This would mean a lot more coming from a major company whose profit margins would be affected by trying to prevent climate change rather than a bank.
To be fair, I feel a bank acknowledging it is pretty notable in and of itself. You would imagine banks are typically more concerned about the pragmatic bottom line, so if even they are taking note, that's a bit alarming.
Not really, a bank is the perfect entity to say we're fucking shit up. They have no profit to be made from fucking over the earth, they have no profit to be made from not fucking it either. Banks profits are based only long term stability in the end, and in this instance it just so happens that not destroying earth happens to align with that need.
This is exactly why it'd mean a lot more coming from a major oil company or something though. A major oil company has clear reasons to deny climate change and adhering to anything to prevwent climate change will at the very least cut into their profit margins quite a lot.
i'm surprised we haven't seen more ecoterrorism, tbh.
Seems like the few wealthy environmentalists don't want to spend their money on that kind of thing.
That's because the ramifications are very abstract. Nothing to gain from it nowadays. What do you think would happen? Bombing Foxconn? Apple? IKEA? Pig and cow farms?
People don't attribute floods, refugees, wars and droughts to their habit of buying a new phone every 2 years and a shitload of cheap meat every day.
Disabling refineries the world over would inflate gas prices to the point that it would prevent people from buying gasoline, thereby grinding the economy to a halt and forcing companies to switch to developing EVs if they haven't already. It's a chaotic solution to the problem of ICE vehicles, but a solution nonetheless. Other countries are making an effort to switch over, but this is the only way that the USA ever will that will be quick enough to actually make an impact.
I guess people aren't angry enough to do this yet, but once the food starts running out sooner or later I would imagine there will be a hell of a lot of vindication being tossed around.
This is part of the reason why I advocate for less consumption as opposed to alternative sources of eg power generation and transport. Everyone goes on about how electric cars are the future, and even though an electric car can be efficient to run, the environmental impact of extracting all of those virgin inputs to make millions of more batteries and chasses; it takes its toll. That’s not to say that combustion engine cars are cleaner to build, but rather, that people should be holding onto their cars for longer, or contemplate cycling or very efficient public transport.
Same with power generation. Everyone here has a boner for nuclear power, which is great and all, but shouldn’t we focus on just consuming less to begin with? Then we wouldn’t need thousands of nuclear power plants to sustain humanity into the future, and could very reasonably get by on renewable energy.
You're never going to get people do so something they don't want to do over something as esoteric as helping the environment.
Well it’s a good thing most of us live in countries with market-based economies; the tools are already there to encourage less demand for products, and that can be something as simple as consumption taxes. And eg for the brief period of time that Australia had a carbon tax, consumption had significantly dropped.
That can work in other countries, but America is the country where people modify their diesel cars to be less efficient to piss off people who care about the environment.
And people would screech "you're stepping on my FREEDOM to buy useless crap"
We. Cannot. Sustain. On. Renewables.
They are not going to provide enough energy. We literally need to go nuclear, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Eh, so I should start placing my great wall of china: serbia edition to stop all the future refugees, right now huh
Yes we cannot sustain on renewables if we continue with our current rate of consumption... but who said we can’t reduce our consumption? Why is consumption treated as a fixed, sure thing?
We’re in a thread about how we use more resources than the earth can regenerate at a faster rate than ever before, so why are we talking about the resource supply side of things when the actual problem is on the resource demand side?
Consumption is only going to increase though, so that sounds like a great idea but it doesn't mesh with our reality. Also, we should be reducing, but there's a limit to how much we really can.
What are you willing to give up? Lighting in your home? Air conditioning? Fridges? Somethings gotta go if you're going to talk about "Reduction", and it won't be large companies or factories reducing consumption, it'll be you and me.
There's no reason to NOT go nuclear. Why shouldn't we use that as a source of energy when it's nearly limitless, doesn't pose any real danger to the world, or people, and is currently a safe enough alternative to anything we have? Because we should reduce? Why not do both?
Renewables are not sustainable, even if we reduce. we cannot store the energy they produce to satisfy the grid, and likely won't be able to do so in a meaningful way.
People just need to accept that we're going to have to go nuclear to satisfy our current demand, let alone the growing demand in the future.
This is actually a really good thing (not the contents of the report, but the report itself). The sooner that the financial sector turns against climate change denial and towards meaningful change, the sooner momentum will shift in the direction of progress.
I wouldn't count on that as long as lobbyists still have as much clout as they do in the US government. I know the article is about a UK bank but I'm still not counting on tons of progress considering how big of a polluter the US is.
Meanwhile our politicians focus on useless shit
Resource Wars now.
What with the current admin's fascist streak and this part of Fallout 1's intro
the European Commonwealth would dissolve into quarreling, bickering nation-states, bent on controlling the last remaining resources on Earth.
Kind of disturbing.
HSBC is one of the world's largest financial institutions and has a lot of sway with the oil/gas industry.
I think there are lots of small things which everyone does that are insignificant on their own, but can add up when considered together. No one has to give up lighting, air conditioning or heaters, fridges, washing machines, 60 inch TVs or whatever. I have all of those things, and my average daily electricity consumption is only 7.4kWh. Meanwhile, the average daily consumption for single person households in my area is 11kWh. So I think that there is plenty that many people can do to reduce their consumption.
It can be small things like only ever having one light on at a time, turning some appliances off at the wall when not in use, using shorter washing machine cycles, not using clothes drying machines etc. And there are ways which people can reduce consumption when out and about. Eg not using disposable cutlery, not buying plastic-wrapped fruits and vegetables. Using reusable shopping bags etc.
I think the ‘fuck it let’s go nuclear’ argument is a bit sort sighted, because it would just mask genuine problems regarding excessive consumption. Maybe nuclear can be considered for baseload power, but it’s certainly not the be-all end-all to our problems.
I think you really, really need to do more research into the viability of renewable energy long term in regards to our grid before you start spouting off with unsupported stuff like this.
Nuclear isn't a "Fuck it" option. It is our ONLY option for truly clean energy. Wind, solar, geo-thermal, and hydro power all have massive environmental costs, and in the case of Wind, we're not even sure what level of saturation is acheivable without dramatically altering the weather. So, to me, I hear you saying "Fuck it do renewables", and you hear me saying "Fuck it do nuclear", but neither is the case. It's that renewables have a place, as a side line generator for gap fill in our grid. It cannot, and should not be thought of as anything but that. It will cause serious environmental damage to do so. Green advocates don't acknowledge this, and argue out of bad faith every. fucking. time.
Mate I don’t think you read my post, and specifically the sentence where I said that nuclear could be used for baseload power. Which you quoted, mind you. Have a read of it again.
And I don’t know how but you keep on missing the overall point; this is literally a thread about excessive consumption of resources (with Earth overshoot day now 1 August), but for some reason you are fixated on waving around your nuclear energy boner. This is not a supply problem; it’s a demand problem. Yes I can bold text too.
And as I said in my first reply to you, yes we should reduce. But if we're talking about who will reduce, it's you and me losing things that make life more bearable, and not corporations losing anything.
Facebooks largest data centre draws more power than the reduction of 4kw/h multiplied by a ten thousand homes or so. Are they going to cut back? No. Are you and I going to be forced to do so? Likely.
Nuclear should be our baseload, and yes I read where you said that. It however you implied it to be, seems dismissive of the issue.
In essence, yes we should reduce our consumption of power. We should also prepare for the inevitable reality of more people existing, and demanding more things. Meaning we all reduce more and more, or produce some more.
Yes I'm full well aware of the earth overshoot day, and I full well understand how terrible that is. The problem as I see it is, all regulation about this will be from the top down, and as we've seen in literally every other political arena, the big guy always wins.
The thing is it isn't just about energy. It is about resources as a whole, eventually the planet is going to run out of them because the planet cannot replenish them fast enough. Lumber, minerals, etc. You can have nuclear as a energy source, but when it comes down to it as a planet manufacturing will come to a halt. The world economy will crash from the panic and the skyrocketing of goods. Mass produced items which we take for granted will become a luxury. The super rich might be okay for a while, but the suffering will be tremendous for regular people.
Reducing global emissions and promoting sustainability is something that needs to happen top down, it cannot be achieved by the collective population deciding to suddenly consume less, personal responsibility won't fix it nearly enough.
Nruh might as well lump nuclear in as renewable considering how long it can sustain us, more than enough time to transfer to other sources by the time we run out of uranium.
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