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Comment by simion314 | Hacker News Reader

>I mean at the end of the day attempting to shift blame to "the corporations" for emissions is neglecting the fact that the corporations are emitting in order to (ultimately) supply consumers.

They want to make big money, the fact they give you products it is not the goal. Is it still legal to just burn the gas at the oil pumps?I remember videos of burning flames on top of this oil pumps and I don't think we the consumers asked for that, it is just that a billionaire oil dude won't invest into fixing the issue when he can open more oil/gas drilling sites and make more billions.

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IIRC, flaring methane is better for the environment, because pound for pound, methane is a significantly more potent greenhouse gas than the CO2 that is produced. Capturing the CO2 would be preferable, of course, but this one's a bit counterintuitive.

I think methane lasts for less than a decade in the atmosphere before it's broken down into C02, so considering this has been likely going on for a long time, reducing it would probably have an immediate effect.

>I think methane lasts for less than a decade in the atmosphere before it's broken down into C02

Source? Google info box says:

>Methane is a powerful greenhouses gas with a 100-year global warming potential 28-34 times that of CO2. Measured over a 20-year period, that ratio grows to 84-86 times.

>Methane, by contrast, is mostly removed from the atmosphere by chemical reaction, persisting for about 12 years. Thus although methane is a potent greenhouse gas, its effect is relatively short-lived.

I was off slightly, but not an order of magnitude.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou...

But you could burn it with a purpose, like in a generator.

That assumes there's use for a generator out near the pump. I don't think that's generally the case, meaning the methane would need to be stored and transported. Considering it's literally these companies' business to store and transport fuel, I'd assume if it were economically viable to do so, they would. That's not to say something like a carbon-tax wouldn't sway the economics toward that side, but it's not just as simple as "burn the fuel in a generator"

The generator can power local bitcoin mining farm: no need to store/transport, frees up electricity in other places by making miners there less profitable.

Do you think there are local bitcoin mining in the middle of, say, the Permian Basin?

One of the points missed in this conversation is that a lot of oil/gas drilling occurs in remote or inhospitable regions.

I don’t think there is, but then if we’re talking about putting waste flare to use rather than release it into the atmosphere and pay hefty tax, I can totally see remote (even ocean) sites carry a standard container-worth of miners - potentially would pay for itself.

Edit: dropped a word

I'm curious why you think they haven't done so already? My guess is that the volatility of crypto creates too much risk for the infrastructure investment.

It’s too radical right now, while people mistakenly think that consumption of energy equals production of energy from dirty sources it probably won’t become the norm. But eventually it will.

There are companies that have solutions: https://ezblockchain.net/

For sure if you can transport liquids and gas you can transport some electricity to the nearby villages/city you pollute with your gases. I think you can make profiit but not big profit from this so why bother. It is like tech giants, why bother with a good product with paying customers if it does not make obscene amount of money.

Sure, but this is one of those arguments that only works well in theory.

Oil and gas companies are usually distinct from the utilities (regulated monopolies) that provide electricity. If you want the O&G companies to subsidize the local populations energy, it makes more sense for them to do so with their existing infrastructure rather than forcing them to use some inefficient process. It will be cheaper for all involved.

The better solution is to just price the externality with regulation.

Right, but the point is that it's only more profitable to open more oil and gas extraction facilities without repairing the broken one because there's demand for oil and gas in the first place.

As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem from residential energy usage (0). Blaming energy companies for these emissions is ignorant of the fact that it's supplying the demand of the American citizens who are using that energy in the first place - and while shifting that blame off to some faceless corporation or billionaire villain might result in some good policy decisions to reduce emissions (for example, making gas and oil so expensive to extract or use for energy production that residential energy providers switch to renewables) but it goes too far from absolving consumers from the fact their demand creates the market that generates emissions in the first place - which leads to bad policy decisions like leaving homes to use natural gas for heating and cooking.

All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains.

(0) https://www.pnas.org/content/117/32/19122

>All I'm saying is that when it comes to emissions and climate change we need to look at it holistically, rather than come up with these mythical comic book villains.

I agree that someone that keeps the lights or TV on while he is not using them is also at fault but it is not possible to catch the person that is doing this , where it is easy to make illegal the behavior that is easy to control for. Maybe the gas will cost a bit more but this might encourage new technology to appear or green energy to take over.

I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if there are results or is too socialist to ever happen? In my country(Romania) there is a tax for polution (for ex cars with old or big engines pay a bigger tax), this tax money goes into green programs, like persons can install solar panel or isolate their homes and the government will give you some money up to 90%. (I am expecting comments like the poor pay for the rich solar panels but IMO you could make the rules to add limits on who can benefit.

The guy that forgets to turn a light off is pretty irrelevant, but you can look downtown in my city and see countless office buildings with all the lights on 24/7. They're literally keeping me up at night with the light that's shining in my windows. It would be relatively easy to create and enforce a rule for the largest wastes.

> someone that keeps the lights or TV on while he is not using them is also at fault but it is not possible to catch the person that is doing this

Punishment is not the only, and in fact one of the worst, means of changing behavior. You can also educate people, who despite the current devotion to cynicism, generally will do the right thing. Lots of people turn the lights off.

> I am curious if this happens somewhere in US and if there are results or is too socialist to ever happen?

How do you define socialist? There are many regulations and fines in the US. Climate change has been politicized by one party here in order to, afaict, make it to inflammatory to agree on any action.

>As an example, about 20% of the emissions in the US stem from residential energy usage (0).

Sounds like we need to focus on the much larger 80% of emissions first to me, as that's where the vast majority of the problem lies, by definition.

I don't buy the idea that unless we attempt to solve 100% of the problem on the first try, we can't start working on a solution.

>Sounds like we need to focus on the much larger 80% of emissions first to me, as that's where the vast majority of the problem lies, by definition.

Alternatively... What if we do both in parallel? I'm also of the opinion that you can more likely change things in your own life than get a big corporation to change something, so you could make small gains within the next year as far as reducing personal impact, and still keep on fighting for the bigger problem to be solved at the same time.

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