‘Trying to Have It Both Ways’: Investigation Reveals BP and Shell Still Back Anti-Climate Lobby Groups, Despite Pledges

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The Unearthed and HuffPost report reveals the companies failed to disclose membership in at least eight Big Oil lobbies in their transparency reports. 

Oil Refinery
Image by Thomas H. from Pixabay

By Brett Wilkins, staff writer, Common Dreams (CC BY-ND 3.0).

Fossil fuel giants Royal Dutch Shell and BP remain active members of numerous Big Oil lobby groups fighting against climate legislation and regulation—without disclosing this in their transparency reports—an Unearthed and HuffPost investigation revealed Monday. 

According to the report, Shell and BP—the world’s second- and fourth-largest oil companies by revenue last year—are members of at least eight industry trade organizations lobbying against climate measures in the United States and Australia.

Both companies support the “astroturf” group Alliance of Western Energy Consumers, which boasted that it had “defeated carbon pricing bills” in Oregon, and the Texas Oil & Gas Association, which is fighting regulation of the super-heating greenhouse gas methane in the nation’s largest oil-producing state. 

Shell and BP also both back the Business Council of Australia and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association, both of which are working to undercut the country’s compliance with the Paris climate agreement. Shell also remains a member of the Queensland Resources Council, which is backing construction of the world’s largest coal mine in the northeastern state. 

[Shell and BP are] trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”

—Robert Brulle, climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society.

The companies, which are quoted in the report, say they are trying to reform the lobby groups from the inside, and that they would review their membership in the future.

“If we reach an impasse, we will be transparent in publicly stating our differences,” BP said. “And on major issues, if our views and those of an association cannot be reconciled then we will be prepared to leave.” 

Earlier this year, both Shell and BP announced in almost identical language their “ambition” to be net-zero emissions businesses by 2050. In recent years they have also very publicly quit numerous industry trade groups that fund denial of anthropogenic climate change or that fight legislation or regulation of greenhouse gas emissions, while pledging to be more transparent about their associations with lobby groups.

While some observers have praised Shell and BP for finally taking some meaningful action to combat climate change caused by carbon emissions—which Shell’s own scientists warned about nearly 40 years ago—many climate activists say the companies’ efforts are misleading, and aren’t nearly enough to avert the worst effects of catastrophic global heating.

Last week, a report from Oil Change International stated that none of the plans or pledges from eight leading oil companies including Shell and BP even come close to aligning with the 2015 Paris agreement’s goal of limiting global warming this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Kelly Trout, a senior research analyst at OCI, likened oil companies to “an arsonist pledging to light a few less fires.” 

Robert Brulle, a climate denial researcher and professor at Brown University’s Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, accused Shell and BP of “trying to have it both ways.” 

“This is a standard business practice,” Brulle told HuffPost and Unearthed—which is Greenpeace U.K.’s investigative journalism platform. “They’re trying to have it both ways, being socially responsible without changing their actual positions.”  

Jane Goodall: The window of time to find climate change solutions is closing

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Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash
Photo by Hu Chen on Unsplash

By Kate Whiting, Senior Writer, Formative Content, World Economic Forum (CC BY-ND 4.0).

  • Primatologist Jane Goodall has urged the world to work together to solve the greatest threat we’re facing: climate change.
  • She was speaking at a session on the World Economic Forum’s digital platform UpLink, which is dedicated to finding solutions to meet the Sustainable Development Goals.
  • The work of the Jane Goodall Institute with the people of Gombe National Park shows we can find solutions that protect livelihoods and the planet.
  • Before we can tackle climate change, there are three major challenges we have to overcome: poverty, excess and population growth.

In 1990, Jane Goodall flew over Gombe National Park, home to the chimpanzees she had been studying for 30 years.

“The national park, which had been part of the great equatorial forest belt that stretched across Africa, was a tiny island of forest surrounded by completely bare hills – more people living there than the land could support, too poor to buy food from elsewhere, overfarmed land.

“That’s when it hit me: if we don’t help these people find ways of making a living without destroying the environment, we can’t save the chimps or anything else.”

Goodall was speaking at a session of the World Economic Forum’s Sustainable Development Impact Summit dedicated to the digital platform UpLink, which is bringing together young people, entrepreneurs and investors to help achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

‘We can’t do it alone’

She said UpLink shows we can start to solve the world’s problems together.

“We face unprecedented crises in the world today. We can’t do it alone. We need everybody who cares about future generations to link up and try and work out a new green economy that is less destructive of the environment upon which we depend.”

The Jane Goodall Institute began a programme that now involves 104 villages around Gombe, to teach locals about agroforestry, permaculture, tree nurseries.

“They’ve understood that protecting the forest is protecting their own future, not just the wildlife,” Goodall explains.

And technology is playing a key role, as volunteers from the villages have learned to use smartphones to monitor the health of the forest.

“It’s worked. If you fly over Gombe today, you don’t see those bare hills, the forest has come back,” she says.

The programme has been rolled out to six other countries. One of the most important parts has been scholarships to keep girls in schools during and after puberty, as well as empowering women through education and microcredit programmes.

‘3 major challenges’

The climate crisis threatens the existence of everything on the planet, including human existence, Goodall believes. And before we can begin to tackle it, there are three major challenges we have to overcome:

  1. “While people are living in abject poverty, they’re going to destroy the environment to grow food to feed their family, fish the last fish, buy the cheapest junk food. They can’t afford to say, ‘Did this harm the environment?’
  2. “We have to solve the problem of the unsustainable lifestyles of the rest of us.”
  3. “We have to recognize there are 7.2 billion people on the planet and already we’re using up natural resources in some places faster than nature can restore them. In 2050, it’s estimated there will be nearly 10 billion of us. So what’s going to happen? We cannot afford to put that aside because it’s politically incorrect. We’ve got to think about it.”

‘We have disrespected the natural world’

The way we have treated the natural environment has also played a large part in the creation of the current pandemic, Goodall believes. “The tragedy is this pandemic has been predicted and to some extent caused by us because we have disrespected the natural world and animals. We have created environments that make it much easier for a pathogen to jump from an animal to us, where it may cause a new zoonotic disease such as COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, COVID-19 was incredibly contagious and has raced around the world, causing so much suffering, so much economic chaos.”

But, to her, climate change represents an even greater challenge.

“To a great extent, it’s the same disrespect of the natural world that has led to the climate crisis. This planet has finite natural resources and we have been plundering them faster than Mother Nature can restore them.”

‘The window is closing’

“We have to realise we are part of the natural world and we depend upon it. We have been destroying the natural world, destroying forests and trees that can absorb carbon dioxide and polluting the ocean that can also absorb carbon dioxide. And both forests and oceans give us the oxygen we need to breathe.

“We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction, we depend on healthy ecosystems and the healthy ecosystem depends on biodiversity. Gradually we are poisoning the land with chemicals and we’re destroying so many environments.

“We need to somehow move into some of these innovations of science, like solar and wind energy. Otherwise, for my grandchildren and theirs, the future is more than grim, it’s very dark. We mustn’t let that happen. We have a window of time that’s closing and we need everyone who cares to get together and find solutions – now.”

Massive ‘Climate Clock’ Urging Governments to #ActInTime Unveiled on Metronome in New York City

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“The clock is a way to speak science to power,” says a project co-founder.

Photo: Zack Winestine/ The Climate Clock
Climate activists repurposed the Metronome, an art installation in New York City. (Photo: Zack Winestine/ The Climate Clock)

By Jessica Corbett, staff writer, Common Dreams (CC BY-ND 3.0).

Some advocates kicked off next week’s Climate Week NYC early Saturday by repurposing the Metronome, a famous art installation in Union Square that used to display the time of day, as a massive “Climate Clock” in an effort to pressure governments worldwide to take swift, bold action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and rein in human-caused global heating.

The clock is telling us we must reduce our emissions as much as we can as fast as we can.”

—Andrew Boyd, project co-founder

“The clock is a way to speak science to power,” project co-founder Andrew Boyd said in a statement. “The clock is telling us we must reduce our emissions as much as we can as fast as we can. The technology is there. We ​can​ do this—and in the process, create a healthier, more just world for all of us. Our planet has a deadline. But we can turn it into a lifeline.”

Launched as people across the country are facing the deadly, devastating impacts of climate change—from historic wildfires in western states to slow-moving hurricanes and the resulting floods on the Gulf Coast—the clock in New York City on Saturday warned that the international community only has seven years and 102 days to “undertake bold transformation of our energy system and economy” in hopes of keeping global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Climate Change is already here. This clock is not an alarm clock saying, in seven years it will ring and we need to wake up! It’s more like a stopwatch already running that we have to keep pace with,” explained Gan Golan, the project originator. “We need to take action today, tomorrow, and the day after that. Let’s get moving. Every second counts. We need to act in time.”

A mobile climate clock that Swedish youth activist Greta Thunberg “now carries with her, as well as the larger Climate Clock project, was assembled by a team of artists, makers, scientists, and activists based in New York, and is part of the Beautiful Trouble community of projects,” according to Climateclock.world, which details the science behind the numbers displayed and how to install clocks in other cities.

“In an accompanying app, the artists include more detail about solutions,” Fast Company reported Saturday. “Another number tracks the current percentage of renewable energy in the world. An interactive tool shows how to ‘flatten the climate curve’ and how much difference it makes to invest more now, and to move more quickly. A DIY maker kit explains how to make a countdown clock of your own.”