random3434
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- Jun 29, 2008
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On the company's Web site, casual visitors can select from the following tabs: "About BP," "Environment and Society," and "Products and Services." In that order. Never mind that BP's spending on green projects constitutes less than half of 1 percent of its revenue. It publicly supports stricter pollution regulations and the Kyoto Protocols, the international agreement calling for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and gives money to groups that lobby for both. BP is selling itself as the anti-ExxonMobil.
ExxonMobil has long been a favorite target of environmental activists, especially since the tanker Exxon Valdez sank off the coast of Alaska in 1989, covering all those adorable Arctic animals in oil. Unlike BP, the company publicly opposes the Kyoto Protocols and has done so for years. That isn't its biggest problem, though. According to Robert L. Bradley Jr., president of the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research, one major reason environmentalists go after ExxonMobil is the company's history of funding free market groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute (and Bradley's own organization).
Ironically, Exxon is also one of the biggest investors in clean technology. Their recent safety record is also significantly better than BP's. Says George Washington's Rivera, "The surprising thing about Exxon is that their facilities are run very well." Better, in fact, than BP's: After a March explosion at a BP plant in Texas City that killed 15 people and injured 170, the EPA and other agencies concluded that the deaths were preventable and that they were primarily the result of carelessness by BP management. The Houston Chronicle editorialized that "BP's carefully nourished image as an environmentally sensitive, innovative company is at odds with its history, particularly in the Houston area."
http://reason.com/archives/2006/02/01/the-age-of-corporate-environme/singlepage