"as one BP director replied when I asked why his company continued to risk deep-water drilling, instead of investing in alternative energy"



BP's objection was 100% valid and it shows poor judgment to be dismissive of it. An oil driller DOESN'T have the slightest expertise in making better solar panels or batteries or ... whatever. You're talking about an abruptly different set of technologies and an abruptly different culture to achieve progress. You can say they're in the vague "energy business" all you want, it changes nothing. Expecting BP or Exxon to create the next alternate energy is like expecting US Steel to have created Google or Facebook. No different. Leaving aside the billions that governments are doing to waste with politically-driven decisions here, if oil cos tried to dump 10s of billions into tech alt energy tech research, they literally would not be able to find things to invest in. You can't just create an infinite number of labs, PhD's and resources out of thin air on demand to do anything productive. You expect BP to buy out Tesla? If an oil company tried such a thing the culture clash would simply ruin the investment and there'd be nothing to come of it. Eventually when the economics makes sense we'll HAVE our alt energy ... and it'll be from other companies and not the giant oil suppliers. Future energy won't come from BP any more than Windows and iPhones came from Univac.

