Our Mastodon friend Steve Genco (@8b05a7db) has posted a long and highly informative article about fossil fuels, politics, and climate change. I'll provide just a few excerpts here, and I really hope you'll read the whole thing...
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"The Oil Age May Not End the Way You Imagine It Will"

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere when we exit the Age of Oil will be the defining factor that determines how much heat our descendants will have to endure for the next several thousand years.

Here we enter the realm of human choice. On the one hand, we could stop burning fossil fuels tomorrow. Climate scientists tell us in no uncertain terms that each tenth of a degree of global warming we inflict on the planet will bring with it potentially catastrophic effects, including the likely triggering of irreversible tipping points that could render the planet not just hotter, but essentially uninhabitable by humans (not to mention millions of other species).

On the other hand, economists and politicians tell us if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, we would destroy the world economy, bring industrial civilization to its knees, and probably put the lives of a large fraction of the human population in jeopardy. And they’re probably right. So we could do it, but we won’t do it.

There is of course a deep irony in the fact that while we continue burning fossil fuels to prop up our global economy, those fossil fuels continue to heat up the planet and produce climate damage that is equally threatening to our global economy, if not more so.

🔴  Exxon has announced plans to double its shale oil production in the US over the next five years.

🔴  Shell announced earlier this year that cutting the world’s oil and gas production would be “dangerous and irresponsible.”

🔴  Both Shell and BP have reneged on prior plans to cut oil and gas production, now claiming that such moves would dampen profits.

🔴  As reported in the New York Times in April 2023, hundreds of new oil and gas extraction projects have been approved in the last year, and dozens more are expected to be approved.

🔴  The industry has co-opted the UN COP process so successfully that Saudi Arabia was able to remove any mention of phasing out fossil fuels from the 2022 IPCC report.

🔴  Based on projections by Rystad Energy, the 20 largest oil and gas companies are expected to invest $932 billion in developing new oil and gas fields over the next 9 years. By the end of 2040 the figure grows to a staggering $1.5 trillion.

🔴  Fossil fuel subsidies remain astronomical and governments are showing little enthusiasm for eliminating or even reducing them.

In essence, governments are paying fossil fuel companies to continue ratcheting up global warming to a level that could plausibly result in human extinction. But that’s not how governments see it. In their view, they are keeping the global economic engine running because, just like the internal combustion engine in your 2010 Ford pickup, if that engine isn’t provided with fuel, it will stop running. 

Both outcomes are happening simultaneously, because currently political leaders fear the end of capitalist accumulation (aka economic growth) more than they fear global warming. This is the major obstacle to any well-meaning plan for voluntary degrowth as a viable response to climate change and resource depletion.
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FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.ph/4eJJB

ALTERNATE LINK -- https://sjgenco.medium.com/the-oil-age-may-not-end-the-way-you-imagine-it-will-68143a68e775

#Environment #Climate #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #ClimateEmergency #Capitalism #BusinessAsUsual