Shell Silently Abandoned Its $100 Million-a-Year Plan to Offset CO2 Emissions
Europe's Biggest Oil Company Quietly Shelves a Radical Plan to Shrink Its Carbon Footprint
Archive: [ https://archive.ph/G0ULZ ]
CO2 "offsets" have always been bullshit green washing. The only way to regulate emissions is by directly regulating emissions. Not coming up with elaborate loopholes.
Is it even possible for a gas company to offset CO2 emissions? They would have to charge insane amounts
It's not possible for anyone to offset CO2 because that's just not how CO2 works. If its going into the air it doesn't matter how much money moves around in the background, it's still going into the air. Carbon offsets were never going to accomplish anything because physics don't work that way
Not really, because there are different "scopes" of emissions when declaring offsets:
Scope 1: emissions done directly during normal operations
Scope 2: emissions from the suppliers, transport and resourcing of raw materials etc.
Scope 3: indirect emissions caused by the use of the product and other effects the company is responsible for.
Obviously fossil fuel companies like Shell mostly have Scope 3 emissions. Barely any company that declares offsets even considers Scope 3 emissions though.
So all companies out there that even say they 100% offset, often just mean Scope 1 emissions. That's basically systemic green washing.
Also a lot of the offsets are nearly useless, so even if Scope 1 and 2 are offset you gotta subtract 90% ineffectiveness from the amount.
Agreed, I feel like they probably abandoned the plan because they realized $100M wasn’t enough…
No, they probably abandoned it because they only said they would do it because they thought it would increase their public appearance. Once they got the boost from saying they'd do it, if they just silently back out, it's unlikely that people notice and/or care anymore.... That's just how advertising works.
They probably never had any intention of actually following through to begin with.
I'll eat my fucking hat if Shell's follow-up here is to invest more money instead of less, absent state consequences forcing them to behave.
They are in the business of selling virgin oil. Anything they spend towards decarbonization hurts the selling of virgin oil. They know it. The rest of this shit is just advertising and they will terminate the campaign as soon as it stops performing. They can just do more adbuys for advertorial content through the NYT if there's any backlash.
They made $40 billion in profit on oil and gas in 2022 and they can't even be arsed to spend 0.25% to pretend to be doing something to reduce the rate of their eco-cide
from june 2022 to june 2023 shell did $365 billion in revenue. the amount dedicated this effort is .027%. one dollar of every three thousand six hundred and fifty.
Just confiscate all their money and the money of the shareholders of the past and present. They knew what they were doing. Then shut their enterprise down.
This, but first, randomly select 150 people from the planet at random to be in charge of it all. There is no state, organisation, political party or group/person who I would trust with making decisions about that money. I’d really just rather have a bunch of anonymous random people in charge of it.
Don't forget the managers!
Good because c02 emissions offsets are pretty much bullshit. I'd rather they do something productive for the environment with that money, than giving it to another snake oil salesman.
They are probably just going to keep it, lol
Shell isn't keeping it either The bastards (CEO, CFO...) are getting bigger bonuses instead since they did such a good job
I’d rather they do something productive for the environment with that money
Bet they use it for stock buybacks.
This is probably a good thing. Offsets programs are rife with abuse and frequently amount to nothing more than greenwashing. The reality is Shell never had any intention to do anything meaningful. At least their decision to cancel the program is honest.
I’d rather some scammers steal money from shell for nothing than Shell have more profits.
Yep, it's a publicly traded company whose duty is to make a profit. It's why DEI is dying off as well.
Also why life on earth is dying off as well...
Companies don't have feelings
Regulations are the way to fix things, just asking companies or their CEOs to be nice doesn't work
The ideal company perfectly maximizes profit, we just should work towards implementing for example 4 day work weeks, higher minimum wage and other great things using regulations
Effectively we should have an ever evolving cat and mouse game where regulations for companies keep getting stricter and stricter to improve the lives of the many because who would have guessed that weekends for example didn't completely destroy the world like company spokepeople said
Just saying, no one is upset sharks aren't turning vegan. Why anyone would be upset corporations aren't willingly doing a unprofitable thing would be the same thing.
Always happens. A commitment to achieve some climate goal in the future isn't even worth use as an buttwipe. There need to be serious consequences for failure that go above and beyond the worst-case theoretical cost of the commitment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
It's literally nothing. Only ACTUALLY decarbonizing is worth a damn.
And to be clear, offsets in ANY form don't count either. The Paris commitments are to get to ZERO carbon. The only way it makes sense for a country to sell an offset is if they sell that offset at an equivalent price to what it will cost you to get rid of your LAST ton of CO2. Since the offsets aren't nearly that expensive, we know they are load of total bullshit. They're fraudulent. Double or triply so for non-national exchanges.
Carbon removal can count, but the legit research is almost always worse bang for your buck than just fucking decarbonizing.
To add on to this, a common carbon "offset" is to pay land owners to not cut down trees that they often weren't planning on cutting down anyway. John Oliver has a segment on Carbon Offsets.
It also has what is called the "leakage" issue in carbon offsets -- if one group of people were going to cut down the trees, get paid, and don't, there's still a demand for the timber/land. Some different hectare of trees somewhere else will likely get cut down instead.
It really is a rare case where the neoliberal logic has it right. We expect the cost of decarbonization to grow as we have less and less CO2 being produced. The first tons of CO2 to get rid of are the easiest and cheapest ones. The very last ones, the holdouts, are going to be the most difficult and expensive. In a paradigm where as close to 100% of carbon as possible must be eliminated, then any carbon offsets only make sense if they're being sold at an equivalent price to those last tons of CO2 to be eliminated. Because otherwise, the person who thinks they're selling it is really just loaning it out -- and the payment is guaranteed to come due.
So carbon offsets should be at least as expensive as, say, direct air carbon capture. Likely more, since even air capture may struggle on those last few tons of emissions. And that's assuming no scammy accounting practices with the emissions are happening. When in reality, carbon offsets is nearly nothing but scammy practices.
Don't forget having multiple parties pay to not cut down the same tree(s) that weren't going to be cut down.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=6p8zAbFKpW0
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
https://piped.video/watch?v=GRB6rSDW5i4
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
It was pretty obvious they would be doing this since they removed references to it a couple months ago.
Shell made 40 billion in profits in 2022. 100 million is one quarter of one percent of that. That’s what they couldn’t spare to even look like they were trying to help the environment. The things that should be done to these executives would probably get me banned from Lemmy if I said. Fuck these villainous asshats with broken glass.
Funny you say that. I was banned from Reddit for suggesting that suicidal people should take oil-ceos with them instead of wasting their death. Of course I learned my lesson and won't do that again.
Sorry, all we have is school shooters.
While a nice thought I guess, it would change nothing as they would just hire the next greedy guy in line and on and on it goes.
People really don't realise/want to see the scale of the problem.
There are nearly 3000 billionaires in the world, at least six of them are worth more than a hundred billion.
Each.
The amount of money other resources, and power these people hold and hoard is literally unfathomable.
How do you even visualise 12.2 trillion dollars?
No amount of personal "every little helps" can make a dent in that.
People need to get their heads out of the sand (or in some cases the boot out of their mouth) and start putting the energy and time they waste on pointless exercises in "personal responsibility", and instead invest them in holding those who are actually responsible, accountable.
The system that not only allows, but enables and encourages billionaires to exist needs to be abolished, and their resources need to be redistributed and put towards building a better world for all of society, globally, which they could easily do.
But they won't do that willingly, nor will they let you vote them away.
I know it's an uncomfortable realisation, but it's reality, and the quicker people come to accept it, the sooner we unite to tear them down.
Don't forget - revolutions aren't just about violence on the front line (and eventually on the billionaires' door steps), they are also about solidarity and supporting those on the front line (be it protesting or striking or other direct action), but also about supporting your community every day, donating and volunteering what and where you can (directly where possible rather than via large organisations with advertising budgets and highly paid execs), lifting each other up, helping with meals or with childcare, teach, create posters, propagandise, everyone can find the right roll for them. Strong communities and dual power (communal structures to replace state-capitalist ones) are a necessary basis for a better, co operative future.
Looking at that visualisation of a trillion really puts it into perspective when an extra $20 note can change my whole week
You’ve got my vote!
To them it’s all about the money. They don’t give a shit about us, the ignorant moronic cunts. They should be offsetting all carbon emissions they ever created, but instead we have this flimsy corporate bullshit.
Economics is the only answer. Tax the rich and their products.
CO2 offsets don't work and aren't a solution to our problem. Shell is just opting not to waste their money on useless projects.
Are they doing something effective instead?