BP abandons goal to cut oil output, resets strategy

Pioneering systems theorist Donella Meadows makes a highly salient point. The problem with BP isn&#x27;t because there are &quot;bad people&quot; at the top, and the solution isn&#x27;t to replace them with &quot;good people.&quot; The problem is that the decision-makers are <i>constrained to act a certain way</i>. If they made different decisions then.... those people won&#x27;t be the decision-makers anymore! The same is true for politicians, consumers, etc.<p>It&#x27;s a systems problem requiring systems solutions, not a problem of (as movies simplistically tell us) &quot;bad people.&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg</a>

It&#x27;s depressing to see companies moving back towards a carbon-burning future. It seemed like electric vehicles, battery technology, and solar power advancement was finally starting to kill the market for ICE engines and &#x27;dirty&#x27; thermal power.<p>Between reversions like this, RTO mandates, and global conflicts that seem to include blowing up oil refineries it seems like there&#x27;s absolutely no hope or interest from any major governments, businesses, or organizations to do anything to address global warming and climate change or even maintain our carbon outputs.

&gt; as investors focused on near-term returns rather than the energy transition.<p>If the justification for burning the earth to the ground continues to be “investors focused on short term returns” then governments need to start telling companies like BP they are legally and financially responsible for the effects those policies have on insurance rates and everything else.<p>At some point if they can’t do the right thing because it’s a sound long term investment strategy, they need to pay the real price of their short term focused strategy.

&gt; BP (BP.L), opens new tab has abandoned a target to cut oil and gas output by 2030 as CEO Murray Auchincloss scales back the firm&#x27;s energy transition strategy to regain investor confidence, three sources with knowledge of the matter said.<p>&gt; The company continues to target net zero emissions by 2050. &quot;As Murray said at the start of year... the direction is the same – but we are going to deliver as a simpler, more focused, and higher value company,&quot; a BP spokesperson said.<p>Bit confused by the discrepancy of these statements. Is this because this is an insider source that has not been officially announced (seems like it), or are they saying &quot;We still plan to cut emissions by 2050... maybe sometime later&quot; (seems less likely).

Anyone got the math, there&#x27;s something like x degrees C more warming already calculated as future profits by oil companies: they&#x27;ve seen the oil fields, they know how much they can extract, and that amount of oil, burned, will cause those x degrees of warming. Asking them to keep it in the ground is like asking them to give up some billions of dollars of future profit ..

In &#x27;The War Below&#x27; by Ernest Scheyder, I learned about the complexities of mining companies profiteering vs the rights of &#x27;the land&#x27; as represented by the indigenous people and environmental activists. This is another example of how we use our knowledge to eviscerate the planet&#x27;s resources developed over millenia for short term gains and enjoyment. And if you thought the oncoming demographic bomb and population collapse in the US, Europe, China and Japan will reduce demand, think again. The 0.1% who own this planet, will simply produce AI driven robots to do the work that humans cannot so they can continue to fly their jets and cruise in their yachts. How can we be so complacent when religious fanatics elsewhere are killing each other over so much less?

I&#x27;m rather torn on the discourse on this. I can understand disappointment that people are adjusting down on goals. What I don&#x27;t understand is that this seems rather removed from outcome measures.<p>Specifically, in this context, they are still reducing output. Just not as aggressively. Do we have reporting on what this means in real impact terms? Last reporting I have seen, the majority of carbon emissions are from locations that we aren&#x27;t governing. Such that this is akin to yelling at people for not eating all of their food, because someone somewhere is starving.

[flagged]