Oil CEO says blaming the energy industry for the climate crisis ‘like blaming farmers for obesity’

Lee Duna@lemmy.nz to World News@lemmy.world – 262 points –
Oil CEO says blaming the energy industry for the climate crisis ‘like blaming farmers for obesity’
cnbc.com
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If he means like blaming farmers, who intentionally prevented the publication of research about how eating too much of the food they were producing would most likely kill people by causing diabetes, then yes, he has a point.

Won't somebody think of the capitalists?!

It turns out that hiding the research was unnecessary. Now everyone has known about that research for decades but they buy even more oil than they did before.

I know, it's like people don't even care enough to walk the extra mile down the road to the Renewable Energy store to buy their solar gasoline and wind powered home heating fuel.

Not necessarily. There's a lot of big moves happening now that would have been a lot more effective decades ago.

They've spent so much time poisoning the discourse and bribing politicians between then and now. So we're playing catch up and we're doing it against a lot of interference from bought off politicians.

Had they not been lobbying and bribing and hiding research and publishing phony studies since at least the 70s, things might be a lot different.

It's because it was a slow boil. If it is in your face you will decide not to use it, but if you have only heard about it after you have made it an Integral part of your life, and so has most of society, then... change is hard.

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Remember when the farming industry did its own independent research on obesity, found they themselves were the cause, and then buried the evidence?

Remember when the farm industry spilled millions of barrels of crude corn syrup in every ocean?

Remember when the f

another poster taken from us too soon by the exxon hit squads :(

They have a point, especially when you consider farmers lobby for things like corn subsidies, which leads to high-fructose corn syrup being nearly free, and added to everything, which leads to obesity.

Or, there's the whole food pyramid thing. The agriculture industry (i.e. farmers) industry lobbies to have the food pyramid reflect their profitable products, telling people to eat 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta every day, and suggesting people limit the fruit and vegetables they eat. Nuts and beans were thrown into the same category as red meat. They then arranged for that food pyramid to be everywhere, even taught in schools, convincing kids that it was a scientifically proven way to eat healthy, when it was largely marketing material from the farmer lobby.

Fundamentally, pollution / climate change is the result of people's lifestyle choices. Oil workers wouldn't extract the oil from the ground unless people were buying it and burning it. Similarly, people wouldn't get fat unless they were eating, and when they're eating the food was grown by farmers. But, take a step back and see the lobbying, the regulatory capture, the lack of choices people have, etc. and you see that both the oil industry and farmers can be blamed for a lot of obesity and climate change.

Can I offer you this as a peace offering?

Food pie which contains pie?

My country's food "pyramid". It was created by doctors and is taught in schools.

These are the people who are in charge of fixing the climate lmfao were so fucked.

Oil CEOs are in charge of fixing the climate? Since when?

Well, COP28 was literally hosted by an Oil CEO...

And with Regulatory capture, many oil execs are positioned to decide energy and environmental matters.

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It's becoming clearer and clearer that we are in charge of fixing it, and we need to organize ourselves.

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Taken at face value, I can see the argument here. However, the reality is that the Oil Industry has spent disgusting amounts of money lobbying (bribing) governments and organizations in order to slow or outright kill programs related to clean energy or anything related to weaning off of oil. They are 100% part of the problem. So fuck'em.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit didn't just invent the idea of oil interests destroying the trolley system

It wasn't us, it was the car centric society. Teehee.

...like blaming tobacco companies for lung cancer?

"Hey, you can't hold us responsible if we deliberately make and market an addictive product. It's clearly the fault of the people who purchase and use our product exactly as designed and intended."

Are you saying that oil is addictive in the same way as nicotine?

Honestly, they wouldn’t be wrong if you look at all the people who hear the word EV and immediately start throwing tantrums.

But they’re mostly making the point that those companies are doing a lot of work to try to tell people that oil is perfectly safe when they know otherwise, discredit competition, and then reap rewards while people have to live in a world where “choice” is largely just which gas station you go to.

Honestly, they wouldn’t be wrong if you look at all the people who hear the word EV and immediately start throwing tantrums.

People have preferences. That would be like saying that people aren't fans of the New England Patriots, that they're addicted to the team. Addiction is a real and serious thing, and just having a preference isn't the same.

those companies are doing a lot of work to try to tell people that oil is perfectly safe

Yeah, they spread disinformation about their product, but who doesn't? The agriculture industry definitely does. Every farmer wants you to believe that you can eat as much of you want of their crop and be fine.

Throwing a tantrum is one way to express a preference, I suppose, but most people grow out of that in early childhood.

Except, the oil industry already knew since like the 80s that burning their stuff will cause climate change.

And it's insane that they are still denying it. Truly the worst timeline to be in.

Man, whoever accepted the bribe to hold this thing in Dubai must have made out like a bandit.

Nah, probably a better analogy is like blaming the Sacklers for the opioid epidemic.

In the U.S., we can probably blame farm subsidies for some of the obesity. Every politician supports corn subsidies (mostly because they all think they’ll be president someday and the Iowa Caucus is historically the first step to that). The result is that high fructose corn syrup is artificially cheap as an ingredient and industrial-sized food and soda producers use the fuck out of it.

It’s not so much that corn sugar is worse for you than sugar cane sugar as that “Low fat!” marketed products are often loaded with added sugars (and salt) to make the product more palatable. You can’t expect consumers to sit at the grocery reading over every label.

And all you need to know about diet recommendations in the U.S. are that they’re done by the Department of Agriculture and not the Department of Health and Human Services. It’s as stupid as asking an oil company executive to help decide how we stop digging up carbon-based molecules and lighting them on fire.

Victim blaming.

These scumbags would be more useful as mulch.

I would say its more like blaming the sugar/corn industry for lobbying for subsidies or getting studies that point the finger at fat over sugar as the problem.