Column: Big oil companies are already reneging on their global warming promises

The Kern River Oil Field in Bakersfield: Don’t expect scenes like this to go away any time soon. “We need continuing near-term investment into today’s energy system — which depends on oil and gas — to meet today’s demands and to make sure the transition is an orderly one,” Looney said in BP’s strategy update, published Tuesday. BP and Shell have been trading at much lower price-to-earnings multiples — a common indicator of what Wall Street expects from a company’s future earnings — than Exxon Mobil and Chevron. For instance, Shell’s pledge in its 2019 annual report to reduce the net carbon footprint of its own emissions and those of its customers using its products “by around 20% in 2035 and by around 50% in 2050” carried the qualifier, “assuming society aligns itself with the Paris Agreement’s goals.” The realities of corporate finance have kept investments in renewable technologies from rising beyond half the level estimated to be needed to meet the Paris goals, according to the International Energy Agency. None of this means that the big fossil fuel companies won’t eventually increase their investments in wind and solar, or recognize that the oil and gas era will come to an end, so their survival depends on transitioning to new technologies.