I consider it more real because it’s more immediate. If we keep burning oil, we’ll be fine until we’re not, and we can hope someone invents a clever fix. If we stop burning oil, most of the country can’t function today.
What would be possible, certainly, is an increasingly harsh sequence of taxes and mandates to force the economy to decarbonize. I think we should do that, but it’s not something that a lawsuit against oil companies could impose.
What ever happened to 'you do the crime, you do the time'?
For 50+ years Exxon et al knowingly did everything they could to prevent a better world.
Every year the world gets hotter, and they just keep getting richer.
You want to give them a pass because people like and use the stuff that's killing them? We didn't use that logic for tobacco companies, and it worked out. We used it for banks, and it didn't. We use it for military spending, and it's another decision that could kill the planet.
The 'too big to fail' argument is a cop-out, just kicking the can. It's astounding that in a world 1.5C above what it should be there are people arguing against holding the people responsible to account by legal means. Just because we use their product to drive life on earth off a cliff faster than we could without them? That makes no sense to me; I don't buy it. Can you explain it to me?
I don't particularly care about the ExxonMobil corporation. I don't think they're too big to fail, and it wouldn't bother me at all if they were held accountable or driven into bankruptcy.
What I don't agree with is the idea in the source article, where this is something we have to do instead of small-scale fixes. Emissions come from oil consumption, so emissions reduction simply cannot happen without small scale fixes from every company which depends on fossil fuels today. Perhaps suing Exxon will help incentivize that, but I worry when it's framed as a silver bullet, as though Exxon has some Department of Increased Emissions and if we shut it down we can fix the climate without disrupting other businesses.
What would be possible, certainly, is an increasingly harsh sequence of taxes and mandates to force the economy to decarbonize. I think we should do that, but it’s not something that a lawsuit against oil companies could impose.