The Bad and the Good: Oil Companies

Posted on 23/11/2015 Updated on 04/02/2016

When it comes to climate change, there are the Do-Gooders who categorize typically between the good and the bad. The Good, the NGOs and politic who are committed to environmental protection and the Bad primarily the neo-liberal businesses and multinational corporations, – and very evil they oil companies. These are now trying to improve their image, and ten (10) of them support the global climate agreement: global warming of max. 2 degrees Celsius. These ten oil companies campaign for a global CO² trading system. The immediate actions would be the application of (innovative) technologies, such as “Carbon Capture and Storage”. And the restriction of gas flaring at oil fields, – blasting around 300 million tons of CO² into the atmosphere each year, corresponding to the driving of 77 million cars a year (total of 1.2 billion cars worldwide). Greenpeace – an environmental organization – views this critically: the initiative has no concrete objectives. US oil companies which are not involved in this project assert that there are (innovations, state of the art) technologies available to solve this problem in short-medium term.

According to recent studies there will be up to 2.7 billion cars on the Earth in the year 2050; and therefore, 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide are projected to be discharged annually. Whether by then so many fossil fuels will still be present is questionable.

Roland Leithenmayr VfV

Weblinks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage

http://www.oilandgasclimateinitiative.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme

http://www.live-counter.com/autos/