OPINION: The messages coming out of New York, where government officials, business executives and prominent civil society leaders gathered this week for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, were dire: the world must do a great deal more to bring down greenhouse gas emissions if there is any hope of avoiding the worst ravages of global warming.
The event packed an additional emotional kick, with an impassioned speech from teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg following worldwide demonstrations calling for drastic action on climate change.
It’s easy to scoff at calls for the near-immediate elimination of fossil fuel use, but with public pressure mounting, it’s also easy to paint the oil and gas industry as villains.
Kudos, then, to the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative for its efforts to fund low-carbon technologies and the individual efforts of its member companies to rein in emissions in their own operations.
But this focus on technical solutions, while essential, is not enough.
Oil companies will be held to a higher standard than other polluters, and fair or not, they will have to pour more of their considerable profits into initiatives outside the traditional oil and gas realm if they really want to change public perception — Shell’s reforestation target, for example.
It also means supporting policies that reduce the use of their chief products — a big ask of any business — and to help mitigate not only emissions but the social effects of climate change, which seem increasingly unavoidable despite this newfound sense of urgency.
(This is an Upstream Opinion article.)