this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2026
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cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/1097575

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[–] Tiger_Man_@szmer.info 1 points 12 hours ago

spoiler alert: the numbers are much higher: https://www.opensustainabilityindex.org/company/shell

another spoiler alert: emission of an average country is much bigger. for countries i will analize poland because its where i live and usa:

for poland: total co2 emmision of poland in 2022 was 315mt. total greenhouse gases emission was 380mt. however 319 megatons of that (83%) was polands nearly entirely coal-based power plants. which means that if not the pro-coal lobbying our GHS emmission would be nearly 80% lower. the flora consumes 35 megatons of co2 per year. so net co2 emission minus the power sector would be 26mt, less than a half of what shell does

source (polish) https://www.ekologia.pl/srodowisko/czy-emisje-w-polsce-maleja-kto-kopci-najbardziej/

usa emits 6343 megatons of GHS per year 79% of which is co2. only 25% of that is from electric power. the biggest factor is residential&commercial(31%)(each of which is around 15%)

source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks

tl:dr: it is partially your flaut

[–] tmr9999@lemmy.world 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I'm not sure about the data sources for this image but from some quick research it looks like this includes scope 3 (end user emissions) for shell and chevron by not the others. The data realistically looks a bit more like this:

πŸ‡ΈπŸ‡¦ Saudi Aramco: ~2.0 Billion metric tons (Estimated; excludes Scope 3 from official tracking) πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ Shell: ~1.1 Billion metric tons πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ ExxonMobil: ~813 Million metric tons πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ Chevron: ~600 to 780 Million metric tons (Varies by accounting method) πŸ‡¬πŸ‡§ BP: ~400 Million metric tons

Context: For all these companies, Scope 3 makes up 85% to 95% of their total climate impact. This is why state-owned giants like Aramco and US majors like Exxon/Chevron focus their climate targets almost entirely on their own drilling operations (Scope 1 & 2) while excluding the footprint of the products they sell.

In any case this is pretty bad and we are probably gonners.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I still feel like these numbers are not appropriately representative... iirc, the vast majority of world oil supplies come from nationalized oil companies, which keep the lions share of the profits of oil production as a source of national revenue. So assuming I havent been misled, my best guess is that the private firms are contracted for extraction and refinement, and so the total carbon footprint gets lumped together under them, rather than being split between the national governments who contract them

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 day ago

Oligarchs. People own Shell, they make demands. Those shareholders demand profits over all else. Those companies are just constructs we've made to organize making money. Not to say you can't go after them... well, you can't because they own the governments... but you get my point

[–] pyre@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

yeah but you make sure you don't fart a lot and keep it in as much as possible

[–] TwodogsFighting@lemdro.id 3 points 1 day ago

Word of the day is 'Oubliette'.

[–] HugeNerd@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Spoiler alert: if we weren't 8 billion and fertilized our crops with fossil fuels, then we wouldn't need that much fossil energy...

Yes, it's you. It's me. It's your 5 kids. The oil didn't pump itself out of the ground and set itself on fire for fun.

It's your plane trip, it's your military, it's your proxy wars.

[–] REDACTED@infosec.pub 8 points 1 day ago

Whenever I see posts like this, I really don't understand if people really think they produce oil/gas/fuel/food packaging, etc. for themselves.

If someone offers a money for a product, there will be someone else willing to sell it to you. You are the consumer.

Think of it like this - a electricity company generates electricity, as much as it's needed for current demand. I'm the final consumer, the demander, the reason infrastructure exists. And I shall be happy burning my RTX 5080 while looking into ACs to cool the room from that PC at the same time, hitting 2kW usage just so I can do nothing and game, because who cares. I tried living green, but when you see MFs producing more footprint in their shitty trucks in a day than you do in a month using Ebike, and people still decide to blame some placeholder instead of our own society and way of living, then it's quite clear nothing will change and it's a lost cause.

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 125 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (21 children)

To the people who are saying "Yeah but you're the one who buys the oil!!!!!" Please stop. Please think about any of the context surrounding those supposedly individualist decisions. Please think about what the most practical solutions are for fixing the problem. You can do that and be helpful or you can be smug and look down on others.

Sure, you buy and drive the car, but you didn't:

  • Design towns and cities that can only be easily traversed by car.
  • Decide where jobs and housing were located.
  • Spend millions of dollars to lobby against public transit.
  • Spend millions of dollars to lobby against regulations.
  • Spend millions of dollars to lobby against green energy investments.
  • Spend millions of dollars to lobby for imperialist wars to access oil.
  • Spend millions of dollars to spread misinformation about climate change.
  • Decide what cars were available to buy and at what price. (Demand driving supply only makes sense if consumers have a way to signal that they want something that isn't being offered. The main market way of doing that would be to not buy anything until the right good is offered... but as stated above, people can't just opt out of needing a car if the places where they can live and work are built around cars.)
  • Decide to be too poor to buy luxury goods masquerading as green alternatives.

Framing the issue in terms of individual decisions lets the people who have most actively stood in the way of progress off the hook and ironically shirks any real responsibility to fix the issue. You think by saying that it's us doing it that you take responsibility for your actions and therefore because YOU got a hybrid car or some shit, you did your part and everyone else needs to do the same and it's not your responsibility anymore. Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests destroying the planet takes effort that deviates from your normal life. You have to actually talk to people, work with them, and take part in collective action. And your responsibility isn't over until the problem is solved.

Also, sort of related: I always take issue with how dealing with issues like climate change is framed in terms of making sacrifices. Like sure, are we going to be able to do as much excessive consumption as we do now? No. But there are so many climate policies that would also just make life better for people in the short/medium term. We would be happier, healthier, and safer in a world where we got rid of our dependence on cars and replaced it with walkable cities and good mass transit. But instead of talking about how good it could be, instead the message ends up being "You're a bad person for diving a car. You need to give up using your car and go either walk to your job which is too far away and across a bunch of busy streets or cram yourself onto the underfunded public transportation that is crowded, slow, unreliable, and falling apart." No wonder people get so defensive. We don't want them to have to use the bad infrastructure. We want it to be so good that it's the best option by far. Pitch that future instead of lecturing people.

TL;DR: I WANT TRAINS! GIVE TRAINS!

[–] Eristalis@reddthat.com 20 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I don’t understand this argument. On the one had you have sympathy for the average car user who hasn’t the time or resources to struggle with poor transport infrastructure and don’t necessarily have the resources to make preventative purchasing decisions, but then, on the other had you say

Needing to put in the political struggle to take on the corporate interests… takes effort that deviates from your normal life

You don’t seem to have avoided the responsibility being laid at the individual at all. You’ve kept it firmly in the same place. All you’ve done is allowed those individuals to keep their materialistic lifestyle because β€œIt’s OK, I’m an β€˜activist’”.

Activism, for most people, is not sacrifice. Its a jolly good day out with a cool social group, sometimes there's even free music, circus acts, the works. You get to waive a flag, and everyone congratulates you on what an amazing person you are.

What's properly amazing is taking a slightly less well-paying job because it's on a bus route, or not going out twice a week so you can afford organic cotton instead of polyester, or avoiding that deal trip to Tibet to meditate with monks to save fuel. Zero social credit, zero visibility.

And if these big companies have the economic system so stitched up that individual choices barely matter, then what on earth makes you think they won't have the political system similarly stitched up so that individual activism doesn't make a difference either?

[–] darthelmet@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago (5 children)

My point is, the important part isn't assigning blame, it's taking actions that actually have some path to success. You really can't ethically consume your way out of climate change. Identifying the corporations and governments most responsible for blocking progress isn't a mere moral victory, it's focusing our efforts.

What's properly amazing is taking a slightly less well-paying job because it's on a bus route,

Sure, but not everyone can do that. And I don't mean it's just difficult, but literally there are a finite number of jobs and housing options that will fit that criteria. As our societies are set up now, it is not physically possible for enough people to make a sacrifice like that for it to make a difference. That's why collective action is needed to make those big structural changes in the first place.

And if these big companies have the economic system so stitched up that individual choices barely matter, then what on earth makes you think they won't have the political system similarly stitched up so that individual activism doesn't make a difference either?

Oh 100%. I'm deeply concerned that there may be no peaceful, democratic way out of this. But that's step 2. Step 1, regardless of what our strategy ought to be, is organizing. Whether we need voters, protestors, boycotters, or an army, we need people who are able to coordinate with others. It's not individual activism, it's collective action.

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[–] BeliefPropagator@discuss.tchncs.de 7 points 1 day ago (2 children)

There are a lot of "who gives them the money" posts here - and on a basic level they're right.

But there's also the part where these companies were spearheading climate research initially - and instead of trying to pivot into renewable energy they doubled down on oil, muddied the waters in discussions by first denying global warming and then when that didn't work out anymore, emphasizing scientific uncertainty, lobbied against environmental regulations, and shifted blame to the individual.

[–] blarghly@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I don't think anyone disagrees with this. But the above meme always irks me, because it implies that if only those mean ol' corporations would just stop it, all us good people could stop climate change and get back to driving our F150s in peace.

they also used more subversive tactics, like funding certain companies, into convincing peopel to buy thier eco friendly products, or those "protesters that have been defacing public property"

[–] WanderWisley@lemmy.world 13 points 2 days ago
[–] yesman@lemmy.world 161 points 3 days ago (29 children)

This is a false choice between huge lifestyle changes for everyday people and regulating the polluters. Regulating the polluters is going to cause huge lifestyle changes for everyday people.

The idea that any of us get to go on as usual is the main roadblock to meaningful climate action.

[–] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 46 points 3 days ago (5 children)

Well can't we just ban Shell from selling oil, and then get in our F150s to drive to the airport?

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[–] Lanske@lemmy.world 28 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 15 points 2 days ago

Please, dodging taxes is the least of Shell's atrocities.

[–] BillCheddar@lemmy.world 18 points 2 days ago (3 children)

We ought to seize all the top companies.

They're just holding companies. They don't make anything. They don't produce anything. They just bleed off a kick, like a mob boss, and use those gains to amass political power.

Seize them all and use the assets (and annual profits) to fund American society.

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[–] SapphironZA@sh.itjust.works 13 points 2 days ago

Put a garnishing order on their past 50 years of profits. All proceeds go to infrastructure investments for the developing world in climate mitigation and food security.

But someone told me it was my neighbors who are the evil polluters? This is telling me it's rich people. That makes no sense. I want to blame my neighbors, not rich people!

[–] heartSagan5@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 days ago (2 children)

But it is us, secondarily because we run our gas cars and such.

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[–] Tango@piefed.ca 59 points 3 days ago (20 children)

>>"Spoiler alert: it's not you"

>>proceeds to display a chart of companies who sell a fuel we all use

[–] VoteNixon2016@lemmy.blahaj.zone 33 points 3 days ago (13 children)

If you can spot me $30,000 I'll get an electric car today

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[–] jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (5 children)

Where does the money they get come from?

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[–] DGen@piefed.zip 10 points 2 days ago

I thought it is me, because I'm Not recycling hard enough. Puh, got lucky here /s

[–] Limonene@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Congress. For not taxing carbon emissions according to the damage they cause.

(And other countries' legislatures, but as an American voter, I first need to hold my own legislature responsible.)

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[–] DarkFuture@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

And God said "LET CORPORATIONS DESTROY THE PLANET AND ERADICATE ALL LIFE".

Guess this is the modern alternative to the flood.

[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 17 points 2 days ago (11 children)

Y'know we could have had spaceships each since the 1930s, right?

Or even just running our cars on seed oils, like hempseed oil, or plant derived ethanol.

Or even just running our cars on water.

... If they'd stop killing inventors and stop abusing the patent system to secretize emancipatory technologies.

[–] EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world 15 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I believe they crush technologies, but most of the things you mentioned aren't true. There were no spaceships possible in the 1930s. Why crush that technology when they could have conquered the world with it? It's not possible to run cars on water. The thermodynamics just doesn't make sense. We have cars that run on biofuel, but mass-converting vehicles to that would drive up costs of food. Ethanol for fuel already does that by using farmland that could grow food.

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[–] Wander@sh.itjust.works 34 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Ah yes companies that famously refine oil only to pour it into a hole and light it on fire for their own amusement, one else uses it at all.

If it's just these companies that would be affected let's just close them down. I'm sure it would make no difference whatsoever.

[–] m3t00@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

who keeps giving them money?

[–] borQue@lemmy.zip 8 points 2 days ago (3 children)

I know for a FACT that Shell bought up every patent it could on Hydrogen use in the 1960's. My dad worked in England back then in the main office; way up in the tree and he witnessed this himself. FACT. Maybe I'm not completely clear: F A C T !!! He told me when I was a boy and I never forgot. (Was I clear? FACT!!!)

What do you have to be a TOTALLY ROTTEN COMPANY to even NOW not use those inventions and implement Hydrogen as a fuel so the world will be saved.

I truely HATE Shell with all my guts.

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