels availability and wealth (compare select rich countries like Luxembourg which are even significantly worse than the US in Co2/capita).
A huge turning point for me was when climate scientists brought forward their estimates for ice-free arctic summers by 1-2 decades. That's a huge revision, and it made me realize that consensus climate science predictions (as terrifying as they are) are probably weighted toward being much too optimistic.
> my view is that the electorate is mostly still unwilling to make sacrifices in favor of climate action
The electorate has made huge sacrifices in favor of climate change. We just passed a 1/2 trillion dollars worth of climate incentives in the IRA, and a majority of voters say they support the incentives. Polling also supports that most Americans think climate change is a problem, and want the government to do something about it.
The important thing to remember here is that this doesn't get cheaper or better as we get farther out. Right now we're experiencing an exponential decrease in the LCOE of renewable energy, mainly stimulated by industrial policy in the US, Europe and China. If we'd pursued those policies earlier (either explicitly, or via a tiny carbon tax in the 2000s) we would now be a decade deeper into an exponential process.
Meanwhile politicians spent enormous amounts of money on both an invasion of Iraq and a healthcare bill, neither of which ever consistently polled higher than plans to address climate change. We should never pretend that our mistakes are the only choice, they're just the choice we made.
The average voter barely knows how their own income tax works, let alone a carbon tax.
Voter perception is shaped by marketing, and large energy companies lobbied hard, very hard, to shape public opinion about global warming, to include, famously, hiring Oglivy to launch a campaign about individual responsibility instead of the systemic, constant push by industry.
Sure. But if people actually cared about climate change, he would have won by a long shot, because Bush was not even competing on that front...
Swap out his "mitigate climate change now" platform for <some generic 10 year old democrat talking points> and he would have probably not done much worse, and thats exactly my point.
Another Inconvenient Truth is that the very structure of our political systems may make it literally impossible to fix this problem. And unfortunately, our culture is not able to discuss reforming institutions, perhaps due to an excess of faith (kill religion and it has to go somewhere maybe).
> Another Inconvenient Truth is that the very structure of our political systems may make it literally impossible to fix this problem.
Can you expand on this? Because I disagree-- in my view, climate change in the US does not get tackled "appropriately" because of lack of will in the population-- everything else is mostly just shifting blame IMO.
The public may have the will, but if the political system or those who are within it (which is a function of the system) aren't willing to exercise the will of the people, it ain't getting done.
Take Medicare For All as an example: bipartisan support among the public, never gonna happen.
How people continue to fall for "Democracy" being our most sacred institution would be puzzling if one didn't realize that the world runs on stories, and those who write such stories are professionals at it, whereas those who consume them are rank amateurs....like taking candy from babies.
If you ask me, if the public really cared about climate change, they'd be willing to surrender their memes....and maybe they are, but they are not able - some things require training, and such things are not taught in school, which is rather convenient.
They knew about this in the 1980s, and have actively laboured to hide it from the public[1].
[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...
Edit: People have got to stop assuming that commenters are American...