DON'T BE AS EVIL: OIL CO. GROWS ROSES

Are today's oil companies making strides towards cleaner energy for PR purposes? Are they making smart long term business decisions or are they just good people? The answer doesn't matter.

What matters is whether they're taking real, concrete steps towards more renewable, less polluting sources and systems. The New York Times' business section today reported a novel development from the Dutch. A Shell oil refinery in Holland is now pumping its byproduct to greenhouses.

"Shell aims to sell 500,000 tons of carbon dioxide a year" to 500 greenhouses, reducing its emissions by 8%, the Times said. That's a lot of roses. The carbon still mostly ends up in the air, but now the greenhouse owners can stop producing it. It's only 8% of one refinery, but it bespeaks more for the larger picture.

"'The debate about CO2 is changing,' Jeroen van der Veer, the chief executive officer of Shell, said in a recent interview. 'You can either fight it - which is useless - or you can see it as a business opportunity.'"

Score one for the libertarian environmentalists of the world.

The trend began in 1997 when British Petroleum (that's Arco here in LA) chief executive Lord Browne declared that oil companies' carbon emissions were contributing to global warming. Since then they've famously invested in alternative energy sources like wind and solar. Now they're planning to spend $800 million a year to reduce their carbon impact by 24 million tons by 2015. BP has has been the industry leader in environmental initiatives, almost as much as it been the leader of marketing itself as environmental.

That may sound cynical, but it's not. Besides the fact that Arco stations are consistently the cheapest in town, buying your gas from BP - or investing your money - sends a message that the marketing works. Americans want greener fuel. Does a mega company like BP still do more harm than good? Sure, but if you drive, you're complicit anyway, so vote with your wallet for cheaper gas and less CO2.

Shell, for its part, is proud of its investment in biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel as well as its share in a handful of wind farms. Its website pegs the total investment in biofuel at over a billion US dollars, but doesn't mention the amount it's spent on
wind, solar, or hydrogen.

Too little? Yes. Too late? Maybe not.

With the success of Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth", global warming is the top national environmental concern and one of the biggest issues in the upcoming midterm elections. The public is worried about it, the scientific community comes up with more evidence every day. Democrats and President Bush agree that it's an issue we have to deal with. The discord is over how aggressive we need to be.

But there are still some Republicans who deny that we have the power to stop it or even that humans have anything to do with it. Richard Pombo, the Representative from Stockton called global warming a "myth" in a 2002 press release. Closer to home, Dana Rohrabacher from Long Beach called it "global baloney" on Real Time with Bill Maher back in 2004.

While it's not too late to save the planet, it may soon be too late for guys like Pombo and Rohrabacher. Global warming could be THE wedge issue for 2006. If this midterm is going to warm up, Democrats must take advantage of these backward looking politicians and place the environment front and center.


The NY Times article by Jad Mouawad:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/business/30carbon.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Shell's environmental statement from 2/2/06 (click "Meeting the energy challenge):
http://www.shell.com/home/Framework?siteId=rw-br

Al Gore on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart:
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/celebrity_interviews/index.jhtml

Pombo's Press Release:
http://www.votepomboout.org/issues/GlobalWarming/PomboEarthDay2002.pdf

A more recent Pombo emission:
http://www.house.gov/pombo/press/press2006/jan31_06.htm

The photo is by Herman Wouters of the NY Times.