Giving Compass' Take:

· Although BP has accepted one climate resolution proposal, shareholders question the avoidance of a stronger one and what it takes for oil companies to take responsibility for their impact in climate change. 

· How can oil companies step up and make an effort to address climate change? Why is it important for oil companies to be involved in this issue? How can donors get involved?

· Here's how another oil company is getting involved with climate change.


At BP’s annual meeting today, investors holding billions in shares, including six of the largest fund managers in the U.K., asked the company to adopt a climate resolution in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement. The resolution passed with 99% support.

It’s a meaningful moment–the 58 investors that filed the resolution own nearly 10% of the company, and represent the largest group so far to support this type of resolution–but it also doesn’t go far enough, activists say. “I think that given where the world’s scientists are telling us we’re at with climate change, we can’t be tinkering around the edges and making small, incremental progress with companies like BP,” says Ben Cushing, a campaigner from the Sierra Club who attended the shareholder meeting with an Alaskan activist who asked about the company’s plans to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. During the meeting, other activists protested outside; some inside the meeting started shouting, “This is a crime scene,” and were thrown out.

The climate resolution calls for BP to disclose its strategy for meeting the Paris agreement’s goal of keeping the planet’s warming “well below” 2 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. It also asks the company to disclose how it evaluates new oil and gas investments in light of climate change, its targets for cutting emissions, and how it links executive pay to meeting those emissions goals. But it doesn’t ask BP about its targets on “Scope 3” emissions, which are outside its direct operations but come from customers using its products–like when people use BP gas in a car. Those emissions are the largest part of the company’s footprint. (Royal Dutch Shell, which made changes in the past after pressure from many of the same investors, does consider Scope 3 emissions, and now has some of the most ambitious climate plans in the industry–albeit still possibly not ambitious enough to address the crisis.)

Read the full article about the effects of oil companies on climate change by Adele Peters at Fast Company.