The Angry Clean Energy Guy on a virus infecting sustainability: Big Oil are deliberately poisoning what sustainability means, diluting its impact and reach, and they are doing that in plain sight, borrowing the language and applying it to terrible initiatives and companies all designed to propagate our use of harmful fossil fuels and indeed increase it, rather than decrease it, when everyone knows we need to power the world with renewables as well as pretty much phase out our use of oil, gas and coal by 2050 – to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Winner of the week: Asset managers Sarasin, for divesting from Shell while not mincing words. Villain of the week, Cargill, named “Worst Company in the World” by NGO Mighty Earth
The Angry Clean Energy Guy on a virus infecting sustainability: Big Oil are deliberately poisoning what sustainability means, diluting its impact and reach, and they are doing that in plain sight, borrowing the language and applying it to terrible initiatives and companies all designed to propagate our use of harmful fossil fuels and indeed increase it, rather than decrease it, when everyone knows we need to power the world with renewables as well as pretty much phase out our use of oil, gas and coal by 2050 – to have any chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. Winner of the week: Asset managers Sarasin, for divesting from Shell while not mincing words. Villain of the week, Cargill, named “Worst Company in the World” by NGO Mighty Earth
[inaudible].
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to episode 16 of the angry clean energy guy with me aside resume. I am so happy you're here. Thank you. A quick reminder, you can now find all my transcripts on my website, the angry clean energy guy.com and I hope you find these useful and helpful. This week I am going to rent a about a virus infecting sustainability. Big Oil is deliberately poisoning what sustainability means, diluting its impact and reach and I will show you how they're doing that in plain sight, borrowing the green and sustainability space language, applying it to terrible initiatives in companies all designed to propagate our use of harmful fossil fuels and indeed increase it rather than decrease it when everyone knows we need to phase out our use of gas, oil, and coal by 2050 and we need to power the world with 60% renewables by 2030 in order to avoid catastrophic climate change, which I guess all executives don't give a toss about. I hope their families and children are listening to this podcast and talk some sense into them.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:sustainability is infected by a virus called big boy and it is not to be belittled or under estimated. It's producing hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical copies of the virus at an extra ordinary rate. I'm not sure if anyone in the green space is keeping up. I certainly, I'm not in this episode. I will take you through this virus because I honestly cannot believe the scheming and sneaky stuff. The oil mafia is up to smack bang in the sustainability space first. These viruses are being spread by an organism hiding in plain sight, the wonderfully named oil and gas climate initiative and all its members. You can find it@oilandgasclimateinitiative.com and let me name the members. You've got Exxon Shell, BP, total and Chevron of climate obstruction, climate denial and bad lobbying. Fang. You've got China's CNPC, Italy's Eni, Norway's Akron or Occidental Petroleum of the US. Mexico's PEMEX, Brazil's petro brass, Spain's Repsol and the big monster that Saudi Aramco. Here's my advice to the members of the oil and gas climate initiative. If you actually mean self, the crap on your websites and let me cite from Norway's Ecuador's website. Can an oil and gas company be part of a sustainable energy future? We're working actively to reduce climate emissions, put a price on carbon and benefit societies around the world. We aim to be the world's most carbon efficient oil and gas producer and are investing actively in renewables. Yeah, right. Ecuador, if you mean that, do it leave the oil and gas anti climate initiative. I'll come back to the oil and gas anti climate initiative in a moment but first I'm going to give you three examples of the dangerous virus infecting sustainability and the disgusting manipulation of citizens taking place out there by big oil. Exhibit one is Shell oil starting this past April across the Netherlands and scarily later in other countries shell says Shell is giving drivers at the gas pump the option to add 1 cent per liter of fuel when they fuel their car, which the company will then use to offset the carbon emissions of that gasoline. According to shell, the money will go towards buying carbon credits from nature based projects, which is a bizarre code word for forest. But anyway, Shell says it's investing$300 million over three years to make this happen and its PR machine has been making noise about that 300 million for many weeks now. Now Shell presents this as great because it shell is allowing US motorists to drive carbon neutral. If only we agreed to pay 1 cent per liter, you know, and 1 cent per liter does sound very small, doesn't it? But I have news for Dutch drivers. Shell is ripping you off and it's arrogance is breathtaking. Do not buy these offsets at the pump. Let me tell you how Shell is ripping you off first when you drive. A liter of gasoline emits two kilograms of CO2, so 500 liters emit one ton of CO2. When you pay a cent per liter, you're really paying five euros per ton of CEO to bell. I have been in this industry for a very long time and I can tell you there are so many things wrong here. It's unbelievable. First they're ripping you off big time. And the reason they are is because they're paying no more than two euros for these credits, which they're selling you at five euros. So that's two and a half times their money right there. You know that alleged 300 million investment in forests, they're selling it back to you for two and a half times what they paid. Second, they're pushing responsibility for everything they have ever done to you, the Dutch motorists to start. And you are the lucky global motorists when they get around to it instead of doing the decent thing, which is to invest in respectable projects that generate carbon credits with integrity, then retiring these carbon credits or in other words, buying them than canceling them and therefore writing off what they spent on them. So instead of buying these carbon credits and retiring them and then coming to us, the consumer to say that they are trying even a tiny little to offset the damage they're doing to our health and to our environment and to the entire planet and to everyone on it. People, animals and plants. They're refusing to take any responsibility whatsoever. Then on top, instead of just stopping there, they want to rip off anyone driving a gasoline car worldwide. I mean the arrogance and lack of morals of basic decency are breathtaking. What shells should do instead, it's really simple. The carbon credits it buys should be at no extra cost to you, the motorist and from a credited organizations that support environmental projects with integrity around the world. There are many of those. So Shell, you must do the right thing. Stop ripping off motorists, stop selling them carbon credits at a two and a half times markup that you should be retiring instead yourselves. But I have a feeling this will take a while. So meanwhile I have a message for Dutch motorists and all other motorists being offered offsets by their friendly, dirty gas supplier. Don't buy them. They are ripping you off several times over several and laughing all the way to the Bank together with their wealth oiled and the pun is intended together with their wealth oiled and disgustingly well funded public relation machines. Exhibit two is Callista. Remember the company I spoke about in Episode 15 Calista is a company that says it produces protein for fish, livestock and pet food. It says that it pumps into a fermentor and then the micro organisms from naturally occurring microbes found in soil metabolize the gas as their sole source of energy producing a high protein biomass. Now that sounds lovely except I have one huge problem with it. BP is pretending to care because what it's really doing is finding an outlet for it's natural gas. Callista could do what it's doing very easily by taking methane out of waste and biomass and actually therefore helping the environment and stopping that methane from going up into the atmosphere and making climate change worse, but no BP wants to displace all that methane that Callista could be using out of waste and biomass and replace it with the methane from it's dirty natural gas instead of just to make sure it can keep producing more and more harmful gas to fry us all. Meanwhile, though it can hide behind. Callista and its management team can make grandiose pronouncements about how they're backing a novel solution to help get the world on a sustainable path and all sorts of nonsense like that. When it knows exactly what it's doing, it's doing exactly the opposite. It's actually helping get the world faster on an unsustainable path. Exhibit three of the virus is the oil and gas climate initiative, which really should be remain renamed immediately as the oil and gas anti climate initiative and some of its investments. So if you look at their website, you'll see that allegedly it's taking practical actions on climate change because of course all the rest of us are just innocent and take impractical actions and allegedly the oil and gas anti climate initiative members leverage their collective strength to lower carbon footprint of energy industry transportation, value chains via engagements, policies, investments and deployment, and armed with at least a billion dollar war chest. But take a closer look at what the oil and gas climate initiative is actually doing with its money. Their website lists 12 companies which they have back. They categorize them into recycling carbon or reducing carbon or reducing methane leakage. I took a look at each investment and what I found, I have to say is no surprise at all. Every one of these investments, every single one, is made with the sole purpose to perpetuate oil and gas use forever under the cover of efficiency. I mean, that's just plain horrible and they're not hiding it. It's all there in plain sight. There's guys behind beautiful words. For example, a company back by the anti climate initiative is a Katie's power. Allegedly, they're a developer of radically improved internal combustion engines that increase fuel efficiency, reduce greenhouse gases and costs less than conventional engines. Yes, but they're still internal combustion engines fired with big oils or Len gas. In other words, that is serious. We regard action serious. We regard action to protect oil and gas exploration and production disguised as doing something good and it's all to slow down our move away from polluting cars and trucks and buses to electric vehicles. I mean, it's so obvious what they're doing, but they have no shame at all. It's all on a website pretending it's a fire is affecting the sustainability space and we have to push back. Another example of a company backed by the oil and gas anti climate initiative is Clark Valve, which is developer of valves that fight fugitive methane emissions. Now I love that one. It's great that somebody is making valves that stop methane emissions, but the whole premise of this investment is to make sure big oil can continue to dig holes to generate gas even though they end, we know they must stop and frankly sticking fouls on the holes is not helping anybody at old investments such as this one. Allow them to pretend that they too have sustainability credentials when in fact they are nothing but another virus created to infect sustainability. I would encourage you to take a look@oilandgasclimateinitiative.com and check for yourselves. Then when you see what big word is really up to and the best I can describe it as is to infect sustainability and green efforts globally with the lethal virus to kill them. So take a look and check for yourselves. Then when you see what the goal is really up to do something, starting with never buying any carbon credits from any polluter, and there are signs of change. Just in the last 10 days or so, the head of OPEC, for example, actually stated publicly that he was being asked about the harmful impact of all the gas by his own kids. A British institution called the national trust divested and it was swiftly followed by two others. BP made an announcement acknowledging that some of its oil, Walt See the light of day, the shell boss pretending said net zero is the only way to go. Words, words, words, oil and gas. These two words became a dirty word in a rebranding of the footsy stock exchange index and finally the F P started highlighting shorting opportunities starting with hydrocarbon projects. So it's not all bad out there, but we have to call a spade a spade and oil and gas hiding behind words such as sustainability and efficiency to propagate the use of oil and gas forever is something we have to push back hard against
Speaker 1:[inaudible].
Speaker 2:On another note, the Economist magazine is a holding a youth essay competition on climate change. I would be grateful if you help spread the word and know I'm not getting paid for this. The youth essay question is what fundamental economic and political change, if any, is needed for an effective response to climate change? What fundamental economic and political change, if any, is needed for an effective response to climate change? It's very relevant question at a critical time. If he economists competition is open to people between the age of 16 and 25 and your deadline is 31 July, they will publish your winning essay and you will be invited to their annual idea. Summit called expenses paid. Good luck. No, my winner of the week is asset managers CyrusOne for cutting their stake in shell and announcing it publicly a few days ago, but more importantly for this strong and direct and honest quote, they said it cannot be in the interests of the millions of people whose longterm savings are invested in your company. For you to produce fossil fuels in such volume is that the planetary stability is threatened and difficult. Now, why would Saracens say that? Simple. It's because Shell is hiding behind words and taking anti climate, rear guard action wherever possible. And in addition, Shell is publicly committed to spending$30 billion a year each year forever to retain according to them the longevity of their fossil fuel portfolio. Now that's at the exact same time as the is on fire and it's getting worse. Now, even with all that, this week shout isn't even my villain of the week. The villain of the week is Cargill. Cargill is one of the largest companies in the world. It's also the largest privately held u s company and it's a very big agricultural concern. Now they are my villain of the week because in NGO with the wonderful name of mighty earth named them as the worst company in the world, and they did that while accusing them of unscrupulous business practices and environmental destruction. The chairman of my TRF is former Congressman Henry Waxman. Now I'm going to quote from what he said, the people who have been sickened or died from eating contaminated Cargill meat, the child laborers who grow the cocoa. Cargill sells for the world's chocolate, the midwesterners who drink water polluted by Cargill. The indigenous people displaced by fast forestation to make way for Cargill's animal feed and the ordinary consumers who've paid more to protrude on the dinner table because of Cargill's financial malfeasance, all have felt the impact of these Agri business giant and their lives are worse for having come into contact with cargo. Strong words, indeed, Congressman Waxman, Cargill, you are so much better than this. Get your act together and stop acting like a monster. Thank you all for listening. Don't hesitate to reach out via my website, the angry, clean energy guy.com and have a great week.
Speaker 1:[inaudible].