Another Certainty Of Climate Collapse: More, Better And Slicker Industry Greenwashing
Oil executives want to play nice with Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teenager whose one-person school strike launched a worldwide movement to treat the climate crisis like the emergency it is. Deirdre Michie, head of the industry trade association Oil and Gas UK, declared in a speech recently that the sector sees climate change as “a real and present danger that we must deal with together,” and assured Thunberg that her industry “is listening.” It’s not clear to which part. Oil and Gas UK also recently praised the start of production on a new oil field in Britain’s North Sea, which aims to pump out 100,000 barrels of oil per day in short order — exactly the type of expansion that Thunberg criticized as “beyond absurd” in a speech before the British Parliament in April.
Michie’s claim that the industry is “listening” is not the first time — and won’t be the last — that an industry leader is speaking out of both sides of their mouth. Pressure is mounting to address the climate crisis, and oil and gas companies and the politicians who have abetted them can see major climate legislation will be harder and harder to stall. Thunberg is regularly joined by tens if not hundreds of thousands of demonstrators around the world every week as part of the “Fridays for Future” movement. In Europe — where the movement has had its largest footprint — it’s been credited for making climate a top issue for voters, funneling a surge of support to the Green Party in last month’s European Parliament election, and encouraging outgoing Prime Minister Theresa May to propose making the UK the first G7 nation to achieve 100 percent net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Meanwhile, in the U.S., where the climate is emerging as a major issue of the 2020 election, grassroots groups like the Sunrise Movement have successfully pushed the idea of the Green New Deal into the national conversation, and five states — plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico — have committed to getting 100 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2050.
So after decades of spreading disinformation, fossil fuel interests the world are shifting into a different strategy: carving out a greener, friendlier image for themselves and appearing to embrace a progressive climate stance — as they continue to try to shape legislation to their benefit. The London-based think tank InfluenceMap found the world’s five largest oil companies have spent $1 billion rebranding themselves as “green” since the Paris Agreement, all the while pushing aggressively to access new supplies of oil and undermine climate rules and regulations.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s most recent report projects that 87 percent of oil and 74 percent of gas usage will need to be phased out by mid-century worldwide for the planet to stay below 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. But among the 40 largest oil-and-gas companies, 92 percent tie executive pay and bonuses to their ability to expand operations and secure new fossil-fuel development. Accordingly, the climate crisis never came up in a conference call this week between ExxonMobil and JP Morgan Chase, one of Exxon’s biggest investors. Exxon boasted about plans to extract one million barrels of oil a day from the U.S.’s Permian Basin by 2024, and to massively expand its operations in Guyana, Mozambique, and Brazil.
EDIT
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/dont-be-fooled-by-fossil-fuel-companies-green-exterior-850285/
= new reply since forum marked as read
A both with cute young women @ local garden center and diagrams of wind turbines over the AEP logo. 
AEP has fought global warming/climate change science for years
AEP has funded bullshit reports that climate change and acid rain are not problems for years
AEP has lobbied against pollution and greenhouse gas controls for years
AEP has backed republican politicians who have fought against green energy and environmental
protection laws for years
And yet there those 2 young women were sitting all smiling and happy to tell you about AEP's
new green programs.
