CaptainExplosion said:
Especially with how corporations hate clean energy because it'll cost them a fortune. Wouldn't surprise me if they were willing to even commit murder just to keep their agenda going.
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Well, in the past, big businesses actually did murder their employees for striking. They may not do that anymore (hiring mercs to violently put down striking employees wouldn't make for good PR in the 21st century), never put it past a legitimate business to simply turn a blind eye to the harm they cause.
Tobacco companies (basically just legalized drug dealers) sell a product that's been known for decades to highly addictive and extremely harmful, because there's money to be made and people willing and able to buy their products. In fact, they fought to suppress scientific evidence showing the effects of smoking and any attempts to educate the public and reduce smoking rates. While tetraethyllead was initially put into gasoline in good faith because it was a good anti-knock agent, gasoline manufacturers turned a blind to and actively tried to suppress evidence that man-made environmental lead compounds were having a harmful effect. Same for CFCs manufacturers; they weren't aware that Freon and aerosol propellants were harmful when they started using them, but switching away from them would hurt their bottom line and they fought back against scientists that revealed their products were degrading the ozone layer. Fossil fuel companies were, at least back during the early decades of the Industrial Revolution, unaware that burning oil, oil byproducts, coal, and natural gas causes global warming by increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but they do know now and have known for several decades, yet instead of adjust their business to correct for it they've mounted massive PR campaigns designed to dismiss the science as a hoax. And in every case, there were politicians sympathetic to the businesses (often because of receiving campaign contributions from them) that went along with it.
It's not that they're being actively malicious. In fact, as mentioned on a couple of occasions they weren't aware of the harm their products caused until after the fact. It's simply that they're callous and indifferent towards the death and misery they are responsible for. A negative externality costs money to fix, and that hurts the bottom line. And delivering a profit to the shareholders is paramount. As far as they're concerned, they have no further responsibilities past making money. And anything that gets in their way of that goal will be fought tooth and nail. They will deny, delay, and obstruct for as long as they can. But eventually they'll relent. Lead compounds were eventually banned from use in gasoline. CFCs were banned. Smoking remained legal but tobacco companies had to accept mandatory labels warning of the harms of tobacco, and restrictions on advertising. While the fight to pass the necessary reforms to combat climate change will take longer and will be resisted far harder than the other examples (because overhauling an entire energy economy is more involved and expensive than adding labels or changing an ingredient), something will have to give. Gasoline-powered passenger vehicles will have to give way to EVs and cars powered by fuels that don't emit CO2. Coal and natural gas will have to give way to cleaner methods of electricity production like wind, solar, and (possibly) nuclear. Let's hope that when we actually do what needs to be done, it isn't too late.