Episode 1 of BBC’s Big Oil vs The World is a polished, emotional, lawyer-like brief for one side of a multi-sided, complex issue. But in the final analysis, the BBC case is long on agenda and feelings and short on facts, balance, and proper context. The documentary is slick propaganda that accuses oil companies of producing slick propaganda.

With its documentary Big Oil vs The World, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has added its voice to the chorus accusing the petroleum industry in general, and ExxonMobil in particular, of misleading the public and slowing the global response to climate change. The three-part documentary (Denial, Doubt, and Delay) was produced in cooperation with PBS, which ran its version on Frontline under the title The Power of Big Oil in April and May of this year.…

Ed Note: A 65-mile, 400 MMCf/d pipeline approved by FERC and in service since late 2019 has been challenged in court by environmental groups that want to wean St. Louis residents off natural gas to force electrification. With successful court decisions, FERC has issued an emergency order for Spire STL to continue operation rather than shut down.

“The moral of this story? In an increasingly politicized economy, it is easier to get the business through government largess than to earn the business through healthy competition.”

Media bias…. “‘The $287 Million Pipeline No One Needed'” is the title of an article published on April 27, 2022, by Mario Ariza in The Intercept; “an award-winning news organization dedicated to holding the powerful accountable through fearless, adversarial journalism.”

Behind the article was Floodlight News, “a nonprofit climate newsroom that investigates the powerful interests stalling climate action,” syndicated and picked up by similar “news” web sites.…

“It’s hard to imagine and even harder to stomach, but more than 60,000 eagle carcasses have secretly shipped to this repository, with no cause of death or origin given…. Since 1997, nobody involved with wind energy and its eagle carcasses, has been allowed to disclose the truth.”

“America’s silenced USFWS agents know exactly what’s taking place because they process and arrange FedEx overnight shipping for nearly all the eagle carcasses shipped to the Denver Eagle Repository.”

Recently an American wind energy company pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges after at least 150 eagles were killed since 2012.  The company has agreed to spend as much as $27 million on efforts to prevent more deaths.

What good are these millions? Except for shutting down turbines, there is no way to prevent eagle deaths from wind blades.…

“Corporate policy makers entering the fray should be guided by two principles…. First, mandatory GHG programs should be rejected in favor of voluntary approaches….  Second, voluntary actions by corporations should not go beyond win-win ‘no regrets’ initiatives. Control practices that are uneconomic penalize either consumers or stockholders and politicize the issue of corporate responsibility.”

– Robert Bradley, “Climate Alarmism and Corporate Responsibility.” Electricity Journal, August/September 2000.

It was called corporate social responsibility (CSR). Today, it has morphed into Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).

Upon the election of Donald Trump, the environmental Left redoubled its effort to politicize business on the climate issue. The subtitle to an early 2017 article in Yale Climate Connections, for example, “Business Leadership on Climate Seen as Key,” read: “With expectations of a much lower federal leadership role on controlling carbon emissions, key sectors of business community seen by some as maintaining momentum.”…