> Then why do current generations have to pay for the profits that the previous generations have banked?

Because the vast majority of "profits" (externalities that were not paid for) were not banked, they were simply not paid.

Even if every person that enjoyed cheap fossil products in the past had the price difference on some separate bank account, taking that to fund environmental policies would be very difficult in western countries because of democracy and demographics (very difficult to get majorities when working against the interests of elderly voters).

> YES, nothing we can do about the corporate overlords who screwed us, let's instead claw it back from the current generation of people instead of from Shell shareholders, that's will go down well politically for sure and not cause extremist rise to power. How is this not a luxury belief?

Again, the Shell corporate overlords only siphoned off a very small fraction of the gains, even taking the whole corporation would be completely insufficient. The main beneficiaries in the past were not Shell and BP, but the end consumers instead.

Just heaping blame on corporations or past generations is not helping anything. You could certainly nationalize the whole petroleum industry and confiscate pension funds, but approaches like that have very detrimental side effects.

> It's not selfishness to afford necessities for a decent life especially when more and more of your paycheck goes towards taxes and necessities.

I would argue that if you discover that a past lifestyle was financed by unsustainably pushing the hidden costs of energy elsewhere (and into the future), then still refusing to pay those hidden costs after the discovery is the very definition of selfish.