causing a "disaster", like it is now up to you to clean up their mess.
Luc
- Original Message -
From: "MH" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2005 10:14 AM
Subject: [Biofuel] Shell Boss Warns Of Global Warming
Shell Boss Warns Of Global Warming 'Disaster'
The Independent,
26 Jan 2005
Governments, not oil companies, must act now on
global warming or there will be a "disaster",
the chairman of Shell's UK arm warned last night.
Delivering the annual business lecture hosted by
the environmental group Greenpeace, Lord Oxburgh
laid responsibility for tackling greenhouse gas
emissions squarely at the feet of government.
Lord Oxburgh, a former chief scientific adviser to
the Ministry of Defence, is one of the two chairmen
at Shell, the Anglo-Dutch oil giant. He heads the
UK half of the business. He insisted last night
that it was not up to the likes of Shell to reform
their behaviour and reduce their supply of fossil fuels.
"Whether you like it or not, we live in a capitalist society.
If we at Shell ceased to find and extract and market fossil
fuel products while there was demand for them, we would fail
as a company. Shell would disappear as any kind of
economic force," Lord Oxburgh maintained.
He said it was up to government to provide a
new regulatory framework that would reduce
the incentive to consume fossil fuels, the
burning of which produces carbon dioxide,
the main gas blamed for global warming.
If government failed to do this, there "will be a disaster"
he said, pointing to the environmental consequences of a
rise in the earth's temperature. Lord Oxburgh said that
Shell would be prepared to accept this kind of regulatory change,
"provided that our competitors operate under similar constraints".
He said: "Our job is to respond in a positive way to
a regulatory environment that has to be determined by
government ... given the urgency, we have to start now."
Unusually for an oil company
the chairman of Shell is an eminent
scientist and an expert on climate change.
---
Shell Exec: We Need to Shift from Oil
Jan 26, 2005
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/01/shell_exec_we_n.html
Reuters. Lord Oxburgh, the chairman of the
Royal Dutch/Shell Group in Britain, said at a
Greenpeace conference this week that
governments should push society towards a
world less dependent on fossil fuel given
the potentially "disastrous" consequences
of climate change.
[He] added that governments needed to act to make
renewable and less environmentally harmful energy
sources more economical compared to hydrocarbons.
"Shell is an energy company and I would be very
surprised if Shell were doing business in the same way in
30 years time as it is today ... It's difficult to see why
big business should be frightened," Oxburgh said.
The burning of fossil fuels appeared to be causing
global warming, Oxburgh added, and this posed a
potentially disastrous risk to the world. He urged
governments in developed countries to introduce taxes,
regulations or plans such as the European Union
trading scheme to increase the cost of emitting carbon
dioxide, a gas many scientists tie to global warming.
In doing so, he added, technologies such as biofuel,
carbon sequestration, the use of hydrogen as a fuel and
wave power would displace the use of oil, gas and coal.
Lord Oxburgh (earlier post) has been outspoken about
the need for carbon sequestration and the need to
move off of a fossil fuel platform. His point about
business is exactly to the point. (Oxburgh, as an
interesting coincidence, was a graduate school
classmate of Prof. Ken Deffeyes, author of
Hubbert's Peak and an upcoming follow-on.)
---
Shell oil chief defects to the green lobby
Jan 30, 2005
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1462584,00.html
THE outgoing chairman of Shell has announced he
wants to take up a post with a climate-change
charity when he quits the oil giant later this year,
writes Jonathan Leake.
Lord Oxburgh is so concerned at the potential
destruction from global warming that he wants to
devote more of his time to cutting greenhouse gas
emissions and the use of fossil fuels.
The move is likely to cause some embarrassment
at Shell, one of the biggest oil and gas producers in
the world.
Despite a history of environmental controversies, it
is now seen as one of the greenest oil companies,
but each year its worldwide activities and products
still release about 700m tons of carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere.
By contrast, emissions from the whole of Britain
total around 560m tons out of a total world output
of 25 billion tons.
Oxburgh, who chairs Shell as a non-executive,
said: "When I leave I would like to go onto the
board of a climate change charity. I would be
campaigning for more responsible use of
hydrocarbons."
Oxburgh, who is also chairman of the House of
Lords science and technology committee,
emphasises that the target of
