Cont: Global warming discussion V

[dann]

No, they didn't. Here's BP's carbon footprint calculator as it appeared on their website in August 2006. On the same page is a link to "What BP Is Doing", which says:-
The page "Introduction to Low Carbon Power" explains:-
Another page titled "What Others Are Doing" includes the following:-
So the narrative that BP was trying to push responsibility onto individuals alone is false. Pants on Fire false. I don't blame you for believing it though. It took me several hours of digging to get to the truth.
In case you still think it was fraud,, the driving force behind BP's attempt to become 'greener' was CEO John Browne, who in May 1997 gave this speech at Stanford, saying:-
I suggest reading the whole speech to get the full measure of it. You may think his take was biased by his position as CEO of the company, and you would be right. But he wasn't wrong about the conclusions. BP could have capped all their wells and not sold another drop of oil, and it wouldn't have had any effect while the demand was still there. To achieve the necessary change we need both the desire to reduce fossil fuel usage and viable alternatives to it. BP was was working on both.

You're still promoting the idea that BP (and the other fossil-fuel companies are the innocent victims of the desire of the end consumers, i.e. that if it weren't for that desire there would be no market, which is simple logic but not exactly how things actually happened. It's the argument favored by Big Tobacco, drug dealers and companies selling low-quality food: But consumers want my product! They want me to deliver it to them! I'm just the innocent middleman between them and the product they so desire!
(It's the eternal excuse of the psychopath: 'Look what they made me do!')

It would be credible ... if!
If only oil companies hadn't simultaneously done their utmost to sell as much oil as they possibly could,
If only they hadn't bribed politicians to create the infrastructure that benefitted them by making people dependent on gas-driven cars, for instance, and if they didn't currently bribe those politicians to subsidize fossil fuels and stop wind & solar parks from being built.
If only Big Tobacco hadn't tried to persuade smokers that smoking was virtually harmless and merely made you look cool whereas what killed you was all that other stuff, not tobacco.
If only drug dealers weren't advertising for their product wherever they could get away with it and never handed out free samples to get the habit started and potential customers hooked.
And if only food manufacturers didn't to their utmost to hide all the unhealthy crap in their products and instead boldly advertised on their packaging how much sugar and additives they contained. As it is, they have to be forced to do so, to which they respond by making it impossible to read without glasses (and often also a magnifying glass).

But this is what the consumers want it is the oldest trick in the book! Don't fall for it!

The Truth About Carbon Footprints – Carbon footprint calculators make you feel guilty while taking the onus off fossil fuel companies (CLF, May 5, 2025)
The idea of a “carbon footprint” was developed by Ogilvy & Mather, a New York City-based British advertising and public relations firm working for British Petroleum, or BP, as they’re better known. Their idea was to rebrand the company in the age of global warming to “Beyond Petroleum.” It was an effort to reposition the company in an era in which climate change was increasingly accepted as scientific fact. As part of that rebranding, in 2004, the BP team brilliantly concocted the idea of an “individual carbon footprint,” which would lay the responsibility for climate change squarely on the shoulders of individuals. That’s right—you and me.

Why Big Oil loves to talk about your carbon footprint (DW Planet A on YouTube, Aug 27, 2021 – 12:46 min.)
Everybody keeps telling us to cut our carbon footprints. So how guilty should I feel about my personal emissions? And what's Big Oil got to do with it?
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.

READ MORE:
Similarities between ExxonMobil's climate communications and tobacco industry PR:
Rhetoric and frame analysis of ExxonMobil's climate change communications

The fraction of global greenhouse gas emissions linked to each fossil fuel company (excluding emissions from things like deforestation or methane from cow burps):
White knights, or horsemen of the apocalypse? Prospects for Big Oil to align emissions with a 1.5 °C pathway

How citizens of 30 countries feel about climate action:
Mobilization, concern or indifference: how do the citizens of 30 countries feel about climate change?

A pathway to hit net-zero emissions by 2050 from the International Energy Agency: Net Zero by 2050

How the richest 10% of humanity were responsible for 52% of the emissions between 1990 and 2015:
CONFRONTING CARBON INEQUALITY – Putting climate justice at the heart of the COVID-19 recovery

00:00-01:10 Intro
01:10-03:23 History of carbon footprints
03:23-05:56 Plastics, tobacco, and PR
05:56-09:15 Fossil fuel companies
09:15-12:46 Does individual action matter?

And now we're there, let's take a look at the adjacent 'carbon offets':

Carbon Offsets (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on YouTube, Aug 22, 2022 – 23:37 min.)
John Oliver explains what carbon offsets are, what they claim to do, how they might be making climate change even worse, and, of course, how Oscar Isaac is getting hotter.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

You're still promoting the idea that BP (and the other fossil-fuel companies are the innocent victims of the desire of the end consumers, i.e. that if it weren't for that desire there would be no market, which is simple logic but not exactly how things actually happened.

What actually happened was an increasing demand for energy. It started about a million years ago when we discovered how to use fire to cook food and provide warmth. Initially we burned wood, but as the population increased the demand for wood became unsustainable, so we switched to other energy sources, specifically coal. To drain water out of coal mines we invented the steam engine, which was soon improved enough to replace animals for transportation and machinery. This started the industrial revolution, which greatly increased the demand for energy.

Then in the 1800s large oil deposits were discovered. Initially this was used primarily to make kerosene, which was mostly used for lighting (replacing whale oil). One of the byproducts of kerosene production was gasoline (AKA petrol). Initially this had little use and was mostly dumped into the environment, until the internal combustion engine started becoming popular for 'horseless carriages'. When Henry Ford dramatically lowered the cost of the motor car, demand for gasoline skyrocketed - and has never looked back since..

Another byproduct of oil distillation was diesel, which was well suited to the engine that Rudolf Diesel invented in 1897. By the 1950s ships and locomotives had largely switched from steam to diesel.

Throughout human history the demand for energy has outstripped supply. Coal and oil sat in the ground for millennia with little use made of it because wood was abundant - until it wasn't. Technologies that made use of coal and oil might not have been developed if there wasn't a supply they could use, but then their proliferation increased demand. Today oil companies go to extreme lengths (literally) to meet the demand. They wouldn't do this if the demand wasn't there, and they didn't create the demand.

That doesn't mean they are innocent. Oil companies have known since the 1970s that their product was causing global warming, but capitalism ignores the tragedy of the commons - and few consumers were willing to 'go without' for something that wouldn't affect them for decades (if ever). Oil companies are definitely at fault for continuing to meet demand for harmful products, just as consumers are for continuing to consume them. Both are also at fault for minimizing or denying it, but that's normal when the system is driven by selfish interests at both ends.