Re: Guest Post - McKinsey & Climate Change

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My assumption is that people are pretty cowardly (business people in particular*) and that having someone big and fancy like McKinsey say something like this gives them cover to be able to raise questions. Whether that will translate into action is anyone's guess.


*Here I'm using cowardly to mean both "temperamentally conservative" and "scared of sticking their necks out in front of the pack" or being seen as earnest or environmentally committed.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 7:46 AM
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My assumption is that people are pretty cowardly (business people in particular*) and that having someone big and fancy like McKinsey say something like this gives them cover to be able to raise questions. Whether that will translate into action is anyone's guess.


*Here I'm using cowardly to mean both "temperamentally conservative" and "scared of sticking their necks out in front of the pack" or being seen as earnest or environmentally committed.


Posted by: Witt | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 7:46 AM
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"How can we profit from the destruction of coastal real estate?"


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 7:49 AM
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I think that was Lex Luthor's plan in one of the 80s Superman movies.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 8:24 AM
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4: Yes, but the fact checker just pointed out it was actually the first Superman movie that came out in 1978.


Posted by: peep | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 8:38 AM
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The long 80s started after the release of Star Wars.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 8:40 AM
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4: We all have our faults. Mine's the San Andreas.


Posted by: Opinionated Lex Luthor | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 8:59 AM
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Anyway, putting something into a statistical model is very much not the same as saying you're trying to fix it.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 9:22 AM
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Insurers will raise rates a bit, and possibly this will stop some new construction here and there, but. . . Private insurers left the flood insurance market in places most likely to flood decades ago, replaced by the federal flood insurance program. Crop insurance was also taken over by the feds long ago. Changing underwriting standards for the federal programs will require political actions, almost certainly legislation.


Posted by: unimaginative | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 9:23 AM
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I think the flood insurance was recently shifted a bit in the correct direction.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 9:29 AM
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Capitalism is a weak tool for combating the capitalistic promotion of climate change, but it's one of the few tools available. Look at things like vaccines or Trump's abuse of social media. When profits are threatened, corporations act. The Trumpists have a point when they talk about the elites having it in for them.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 9:40 AM
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11: Corollary: when corporations recognize that their losses will be underwritten by the public, they will not change anything.


Posted by: (gensym) | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 10:34 AM
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6. And damn, they were long!


Posted by: chris y | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 10:38 AM
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They ended with the release of Nevermind.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 10:49 AM
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The Trumpists have a point when they talk about the elites having it in for them.

No, because they mean having it in for them uniquely, as opposed to also having it in for people of color, non-rich people of any background, etc.


Posted by: CharleyCarp | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 11:29 AM
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When profits are threatened, corporations act. The Trumpists have a point when they talk about the elites having it in for them.

More that they either are propertied elites at various levels (from user car dealers to oil billionaires) and want to dominate over the more professionalized corporate competitors; or they sympathize with and want those elites to so dominate, with them getting subsidiary benefits; but either way it's the-freedom-to-dominate.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 11:50 AM
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In the last year or so, the amount in which business is taking climate change seriously has jumped a great deal. For example, Blackrock forced Exxon to put two people on the Board of Directors to make Exxon take it more seriously.


Posted by: Walt Someguy | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 12:12 PM
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15: There is a sense in which the capitalist elites really do have it in -- quite specifically -- for the Trumpists, and I think this fact that is foundational to Trumpism.

Liberals have a hard time grasping the undeniable advantages attached to ignoring basic reality and decency. So with vaccines, for instance, liberals are reluctant to acknowledge that the vast majority of unvaccinated Trumpists are going to emerge from the pandemic just fine. And Trumpists, by and large, will be dead before global warming would have an impact on them personally.

The capitalist elites often really do have a problem respecting these people -- often to the point of being unwilling to hire them. If you're going to run a hospital, you'd rather have people be vaccinated. If you're going to run an oil company, as much as you depend on science denial for your fortune, you're still not going to hire creationist geologists. Sometimes making money depends on acknowledging reality; sometimes it depends on behaving decently in public. Trumpists resent the inherent condescension that they correctly perceive from elites who value money or education or public politeness above the exemplary Christianity of a guy like Donald Trump.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 12:24 PM
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18.2: I think about it every day, but my mother really succeeded in implanting a Catholic-based series of guilt triggers in my head.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 12:33 PM
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Even so, I would hire a creationist geologist if I had access to enough of someone else's money. I'm a little curious to see what they would say.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 12:43 PM
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Back in the days of dial-up and BBSes, I used to hang out on creationist chat boards. I ran into a creationist geologist who explained that while creationism is true, he didn't use it in his work.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 12:55 PM
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That's shitty. I want the full set of interlocking spheres like the geocentric guys made.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 1:01 PM
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The capitalist elites often really do have a problem respecting these people -- often to the point of being unwilling to hire them. If you're going to run a hospital, you'd rather have people be vaccinated. If you're going to run an oil company, as much as you depend on science denial for your fortune, you're still not going to hire creationist geologists. Sometimes making money depends on acknowledging reality; sometimes it depends on behaving decently in public. Trumpists resent the inherent condescension that they correctly perceive from elites who value money or education or public politeness above the exemplary Christianity of a guy like Donald Trump.

It's just a coincidence, though. Capitalist elites don't like hiring colossal dumbasses who will wreck their profit margins and are immune to being corrected. Trumpism happens to select for those exact properties. Life is full of mysteries!


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 1:42 PM
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Moby: "Even so, I would hire a creationist geologist if I had access to enough of someone else's money. I'm a little curious to see what they would say."

Have you ever glanced at the "abiogenesis" theory of hydrocarbon formation? Wacky stuff, wacky stuff. For a mineral that is found by using the existing theories of paleontology and geology that posit a biological origin of hydrocarbons, and where all the methods, means, tools ... *everything* is based on that biogenesis theory, these people are .... preeeeeetty wacky. I remember they got a covery story in The Atlantic, a few decades ago.


Posted by: Chetan Murthy | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 2:01 PM
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Yes. That's the good stuff.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 2:02 PM
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I recently read about some ~1900 cult in Florida that believed the world was inside out. That would throw off your calculations if you were trying to drill for oil or send a space shuttle to the moon.


Posted by: heebie-geebie | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 2:05 PM
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I thought the creationist view is that god just put all the oil and coal for us to find and threw in some fossils to see if we could resist the temptation of the devil.


Posted by: SP | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 3:51 PM
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I think that's just plain-vanilla creationism as opposed to "scientific creationism."


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 3:54 PM
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/find//burn/

Not sure if I got that pseudocode right.


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 4:07 PM
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Trumpists resent the inherent condescension that they correctly perceive

Well, that's the price one pays for being contemptible.


Posted by: apostropher | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 5:30 PM
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30: If your fuckups are going to have consequences, what's the point of even being white?


Posted by: DaveLHI | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 6:02 PM
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You really appreciate mayonnaise.


Posted by: Moby Hick | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 6:24 PM
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Fair point.


Posted by: DaveLHI | Link to this comment | 09-13-21 6:40 PM
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30: Similarly, you know the media is unfair to Trump because they never once covered Obama bragging about grabbing pussy, having five children by three women, and being accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women.


Posted by: politicalfootball | Link to this comment | 09-14-21 6:55 AM
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Delurking to agree with 23.

Reading between the McKinsey lines, the call is to consider and address not just 'climate change' but address disruption and change fraught by investors, regulators, consumers, supply-chain, media tastemakers, and society. Disruption brings both risks and opportunities.


Posted by: Econolicious | Link to this comment | 09-14-21 11:25 PM
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29: Failing to resist the call to pedantry...

The sed syntax for string replacement is:

sed s/find/replace

I wonder if this is now used more in reference in comments than on actual commandlines.


Posted by: clew | Link to this comment | 09-15-21 10:59 AM
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36: Thanks!


Posted by: Minivet | Link to this comment | 09-15-21 11:54 AM
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