solarpunk memes

"It's not the company's fault that you didn't recycle. Grow up!"

Why should our profits go down to save the world?

Or just "Climate change is real, but it is to late to do anything about it".

Doing God's work

The one case I have seen for hydrogen, that might be useful, is that when things like solar energy generation, create and overload of power, it can be used to create hydrogen, then the hydrogen can be stored, and used for a variety of ways to power things, in a largely eco-friendly, way. Otherwise... yeah.

Not only this, H₂ is also a green gas, and we can't afford the leaks of H₂ due to the used as an energy supply.

There is a more extreme version of doomerism which is accelerationism.

So sure, we may be doomed, and since no one is doing anything about it in time.. fuck it, let's speed things up. Build more coal, clear cut forests, kill every insect. Let's show people how bad it can get and how fast. No one's grandchild gets a future.

The nice thing about this worldview is that you wake up every morning to good news. New oil pipelines, shrinking aquifers to cool data centres, a couple dozen more extinct species, etc.

This belief system sees humans as a plague on the planet that is luckily self-healing. Good luck to the next wave of humans in 2-30 million years.

Sounds crazy right? Maybe, but since the only historical alternative is class violence, ..and since that's a no-no topic, we are left with the choice to accept a terminal diagnosis and just die like a good peon. We wouldn't want to inconvenience rich people.

The same rich people who have been spending the past two decades building reinforced under-mountain bunkers and meeting with security advisors for tips on how to keep human security in line in a world where money has no value. But no, that's just a hobby, they totally don't think the world is in trouble.

That's a strawman of doomerism. There's as many different opinions as there are "doomers", but most are probably in the realm of "do what we can to reduce the damage, but the science and math is saying we're way past any great solutions." I guess some would call that realism to separate it from the doomer label, but whatever it's called, that's where we are.

Let's get rid of fossil fuels and eat more plants?

Give up cheese... Or die...

Sometimes sacrifices must be made. It is a shame though, this planet is pretty.

Like...why would anyone believe a company whose interest is enmeshed with their claims?? A company isn't a person with morals. It's a Machiavellian machine with the sole purpose of maximizing profits. They will never ever intentionally make a claim that hurts their profits. It would make absolutely no sense for a company to reduce demand of its product. That would be soooooo counterintuitive. If you sold lemonade, would you publish a study that showed that lemonade harms people? If yes, then your company would stop selling lemonade and disband while every other lemonade seller would flood the market with the benefits of consuming lemonade.

Same for Shell, if I remember correctly.

Abolish the corporate veil! Their children and children's children deserve to go to public school.

A lot of O&G industry has pivoted to "Only we can fix climate change!" then started mopping up federal grants and subsidies to build quixotic hydrogen fuel cell, carbon capture, and "clean" carbon projects that consistently fail to pay dividends.

Their Republican enablers then point to these failures and announce "climate change is a hoax! We should go back to Drill Here, Drill Now!"

We go back into a debate, while O&G profits surge and temperatures continue to rise. Then everyone in the economy panics when a foreign power takes the lead on battery and nuclear technology.

It would be nice to at least have a plan to one day be immune to oil price chaos and geopolitical fights surrounding distant oil wells. And day now...