Schreef gisteren al over de topgraaier van Exxon Darren Woods deze hufter vindt de draai van collega
oliemaffialeden naar duurzame energie een vorm van 'greenwashing'*,
ofwel een mooi beeld scheppen voor het wereldtoneel, terwijl het
niets voorstelt. Te zot voor woorden dat iemand die niets doet commentaar heeft op
anderen, ook al heeft Darren in feite gelijk.
Echter waar
Woods niet aan heeft gedacht is het feit dat er met duurzame
energie een hele bak subsidie is te halen en wat dat betreft is hij
dus een hele slechte CEO. Inderdaad er is met duurzame
energie vele miljarden aan subsidie binnen te slepen, niet voor niets dat Shell en nog een paar
andere oliereuzen zich op duurzame energiemarkt hebben gestort.
Malcolm
Harris, de schrijver van het hieronder opgenomen artikel kijkt verder
dan de neus lang is en stelt dat ook de oliemaatschappijen die zich
nu op de alternatieve energiemarkt storten, tegelijkertijd zoveel mogelijk fossiele brandstoffen
uit de grond willen halen, dat is voor deze bedrijven zelfs het allerbelangrijkste doel
voor de komende jaren, immers er zijn enorme winsten te maken en dat
is men voorlopig niet van plan op te geven..... Ofwel firma's als
Shell proberen de wereld duidelijk te maken dat men op het goede pad
is, terwijl de werkelijkheid er totaal anders uitziet.... De werkelijkheid laat dan ook zien dat er jaar op jaar meer fossiele brandstof worden uitgestoten, waar politici hun doorzichtige valse beloften doen dat we teruggaan naar de uitstoot van 1990....**
Lees het
uitstekende artikel van Harris en geeft het door! Jaarlijks worden er
meer fossiele brandstoffen gebruikt, waardoor de uitstoot met het
jaar groeit, terwijl een groot aantal westerse politici zich voordoen
als begaan met de klimaatverandering en dan m.n. de negatieve
gevolgen daarvan, zoals de immer groeiende weergerelateerde rampen,
neem de maandenlange bosbranden in Australië, of de steeds vaker
optredende orkanen, die ook aan sterkte winnen (waar
men in de Filipijnen eertijds sprak over het orkaanseizoen, vinden
deze nu het jaarrond plaats.....***)
In het artikel besteedt Harris ook aandacht aan het stelen van grondstoffen in arme landen door de grote oliemaatschappijen, zoals Exxon Guyana op een gigantische manier heeft belazerd en waar onervaren politici akkoord gingen met ronduit diefstal.... (al moet je niet vergeten dat grote bedrijven als Exxon, Shell en Unilever politici in die landen omkopen, het is dan ook in het belang van grote bedrijven dat de corruptie in die landen in stand wordt gehouden.....)
Het
artikel van Harris werd eerder gepubliceerd op de Intellingencer, ik
werd erop gewezen door een mail van Unearthed (Greenpeace):
Shell
Is Looking Forward
The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes.
In a conference room overlooking the gray Thames, a group of young corporate types tried to imagine how the world could save itself, how the international community could balance the need for growth with our precarious ecological situation. For the purposes of our speculative scenarios, everything except for carbon was supposed to be up in the air, and democracy’s track record is mixed.
A graph from Chinese social media showing how many trees the country is planting — a patriotic retort to the Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg — had a real effect on the room. Combine that with the Chinese state-led investment in clean-energy technology and infrastructure and everyone admired how the world’s largest source of fossil-fuel emissions was going about transition. That’s what the salesperson meant by “outcomes”: decarbonization.
Regional experts from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East–North Africa also entertained the democracy question, pointing to Iraqi disillusionment with voting and economic growth in Rwanda under Paul Kagame (“He’s technically a dictator, but it’s working”). The China expert said the average regional Communist Party official is probably more accountable for his or her performance than the average U.K. member of Parliament, a claim no one in the room full of Brits seemed to find objectionable. The moderator didn’t pose the question to me, the American expert, presumably because our national sense of democratic entitlement is inviolable.
Actually, the moderator didn’t ask me any questions during the plenary that followed our regional-perspectives panel, either. That might have had something to do with my talk, which included bullet points like “Green growth is a myth” and “Your corporate existence is incompatible with a livable future for cohorts that are already born.” But I didn’t get that impression, not really. I was repeatedly asked to be honest, and everyone was really nice about it. Everyone was really nice in general.
Since
2017, when
I published a book
about American millennials, I’ve had the occasional cold call
from corporations to come talk about my work, all but one of which
I’ve turned down. But last fall, the Shell Scenarios team — as in
Royal Dutch Shell, one of the biggest oil companies in the world —
offered me £2,000 in exchange for a 15-minute talk and my
participation in a group exercise. Its internal corporate think tank
was holding a daylong conference about how generational change would
affect the hopefulness projected in what the company calls the “Sky
Scenario,” which it describes as “a technically possible but
challenging pathway for society to achieve the goals of the Paris
Agreement.” I’m not a climate expert, but apparently I qualify as
a generational whisperer, at least to Shell, and to talk to me about
global warming, the giant energy conglomerate wanted to fly me to
London from Philadelphia, business class. I warned them that I
couldn’t keep their money and asked if I’d need to sign an NDA.
When they said no, I saw an opportunity to report on the oil company,
undercover while in plain sight, without technically lying to anyone.
It was too good to pass up. I said yes, then I emailed my editor.
From a certain vantage, the momentum looks almost definitive, as though nothing could stand in the way of a renewable future. But unlike coal, oil and gas companies are still definitely profitable, even investable, and more oil and gas are being produced, and used, every year — which helps explain why carbon emissions keep rising too. There’s little doubt that fossil-fuels are, culturally speaking, on the wrong side of history. But there is still a lot more money to extract from those wells, and the fossil-fuel businesses are intent on extracting as much as they can. It’s not necessarily such a bad time to be an oil and gas company, in other words, but it is a bad time to look like one. These companies aren’t planning for a future without oil and gas, at least not anytime soon, but they want the public to think of them as part of a climate solution. In reality, they’re a problem trying to avoid being solved.
Few organizations have been paying as much attention to global warming for as long as the companies that have helped cause it. Journalists at the Dutch publication The Correspondent tracked down an educational video Shell released in 1991 called “Climate of Concern,” which warned, “Global warming is not yet certain, but many think that to wait for final proof would be irresponsible. Action now is seen as the only safe insurance.” There’s good evidence Exxon knew a decade earlier. But not only did these companies continue exploiting their reserves, not only did they explore for new sources and develop new modes of extraction, like fracking, but they funded politicians and groups that claimed not to believe in global warming, agents that have worked to delay the same action they knew was “our only safe insurance.” So far, the oil and gas companies’ calculations — that delay would make them money and that they could avoid consequences for misleading the public — have been spot on. But denial-backed delay is no longer sufficient, it seems. They’re now hoping to leverage their incumbency, and fossil-fuel wealth, to lay claim to the world’s clean-energy future as well. To do that, they’ll have to persuade young people to forget who caused climate change in the first place, or at least to let bygones be bygones. And if they can transition their corporate profiles from fossil fuel to green energy without missing a profitable quarter, that wouldn’t be a repudiation of their delay strategy; it would be a vindication.
Of course, to judge by the advertisements, the transition to renewables has already happened. British Petroleum is now a solar-energy company called BP, ExxonMobil brews giant swimming pools of cool green-algae fuel, and Shell maintains mountain canyons lined with wind turbines floating in fog. All these initiatives actually do exist, though they are a tiny fraction of each company’s budget; so far, the main product of Exxon’s algae program seems to be propaganda. Right now, these companies have to convince governments and their publics to let them run out the clock with fossil fuels, and they’ve decided the best way to do that is to appear to be an essential partner for whatever’s coming next. I was ostensibly there to help plan the timing.
Some of the most revealing insights came the night before the sessions at a group dinner at a minor Gordon Ramsay restaurant. The venue had two party spaces, and it wasn’t immediately clear where we were supposed to go, but when someone suggested putting up a sign rather than having wait staff direct the party one by one, the younger Shell employees grimaced. “Extinction Rebellion,” one said, less than half-joking. The climate-protest group has a major presence in the city with flyers and volunteers everywhere. “XR” targeted Shell locally in April 2019, smashing windows at the company’s London headquarters. In the U.K., it has succeeded at creating an ambient sense of fear or at least shame. We gathered in the mezzanine dining area and milled around doing introductions, and I asked young workers from the far-flung corners of the Shell empire, “Oh, what’s that like?” I tried to remember not to talk like a reporter.
When they called us to the table for dinner, I was lucky enough to be seated next to one of the senior Shell participants, Steven Fries, the firm’s chief economist. We met over arancini, the likes of which you might find at an upscale food court in a baseball stadium. Based in Shell’s global headquarters in the Hague, Fries pronounces his words with a precision that defies accent; even after speaking with him, his colleagues didn’t realize he’s an American until he told them. Like many people who studied economics at elite Western institutions between 1975 and 1986 would, he blames the lack of affordable housing in London on too much government regulation, which is why his support for big public investments to transition society away from oil and gas surprised me. That is, until I realized that, in his mind, those big public investments would be going to energy companies. When the proverbial light bulb went on above my head, he gave me a look that seemed to say, “Come on, man. What do you think we’re doing here?”
In the meantime, I asked Fries, if Shell is serious about transition, then couldn’t it voluntarily speed it up by leaving some of its wells fallow, constraining oil output and thereby driving the price relative to renewables higher, faster? Sure, it would have to take some losses in the short term, but we’re talking about the future of the planet here. He dismissed the idea, telling me it’s important not to artificially withhold supply, which would introduce price shocks that could turn public opinion against environmentalist policy. Besides, it would only end up sending money to the Saudis anyway.
“We’re going to get as much out of [oil and gas] for as long as we can,” he said.
“That’s an extremely frightening thing for you to say,” I said.
“It doesn’t mean every drop,” he said, failing to reassure me.
Shell would apparently prefer us not to think about how to reduce carbon emissions by raising the costs of fossil-fuel development. Which makes sense: No matter their green branding, fossil-fuel companies do not want their projects rendered uneconomic. Instead, they want to talk about how their new projects can be rendered economic faster. Even planned production from existing fossil-fuel infrastructure, it’s been estimated, will push the planet past the Paris targets, and Shell is still “exploring” for new oil deposits to exploit. “In terms of emissions, it’s one of the cleanest ways to go,” a Shell employee in deepwater strategy seated across from me explained about deepwater drilling as compared with other kinds of drilling. “Of course, when you put it in your car and burn it, it’s oil, but,” he said, trailing off. Although the slice of revenue energy firms derive from fossil fuels is by all accounts scheduled to shrink, Shell foresees a sizable enduring demand. No one has viable plans for a battery-powered container ship, and the world’s militaries aren’t about to give up jet fighters pending the development of an electric model. Not to mention that all this clean technology requires a lot of energy in advance for manufacturing.
Deepwater wells operate on a ten-year schedule, I’m told, so my dinner companion doesn’t expect the ones he’s looking at now off the coast of Brazil to even yield product until the 2030s, at which point it will take more time just to earn back the initial investment and even longer to turn a profit.
In February, Shell announced the purchase of a 50 percent operating stake in three deepwater blocks off Colombia’s Caribbean coast under an agreement with Colombian state-controlled Ecopetrol. And Shell’s not the only one looking in the water off South America: In January, based on exploration in late 2019, Exxon revised its estimate upward for its blocks off Guyana, from 6 billion barrels of recoverable crude to 8 billion. (A week later, the nonprofit watchdog Global Witness released a report estimating that Exxon’s 2016 agreement with the country, negotiated with inexperienced government counterparts, had deprived the Guyanese people of $55 billion compared with international contract norms.) Fossil-fuel companies claim they’ve got one eye on 2050, but they’ve clearly got the other on next week. “If these activities are positive, these discoveries could be developed and potentially be a substantial increase in gas supply in the medium term,” a Shell spokesperson said of the Colombian offshore blocks, as if that would be a good thing.
But if short- and medium-term profit considerations are still driving plenty of decision-making at Shell and the other energy companies, employees are trying to think ahead when it comes to their careers. During the cocktail hour before dinner, I met a geoscientist who has been attempting his own transition (to the finance side of the business), preparing to move from the declining subsurface field to clean tech. I asked how he got involved in oil exploration in the first place. A little embarrassed, he told me he liked rocks as a kid. When he graduated from college, he saw two career paths: the energy sector or academia, where he would just be training others for the energy sector anyway. He said he was worried about the next generation of Earth-science students, who are graduating into a shrinking industry. Maybe they’ll be mining asteroids, suggested the deepwater strategist.
According to the geoscientist, one of the ways Shell incorporates climate change into its calculations is that when it looks to develop a new fuel source, it tries to figure out how much it’ll be able to sell it off for when the company transitions out of fossil energy — when the reputational costs start to exceed the returns. Whoever buys it will almost certainly continue extracting but at a lower cost of production, maybe because it has better technology or, more likely, because it cuts corners on labor and safety. What this means: Unregulated fossil-fuel production might come to look a lot like the narcotics trade, with its brutal criminal organizations that thrive in conjunction with corrupt state elements regardless of international agreements. The problem is that once reserves are discovered, there’s no way to undiscover them. “We don’t plan to lose money,” the geoscientist turned finance analyst said, and he meant it in the most general way.
The whole session was conducted under “Chatham House Rule,” which means participants are allowed to repeat what they hear but not who said it. The idea behind the rule is that it creates circumstances under which subordinates can speak freely to higher-ups about the company without endangering their career path. (As an American reporter, I am ignoring the rule when I see fit, having technically never agreed to anything.) The deepwater strategist put it to the test, prodding the senior executive Fries about the generational implications of green regulation. Was Fries, he wondered, going to help pay for the new electric car he’ll have to buy if the internal-combustion vehicle he just saved up enough to purchase is banned?
At a pub after dinner, away from the executives, the deepwater strategist confessed that he often thinks about what he’ll have to tell his child someday about the job he’s doing now. “I don’t have any kids, but, yeah,” the geoscientist agreed. He didn’t know how to describe the people to whom he owes an explanation, but he knows they’re out there.
We were tasked with trying to come up with ways Shell could see what’s coming, and participants began by imagining various ways Shell would feel this “rise of a new ethics,” as one of the experts called it: millennial politicians forcing harsher regulations, millennial investors divesting from fossil fuels, millennial potential recruits who don’t want to be embarrassed about their work, and millennial protesters who push everyone else. Shell strategists used the phrase “long march through the institutions” — coined by the German communist Rudi Dutschke for the ’60s student movement — to describe the way they expect left-wing climate radicals to become part of the Establishment.
===================================
** Waarschijnlijk zal e.e.a pas worden bereikt als de
mensheid door bijvoorbeeld een enorme pandemie wordt getroffen, zo is het Coronavirus
nu al verantwoordelijk voor een enorme vermindering van uitstoot, een
vermindering zo groot dat politici zich de oren van de kop zouden moeten
schamen dat er zo weinig is bereikt terwijl er al zoveel overleg is geweest op de vele klimaattoppen (waar die toppen zelf ook al een fikse aanjager zijn van de klimaatverandering...)... Politici die nog steeds oliemaatschappijen laten plaatsnemen aan de
onderhandelingstafels en dat voor meer dan 90% van de tijd, terwijl milieuorganbisaties blij mogen zijn als ze 6% van de tijd mee mogen doen aan de onderhandelingen.....
*** Deze
bosbranden moeten gevolgen hebben voor de rest van onze kleine aarde,
als je ziet dat de 'rookwolk' van die bosbranden zo groot was als een
fiks deel van Europa.....
Zie ook:
'Australië: film 'Dirty Power: Burnt Country' maakt gehakt van regeringsbeleid en media misinformatie'
'Australië: steenkoollobby werkt samen met de regering nog veel meer bosbranden in de hand'
'Groot Barrièrerif voor 60% verbleekt'
'Brekend Coronanieuws: koningshuis vraagt om overheidssteun: Shell keert aanmerkelijk minder dividend uit op de aandelenportefeuille'
'Shell scherpt klimaatdoelen aan, ofwel greenwashing op 'topniveau''
'Groot Barrièrerif voor 60% verbleekt'
'Houtstook professioneel en voor huishoudens moet worden verboden'
'Australië: steenkoollobby werkt samen met de regering nog veel meer bosbranden in de hand'
'CDA wenst geen EU 'green deal' en 'klimaatambassadeur' de Boer weet niet waar hij over spreekt'
'Frits Böttcher een 'klimaatsceptische wetenschapper' die zich liet betalen door o.a. Shell, KLM en AkzoNobel'
'Siemens heeft lak aan de klimaatverandering en haar slachtoffers'
'Australië slaat alarm over koraalriffen........ AUW!!!' en zie wat het rif betreft ook:
'Australische autoriteit geeft toestemming voor dumpen van 1 miljoen ton giftig havenslib in Groot Barrièrerif (Werelderfgoed)'
'De bosbranden in Australië zullen hun weerslag op de hele wereld hebben'
'Schildpad animatievideo over plastic- en olievervuiling oceanen >> door makers: Wallace and Gromit >> Greenpeace Nederland laat het alweer afweten'
'10.000 dromedarissen worden in Australië afgeschoten vanwege droogte'
'Australische bosbranden: 500 miljoen dieren dood en een rookpluim die groter is dan Europa'
'Greenpeace stelt dat de klimaatverandering is te stoppen ha! ha! ha! ha!' (en zie de links in dat bericht over de klimaatverandering enz.)
'Australië staat in brand terwijl de regering milieuactivisten straft voor het zich uitspreken tegen de oorzaken van de klimaatverandering'
'Scott Morrison (premier Australië) moest bezoek aan door bosbrand getroffen gebied afbreken en vertrok met de staart tussen de benen'
'Australië staat olieboringen toe in de Grote Australische Bocht, inclusief seismische ontploffingen'
'Duitsland stelt CO2 belasting op € 25,-- in plaats van € 10,-- >> heibel in de deelstaten' (terwijl die € 25,-- per ton CO2 een veel te lage belasting is...)
'Remco de Boer ('klimaatambassadeur') wil de Nederlandse kolencentrales openhouden'
'Filipijnen geen orkaanseizoen, maar het jaarrond tropische cyclonen'
'BP stelt in milieuplan dat een olieramp op zee goed is voor de lokale economie..........'
'Australië geeft toestemming tot uitbaten enorm grote kolenmijn'
'Redt het Groot Barrièrerif, zet uw handtekening a.u.b.!'
'Het Groot Barrièrerif, dreigt te worden gesloopt voor een grote kolenhaven........'
'Australië heeft VN gedwongen een passage uit een klimaatrapportage te verwijderen...........'
'Leard Forest: grootste kolenmijn ooit dreigt gerealiseerd te worden in dit vele duizenden jaren oude Australisch bos......... '
'Australië exporteert dagelijks één miljoen ton steenkool, dit i.h.k.v. de klimaatverandering en de afgelopen klimaattop........' (daar wordt jaarlijks nog eens 10 miljoen ton aan toegevoegd....)
'Coca-Cola betaalt wetenschappers om haar producten te promoten en voor weerleggen kritiek......'
'Shell, ExxonMobil en andere oliemaatschappijen gaan 180 miljard dollar investeren in plasticproductie.........'
'Bas Heijne weet, geenszins 'onbehagelijk', niet wat te denken van de klimaatverandering....... OEI!!!'
'ExxonMobil vervolgd voor 'misleiding...' Nou zeg maar het op grote schaal bedonderen van de kluit!!'
'Shell was al in 1989 overtuigd van klimaatverandering.............'
'Exxon lobbyist (politicus) dagvaardt milieugroepen voor kennis bij Exxon over klimaatverandering.......' (ongelofelijk ook.....)
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