“The BP incident highlights big differences in how socially responsible funds prioritize various causes. Some of these managers considered BP’s stance on climate change a strong positive. ‘BP was the first to break the logjam on climate change policy’ and had been a leader on alternative energy, says Mark Regier, director of stewardship investing for MMA Praxis.”
– Quoted in Eleanor Laise, “Oops: ‘Socially Responsible’ Funds Hold Big Stakes of BP,” Wall Street Journal, July 17–18, 2010.
The greenwashing strategy of BP and Enron has been the subject of three recent posts at MasterResource:
Don’t believe that “Beyond Petroleum” BP fooled the politically correct after Enron and even all the way up to the Deepwater Horizon explosion/Gulf spill of April 2010?…
Energy is the master resource. Without it, other resources could neither be produced nor consumed. Even energy requires energy: There would not be usable oil, gas, or coal without the energy to manufacture and power the requisite tools and machinery. Nor would there be wind turbines or solar panels, which are monuments to embedded fossil-fuel energy.
And just how important are fossil fuels relative to so-called renewable energies? Oil, gas, or coal generates the electricity needed to fill in for intermittent wind and solar power to ensure moment-to-moment reliability. So renewable energy, ironically, is dependent on nonrenewable energy short of prohibitively expensive battery technology assuring the flow of electricity.
As a component of all products and services, energy needs to be affordable, convenient, and reliable. To this end, public policy should respect consumer preference and allow energy producers to meet the demands of the marketplace.…
MasterResource, a free-market energy blog, continues to attract new talent and a growing audience. We have had approximately 45 authors to date, and our cumulative views have exceeded one-half million.
We are not a mega-blog, but we are an important addition to the energy literature that will, like a good book, be accessed and referenced for years to come.
At Technorati, MasterResource has consistently been in the top 25 (out of 1,550) “green” blogs and has reached as high as #7. But more importantly, serious students of energy policy are regulars at our site, reading our once-a-day, in-depth post or tracking down material on what Enron/Ken Lay really did, what Jim Hansen or John Holdren really said, or what BP was doing under John Browne. We preserve the excesses of the smartest-guys-in-the-energy-room for posterity.…