Thread by @SteB777

I want to let people into a dirty secret. Why our governments have taken no effective action on the climate crisis for 31 years, and why we are hurtling to climate catastrophe/global suicide.

It's why no major government wants to talk about ending fossil fuel burning.
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It's very simple. The major value of fossil fuel companies, are their reserves. The oil, gas and coal reserves, which form the major assets of fossil fuel companies, are only worth something, if they can be exploited until well into the future.
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If governments decided to phase out fossil fuel burning, preferably, if they had done it 30 years ago, those assets would go from being very valuable, to almost worthless. I believe the name for this is stranded assets.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranded_…
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If a such a decision was made, the value of fossil fuel companies would collapse almost overnight, and the value of some of the biggest companies on the stock markets, what billionaires, banks etc, have got all their money invested in, would become almost worthless.
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It isn't just direct investments in fossil fuel companies, but in highly interlinked and interdependent investments, all dependent on fossil fuel assets. It's this that props up the wealth of the richest and most powerful individuals on Earth.
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Right from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and the signing of the UNITED NATIONS FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE - UNFCCC, which put into place the COP talks, the most obvious move, has been to phase out fossil fuels.
un.org/en/conferences…
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Yet, oddly, no government has wanted to even mention, let alone discuss the most obvious solution to the climate crisis, and the self-created global suicidal course we're, of climate catastrophe we are hurtling towards. Utterly bizarre.
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Until that is, you realise, that even talking about it, could massively devalue some of the biggest companies in the world, which all the powerful and rich people are invested in. Where they could lose most of their wealth, and power if that happened.
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This is how we have got 31 years into the future, without anyone seriously mentioning, let alone talking about the phasing out of fossil fuel burning. It's why we're hurtling towards global suicide, and no one wants to talk about why.
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If I've got it all wrong, then please feel free to explain. But please no circumlocution and ad hominem attacks, where you discuss absolutely everything, except the topic this thread is about. Which is why didn't we just agree to phase out fossil fuels, 31 years ago.
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It's all just so obvious, that you struggle to understand why no one wants to talk about it. Or rather why no government, corporation, billionaire and the media they own, wants to discuss it. Why they stop all discussion of this topic.
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Okay, all my life, when I point out the obvious, I get told I don't understand the real world, like these oh so clever people justifying business as usual. But no, I don't get why we have to commit global suicide, just to preserve the great wealth, status and power of a few.
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@GretaThunberg @GeorgeMonbiot @KevinClimate @ClimateHuman @GreenRupertRead @CarolineLucas @JKSteinberger @ProfSteveKeen @KateRaworth