Shell Gas/Oil are business people.
And, as such, maybe they’ll give a fuck about renewable energy when I stop giving them my money.
Comments
Credit: Xtina.
i’m done with shell now, too! it’s added to the list of the pop shop, wal-mart, rita’s and friendly’s.
Wal-Mart is obvious, we’ve heard about Pop Shop… why Rita’s and Friendly’s?
mmmmm reese’s cup sundae
every single time i walk out of friendly’s, i barf.
rita’s is just because i love cabana so much. they are independent franchises which i like but i’ve always had bad experiences with the one near me. it smells funny, the teenagers are even more incompetent than i could imagine and the water ice tastes fake to me. however, i did have some of evan’s last summer when they debuted “sweet tea” so i haven’t boycotted entirely. we’ll see what happens this season.
maggie said:mmmmm reese’s cup sundae
definitely barfed after eating that.
more for me!
Makes perfect sense to me. Wind and solar are electrical generation technologies, whereas Shell is an energy provider. Exxon does the same thing. It seems odd to us because we think of large oil companies as being in the same market, but they aren’t.
They own tankers, refineries, pipelines, geologic equipment, derricks, offshore rigs, research facilities, etc. They do not own transmission lines, generators, transformers, etc., and so were never really in the wind and solar field, probably just did as a pr thing. Companies like that would be interested in biofels, because they already have the infrastructure to deliver it. But wind and solar are a different market altogether. Now if energy generators said they were getting out of wind and solar, that would be something worth mentioning.
I thought the same thing as Evan. I’m no fan of oil companies but by the same token why would it surprise us that they would not want to get into a completely different field/industry that would render all of their current equipment and business model obsolete and require them to start from scratch with all new equipment in a completely different industry?
I’m not saying they shouldn’t eventually be rendered obsolete, but getting mad at them for not assisting in speeding up their own obsolesence seems somewhat misplaced. Unless I’m missing something.
How about getting mad at them for being socially irresponsible and continuing to contribute to a technology that is dooming us all when they are they ones who have the most power in changing it.
The technology the entire world runs on, and would plunge into Mad Max-like chaos without.
And again, why would they lead the charge to change? Thats like getting mad at broadcast TV because YouTube is the future.
It’s not at all like that because broadcast TV isn’t making the planet we happen to live on list habitable. The difference here is that burning fossil fuels is fucking shit up. Badly. And they just up and said “well, it’s our business model to fuck shit up, so we’re gonna keep on doing it.”
Yeah, but as Evan pointed out, right now it’s essential to how all of us live. I mean if you want there to stop being a demand for fossil fuels, we need to all stop using them. Don’t drive a car. Make sure you use electric rather than gas heat in your home, etc. But until such time when we all do that, Shell, and Exxon, and BP, etc. are simply filling that demand. I don’t like it either, but I also don’t expect a company to knowingly and willingly put themselves out of business. And unfortunately I don’t have a choice but to use fossil fuels. I couldn’t glean it from that article but are there other oil companies who are going out of their way to fund and speed up their own obsolesence that we should be frequenting? Or is Shell just being the most honest about the fact that they aren’t going to speed up their own demise?
Whether you like it or not, a company’s main goal isn’t to be socially responsible, it’s to make the shareholders happy. And you do that by growing your profits.
While it would be awesome to see the oil companies evolve into all-encompassing energy companies, like Kevin said, the cost of doing that is ENORMOUS, and from a purely business standpoint, probably not worth the risk.
Fine, not television. It’s like blaming the drug dealer for you being a drug addict. I think corporation hating should go into the douchebag post.