The harsh reality is that the consumption of Petroleumdespite the climate crisis that the planet is experiencing, it continues to increase. For next year, OPEC says it will increase by 2.7%, as long as the war in Ukraine and inflation hit the economy no more than expected. In any case, for a while there is oil, as well as coal and natural gas, the other fossil fuels responsible for humanity that sees its very survival threatened.
And is that, to begin with, the big oil companies are simply reluctant to abandon the production of the ‘fuel of the apocalypse’, as it has sometimes been called, and they are stubbornly fighting initiatives to decarbonise the planet. This is how “they have humanity by the neck”, in the words of the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, so that industry, trade and the bulk of the economy depend on oil.
He is not a figure of speech. A study by the Influence Map climate change analysis laboratory revealed this a few weeks ago Oil companies spend $ 750 million annually on climate marketing, but, on the other hand, they plan to allocate only 12% of their total investments to decarbonisation. In other words, despite repeated announcements about their environmental commitment, the truth is that practice shows that they do not intend to correct the course, at least not immediately.
The ‘Big Oil’s Agenda 2022’ study is the result of the analysis of over 3,000 messages and announcements launched by five of the world’s largest hydrocarbon companies: British BP, Dutch Shell, France Total and American ExxonMobil and Chevron. 60% of all these messages contained references to environmental commitments. The cost of all these advertisements (in the media, billboards, blogs, social networks, etc.) amounts to $ 750 million for a single year, according to a “conservative estimate,” the study says.
These data are then compared with how much these companies intend to allocate in 2022 to low carbon activities, and this expenditure turns out to be only 12% of the total budget for investments in assets of these companies, which varies between 87,000 and 96,000 million dollars.
When the authors of the report they asked companies to provide data demonstrating compliance with their environmental commitments, none of them provided itaccording to Faye Holder, co-author of the report and researcher at Influence Map.
This contradiction between such an avalanche of pro-climate messages and anti-climate actions constitutes, for Holder, a case of greenwashing.
The powerful ‘lobbies’ of the oil companies
And that’s it oil companies and gas and coal companies form authentic lobbyorganized in a disciplined and effective way, which acts to try to minimize the damage caused by the fight against climate change. This was demonstrated, for example, during the last COP26 conference in Glasgow, which brought the different countries together to continue moving towards decarbonisation.
The largest delegation present at that conference did not correspond to any country, however important it was, but to the fossil fuel industry. And is that, according to the conservation organization Global Witness after consulting the list of attendees, more than 500 people who participated in COP26 were part of this sector. Their aim, as this entity suspected, was to exert pressure in favor of the interests of the hydrocarbon companies, to which they believed they should be barred from entering.
The influence of the oil lobby “is one of the main reasons why 25 years of UN climate talks have not led to real carbon cuts,” said Murray, a spokesman for Global Witness.
More and more entities are remembering this, as a precedent the World Health Organization (WHO) did not take the tobacco ban seriously until all representatives of the tobacco industry were excluded from WHO meetingsto which they went to relativize and question the dangers of tobacco.
One of the largest oil lobby groups identified at COP26 was the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), whose spokesperson, Alessandre Vitelli, said its raison d’etre is “to find more efficient means on the market to reduce emissions “and stated that in his organization there are not only fossil fuel companies, but also from other sectors.
Insufficient emission cut targets
Beyond these industry efforts in public relations and political influence, the truth is that large companies in the sector have clearly insufficient decarbonisation targets achieve the goals set by the Paris Agreement.
This was revealed by a survey published in Nature Communications and conducted by the organization Climate Analytics, which concluded that the decarbonization scenarios in which companies such as BP, Shell or Equinor have publicly engaged are not ambitious enough to prevent the overheating of the planet above. 1.5ºC before 2100.
Even the boldest strategy of all those analyzed, that of British Petroleum, results in an average maximum warming of 1.65ºC, which is too high respect the Paris Agreements, since, as the researchers say, “every degree fraction counts”.
Climate Analytics Executive Director Bill Hare believes it is “important not to allow oil companies to establish scenarios that do not meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement.”
As a result of all this situation, a few days ago 1,000 professionals and 200 health sector organizations from around the world, led by the World Health Organization (WHO) itself, signed a appeal to the governments of the planet for the urgent approval of a non-proliferation treaty for fossil fuelsa figure that recalls what was done with nuclear weapons decades ago to limit atomic arsenals.
“The current dependence on fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. From a health point of view, it is an act of self-sabotage, “said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
These professionals and organizations point out in their writings that the threat posed by hydrocarbons to human health is not a generic or immaterial threat. In reverse. “Air pollution kills more than seven million people a year around the world”they point out
In short, the dirty energy industry seems to be doing everything possible to prevent its withdrawal and conversion to sustainable sources. The challenge for humanity is to accelerate the transition to an energy future without oil, gas or coal.
Antonio Guterres: “The same tactics of the tobacconists of a few decades ago”
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres is one of the main voices against the domination that oil companies and other dirty energy industries still exert on the planet. This summer, during a summit held in June with the main world leaders, he did not hesitate to give them a clear rebuke: “You represent the largest economies and also the largest emitters in the world. Your first duty is to protect people. And nothing is clearer than the danger of fossil fuel expansion, ”Guterres said in his speech at the Major Economics Forum on Energy and Climate.
Guterres also denounced the pressure that the gas, oil and coal industry exerts on governments and economies: “It seems that fossil fuel producers have humanity by the throat“he said, adding that these pressures are” the same outrageous tactics that Big Tobacco used decades ago. “Just like the tobacco industry, the lobby fossil fuels and their financial accomplices must not shirk responsibility”Added the UN Secretary General. With these last words he alluded to the fact that the big banks of the planet continue to finance dirty energies with huge sums of money, without which their survival would not be possible.
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