@bravojohnson

Tech’s sudden sympathy for oil makes sense because they recognize each other as structurally similar industries: both extract abstract value (data or hydrocarbons), externalize real-world costs, and rely on scale, infrastructure lock-in, and regulatory complexity to stay dominant. So the climate-“realist” argument isn’t denial—it’s managerialism: trade economics reframed to make producer profits sound like national benefit, methodological quibbles over methane used to preserve LNG expansion, utilities treated as neutral arbiters rather than incumbents protecting sunk assets, “cleaner US oil” invoked to justify more supply rather than less demand, and the Big Tobacco analogy rejected because it implies moral clarity and an endgame. Tech sees itself in oil—capital-intensive, system-critical, too complex to unwind—so “game recognizes game,” and what gets sold as pragmatism is really a mutual defense pact against being told the party has to end.

2 replies

1 recast

8 reactions