Green group Rising Tide this week organised a rowdy reception for Browne at London’s Royal Institute of British Architects, where he was due to give a speech on sustainable development. Rising Tide said it would be a ”top-dollar greenwash”.
Friends of the Earth (FoE) said it, too, is re-evaluating relations with BP and Shell because of their apparent failure to turn rhetoric into action.
”ExxonMobil is still the bad guy, but we are getting increasingly frustrated with BP and Shell, which talk about climate change but put their money into [oil and gas] developments in places such as Russia and the Middle East rather than renewable schemes,” said FoE’s Roger Higman.
Rising Tide argues that BP is undermining fine words on sustainable development by its involvement in the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which could be a ”human rights disaster”.
It claims BP invests less than 1% of its annual budget on renewable energy sources, a great deal less than it spends on advertising and public relations.
BP said it had never presented itself as anything other than an oil and gas supplier, but one that wanted to play its part in reducing harmful emissions. — Â