Royal Dutch Shell CEO: “Climate Change Is Real, and It’s a Threat” – But What Do Their Actions Show?

The CEO of Royal Dutch Shell, one of the world’s largest oil and gas companies, recently stood up for climate science and said, “We’re not aligning with skeptics.” He went on to say, “Let me be very, very clear, for us climate change is real and it’s a threat we want to act on.”

But Shell continues to fund ALEC, a group that has been spreading disinformation about climate change for years.

I just sent the CEO an email, suggesting that, if he’s sincere, he’ll knock off the support for ALEC, just like Google and dozens of others of the world’s top companies have.  Here are some words from Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, in an interview a few weeks ago:

We funded [ALEC] as part of a political campaign for something unrelated [to climate change].  I think the consensus within the company was that was some sort of mistake and so we’re trying to not do that in the future.

The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts — what a shock. And the facts of climate change are not in question anymore. Everyone understands climate change is occurring and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and our grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people — they’re just, they’re just literally lying.

Bravo.  Let’s see where Shell really stands here.

Even more to the point, let’s see what they do about being in the oil and gas business.   This whole deal here is rather like R.J. Reynolds expressing concerns about lung cancer.