In this case we could get huge sums of money to fix the sinking ship(climate change). So, I am not seeing how this analogy applies.

Exxon's current market cap is something like 300 billion. It is worth that much because of future claims it has on profits from the extraction, refinement and sale of oil. If Exxon makes enough to recoup that... you'll have another 50ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere.

So no. You won't have a huge sum of money to fix the sinking ship. You'll be bailing water from one compartment and throwing it into another.

How much could we possibly get? Nothing proportional to the cost of a solution, certainly.

The reason the characters are lieutenants in my story is because this problem is bigger than them. You could take every penny the oil companies have and it would barely make a dent in the problem. This isn't a money problem it is a fundamental economic and industrial structure of society problem.

> You could take every penny the oil companies have and it would barely make a dent in the problem.

Citation needed. The top 10 oil companies [1] had a cumulative $2.5 trillion dollars in revenue in 2017. I'd say that'd go a long way in climate change R&D.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_oil_and_gas_co...

Revenue, not profit. Oil is very low margin. Oil companies makes about 7 cents per gallon of gasoline. That's a lot less than the amount of money that is collected from gasoline taxes.

https://www.forbes.com/2011/05/10/oil-company-earnings.html#...

Value would go to zero the minute you announce confiscation or whatever we call it. And revenue is different from money in the bank or assets.

So, nationalize oil sales revenue to fight to raise money to climate change. See any problem there?

I can imagine one difference with the lieutenants here is that nobody outside will ever know about said fight, given that the ship will sink.

In my analogy the intended implication was that getting people into life boats is more useful than fighting.

Okay, but the intended implication of my comment was that since this can actually send a message to others, it might actually cause others to be a bit more careful about how they proceed moving forward, which actually might very well help with help things moving forward.

Ok, but one of the "lieutenants" in your analogy is telling passengers that the ship's not sinking, and interfering with attempts to warn other ships about enemy torpedos.