If an arsonist lit your house on fire, in addition to sending him to jail you could also sue his estate for damages - Isn't lighting the planet on fire worse?
Legislation to accomplish this goal seems elusive. The only path is the judicial process. Yes, it may take years, but in combination with a green energy economy, we could quash the devastation before it ends civilization.
Assume that our government’s purpose is to promote our general welfare using best practice-based solutions and defend us from those who do things adverse to our rights and communities’ interests. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon our government to protect us from the negative externalities inflicted on our citizens and the rest of the world by the oligarchs (and other morbidly rich assholes). Thom has chronicled an impressive list of negative externalities (defined here as undesirable impacts on unrelated third parties because of the production or consumption of goods or services), and, taken together, they are existentially harmful to people and other living things. We need our government to end corporate personhood before corporate personhood ends the possibility of life on Earth. (And if you have a better (and hopefully pithier) definition of our government's purpose, please share it.)
DIVESTMENT-"At the institutional level, divestment is a policy and set of economic sanctions used by corporations, groups of shareholders, individuals, and governments to put pressure on a company or a country, usually to protest either the company’s or the country’s policies and practices."-Britanica
Breakout the shame and add some pressure for those with the big money. It has been working. Perhaps that's because they are afraid of what Thom is suggesting.
Here are some quotes from an executive survey: “Constrained capital will lead to significantly higher commodity prices. And it isn’t the administration’s fault—this is a Wall Street and environmental, social and governance-led charge,” one executive said in the comments accompanying the survey for the fourth quarter. “Despite us being one of the top-performing energy funds in America, investors are cutting our funding by 80 percent. We believe this is a two-edged sword—if it is happening to us, it is likely happening to everyone,” the executive added. “The political pressure forcing available capital away from the energy industry is a problem for everyone,” another executive at an exploration and production (E&P) firm noted. “Banks view lending to the energy industry as having a “political risk,” the executive added."
Please Google the article they're from in OILPRICE.com; ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance:
Fossil Fuel Financing Under Pressure As Wall Street Caves To ESG Demands. By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 02, 2022,
I'm about your age, Thom, and it is just flabbergasting to me that after all these years under- grounding has been squelched and squelched. I am away from home for the "Holidays" because my mountain place can't be warmed without PG&E, and the forecast was for sticky snow and wind....It's an existential moral failure of our American civilization: a cultural choice of winners over mostly losers, and profits over "acceptable" casualties. But I am humble that I have a place to stay, and my heart goes out to my fellow citizens in Boulder and that great gutting by tornadoes lately and on and on. What do you bet the power "public utilities" back there whine, oh, it's just too expensive to build back underground, besides it'll take too long...?
I made this argument quite aggressively in Forbes 10 years ago and got reamed for it. Keep up the good work, Thom!! https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevezwick/2012/04/19/a-tennessee-firemans-solution-to-climate-change/
Legislation to accomplish this goal seems elusive. The only path is the judicial process. Yes, it may take years, but in combination with a green energy economy, we could quash the devastation before it ends civilization.
Assume that our government’s purpose is to promote our general welfare using best practice-based solutions and defend us from those who do things adverse to our rights and communities’ interests. Therefore, it’s incumbent upon our government to protect us from the negative externalities inflicted on our citizens and the rest of the world by the oligarchs (and other morbidly rich assholes). Thom has chronicled an impressive list of negative externalities (defined here as undesirable impacts on unrelated third parties because of the production or consumption of goods or services), and, taken together, they are existentially harmful to people and other living things. We need our government to end corporate personhood before corporate personhood ends the possibility of life on Earth. (And if you have a better (and hopefully pithier) definition of our government's purpose, please share it.)
DIVESTMENT-"At the institutional level, divestment is a policy and set of economic sanctions used by corporations, groups of shareholders, individuals, and governments to put pressure on a company or a country, usually to protest either the company’s or the country’s policies and practices."-Britanica
Breakout the shame and add some pressure for those with the big money. It has been working. Perhaps that's because they are afraid of what Thom is suggesting.
Here are some quotes from an executive survey: “Constrained capital will lead to significantly higher commodity prices. And it isn’t the administration’s fault—this is a Wall Street and environmental, social and governance-led charge,” one executive said in the comments accompanying the survey for the fourth quarter. “Despite us being one of the top-performing energy funds in America, investors are cutting our funding by 80 percent. We believe this is a two-edged sword—if it is happening to us, it is likely happening to everyone,” the executive added. “The political pressure forcing available capital away from the energy industry is a problem for everyone,” another executive at an exploration and production (E&P) firm noted. “Banks view lending to the energy industry as having a “political risk,” the executive added."
Please Google the article they're from in OILPRICE.com; ESG stands for Environmental Social Governance:
Fossil Fuel Financing Under Pressure As Wall Street Caves To ESG Demands. By Tsvetana Paraskova - Jan 02, 2022,
I'm about your age, Thom, and it is just flabbergasting to me that after all these years under- grounding has been squelched and squelched. I am away from home for the "Holidays" because my mountain place can't be warmed without PG&E, and the forecast was for sticky snow and wind....It's an existential moral failure of our American civilization: a cultural choice of winners over mostly losers, and profits over "acceptable" casualties. But I am humble that I have a place to stay, and my heart goes out to my fellow citizens in Boulder and that great gutting by tornadoes lately and on and on. What do you bet the power "public utilities" back there whine, oh, it's just too expensive to build back underground, besides it'll take too long...?
Wondering what your take is on “The Ministry for the Future” by Kim Stanley Robinson. I have just started reading it.
The Republican Party Is Succeeding Because We Are Not a True Democracy:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/03/opinion/us-democracy-constitution.html