LEO MCKINSTRY: Eco zealots are turning firms like BP and Shell into cultural pariahs – yet they’re the giants whose innovations can wean us off fossil fuels
From pioneers to pariahs, the speed of the change in status of our big energy companies has been remarkable.
Giants such as BP and Shell helped build modern civilisation, but now are widely treated as unfit for any involvement in civic life, particularly by the virtue-signalling, self-regarding affluent Left that dominates our culture.
In the league table of corporate villainy, they jostle for the top spot with arms dealers and tobacco companies because of their perceived role in fuelling climate change.
Indeed, for many environmentalists, Big Oil is now the enemy of the people, the target of constant demonstrations and protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion.
Indeed, for many environmentalists, Big Oil is now the enemy of the people, the target of constant demonstrations and protests by groups such as Extinction Rebellion
They are self-appointed, like the censorious 17th-century Puritans. Their vendettas have no mandate, their demands no political legitimacy
But the green lobby has found a more sophisticated way to ostracise firms, and that is to wage a systematic campaign against their sponsorship of the arts.
In recent decades, energy firms have poured tens of millions into support for organisations such as the National Theatre, often compensating for shortfalls in state funding.
Generous
But such patronage has fallen foul of the eco zealots. This tarnished money is apparently no longer wanted.
When Shell announced in 2018 that it was to end its long partnership with the National Gallery, Chris Garrard of pressure group Culture Unstained sanctimoniously declared: ‘Shell is not a philanthropist but a toxic company with an image to clean up.’
Now the environmentalists have claimed another scalp. Last week the Royal Opera House in London’s Covent Garden revealed it has terminated its long-standing deal with BP, which had been one of its most generous backers.
Over the past 33 years, BP’s sponsorship of the globally renowned venue has not only made thousands of affordable tickets available to those — like students — who would otherwise have been priced out. It has also allowed people to see free opera and ballet through nationwide BP Big Screen events.
In many of those years, BP is believed to have handed over seven-figure sums to the Royal Opera House. But that counts for nothing in the face of green disapproval. Compliance with the fashionable environmental code is more important than bringing the finest in music and dance to young and disadvantaged people.
Predictably, Chris Garrard was exultant. ‘We are witnessing a seismic shift, a near wholesale rejection across the arts of BP’s brand and the climate-wrecking business it represents.’
And he is right to claim that green campaigns are working, for the Royal Opera House’s move is just the latest in a growing catalogue of rejection for the fossil fuel companies.
Last year, the National Portrait Gallery brought to a close BP’s sponsorship of its hugely successful annual Portrait Award, an arrangement that had existed since 1989.
Giants such as BP and Shell helped build modern civilisation, but now are widely treated as unfit for any involvement in civic life, particularly by the affluent Left
Similarly, in February 2022, the Scottish Ballet cut its ties with BP because the partnership ‘no longer aligns with our company’s green action plan’.
And six years before that, two other cultural institutions ended sponsorship agreements with the oil giant: the Edinburgh International Arts Festival and the Tate galleries, which brought down the curtain on BP after 26 years.
But BP is not the only major corporation in the eco-radicals’ sights. In 2020, the British Film Institute and the South Bank Centre severed their financial relationships with Anglo-Dutch firm Shell.
A year earlier, the National Theatre had done the same — despite Shell’s sponsorship of the National’s popular annual youth theatre festival.
Meanwhile, the dwindling band of institutions that continue to maintain their partnerships — such as the Science Museum and the British Museum — are coming under tremendous pressure to dump the fossil-fuel merchants.
Last April, there were four protests at the British Museum in just one month, culminating in an ‘occupation’ of its Great Court and a demonstration by the activist theatre group ‘BP or not BP?’.
There is also something unbalanced about the neurotic hostility towards oil companies, while giving a free pass to other businesses that could be portrayed as equally guilty
The chairman of the museum’s Trustees, former Tory Chancellor George Osborne, showed he knew which way the wind was blowing. ‘Our goal is to be a net-zero carbon museum — no longer a destination for climate protest but instead an example of climate solution,’ he said.
But when such bodies quit their corporate sugar daddies, it is ordinary people who suffer, not the rich elite and wealthy wokesters, brimming with the ‘right’ opinions.
This depressing process was seen in 2019, when the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon scrapped its BP sponsorship deal.
With it ended BP’s fine scheme which for eight years had provided 80,000 subsidised tickets, allowing young people to see Shakespeare plays performed by the finest classical actors in the world for just £5.
There are other contradictions and hypocrisies. One is that the green lobby, for all its posturing as the voice of the people, is fundamentally undemocratic. No one elected these activists to dictate public policy or decide how the arts should be funded.
Unbalanced
They are self-appointed, like the censorious 17th-century Puritans. Their vendettas have no mandate, their demands no political legitimacy.
Groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Culture Unstained are also indicators of how so much of the public realm has been hijacked by Left-wingers, despite an inability to win elections.
By surrendering to outfits such as Culture Unstained, the Establishment is handing control to hardliners like Clara Paillard, one the group’s leading figures, whose website states she ‘is an anti-racist, intersectional feminist, disability activist and LGBT ally, as well as climate activist’.
Groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Culture Unstained are also indicators of how so much of the public realm has been hijacked by Left-wingers, despite an inability to win elections
It adds: ‘She had been a member of the Labour Party since 2015 and is a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.’
Ms Paillard’s colleagues include Dr Paula Serafini, ‘a cultural politics scholar, artist, activist and educator’, whose research has examined ‘the relationship between culture and extractivism [the exploitation of mineral resources] in Argentina, focusing on issues of narrative, power and decoloniality’.
There is also something unbalanced about the neurotic hostility towards oil companies, while giving a free pass to other businesses that could be portrayed as equally guilty.
So the Tate kicked out BP in 2016, yet among its current and recent partners are car makers BMW and Hyundai and Australian airline Qantas, all of which could attract green condemnation for their vast carbon footprints.
Stampede
And the greens’ analysis is grossly simplistic. It paints a crude picture of fossil-fuel firms as grasping, irresponsible capitalists, indifferent to ecological degradation.
But that takes no account of how they are changing or how their energy technology expertise could prove our saviour.
BP, for instance, has set out its ambition ‘to be a net zero company by 2050 or sooner and to help the world get to net zero’ through new forms of power generation.
And the greens’ analysis is grossly simplistic. It paints a crude picture of fossil-fuel firms as grasping, irresponsible capitalists, indifferent to ecological degradation
Just yesterday, BP said carbon emissions will fall more rapidly than it forecast a year ago, because the war in Ukraine has pushed the West to seek cleaner energy.
In fact, the potential of the energy giants for innovation explains why the Science Museum has resisted the stampede to ditch its partners.
Following an Extinction Rebellion ‘occupation’ of the museum in September 2021, its director Sir Ian Blatchford argued that ‘energy firms have the capital, geography, people and logistics to be major players in finding solutions to the urgent challenge of climate change’.
This subtle, mature approach may not suit the sloganeers of the green movement, but it holds out far more hope for the future of mankind — and the health of our planet.
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