As shareholders gather for BP’s AGM in London this week, they deserve to be made aware of just how at-risk their investments are — and what BP thinks about the future of the firm and the planet. Because the company their investments allow to operate is fourth in a list of the world’s top-emitting companies and was responsible for 2.47% of global emissions from 1751-2010.

The company will be forever linked to the massive spill in the Gulf of Mexico — but its the daily environmental toll that ultimately matters more — the constant, minute-by-minute flow of carbon into the atmosphere.

In order to keep its profits coming, despite the science, BP has worked its way into the highest levels of governments, and even gotten inside great cultural institutions like the British Museum and the Tate Britain gallery. It’s now attempting to slide unchallenged into the magical and dangerous waters of the Great Australian Bight, searching zombie-like for yet more oil. Ditto Azerbaijan, Angola, the tar sands of Canada and the old hunting grounds of the North Sea, even though scientists are painfully clear about the fact that we can’t burn most of the reserves we already know about.

BP’s actions are weird, in that they insist “we have publicly acknowledged the risk [of climate change] and have been working to address it since the 1990,” and that they are part of the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) which publicly supported a global agreement at the Paris talks. But when you scratch beneath the surface, this is just another carbon major, being fast and loose with the future.

BP is also a card-carrying member of a trade organisation that lobbied against the EU setting renewables and energy efficiency targets for 2030; and opposed carbon pricing while supporting it publicly. It actively lobbied against action to reduce emissions – a 2015 analysis gave BP the lowest rating - a “negative and actively conflicting approach to climate change regulation”.

They’re out there every day, hunting for more hydrocarbons, even though their current reserves of oil and gas will release seven gigatonnes of carbon dioxide - 1% of the world’s remaining carbon budget.

BP is not only ignoring what its activities could mean for climate change. It is also ignoring the energy transition that is already happening. While BP hopes for an “orderly” transition to a low-carbon energy system, it has repeatedly underestimated the exponential growth of renewables. Clean energy currently represents just 0.5% of BP’s business - and it doesn’t seem to have any plans to change this. While the energy transition moves on, BP just keeps drilling.

Their old pillage and pollute business model is failing, though. Last financial year they posted the worst financial loss in their corporate history, even as investment capital around the world swings toward renewables. That’s the future, clearly — but the news comes as cold comfort for the people of the Pacific islands, or drought-affected Africa or India, or the folks in Australia whose livelihood depends on the survival of the Great Barrier Reef or the fishing industry in the Great Australian Bight.

Last year, in the Guardian, I wrote about the discovery of Exxon’s secret climate documents, saying: “it seems crucial simply to say, for the record, the truth: this company had the singular capacity to change the course of world history for the better and instead it changed that course for the infinitely worse.”

In 2016, as shareholders gather to talk about the company they collectively own, it’s worth saying that I could have easily been writing about BP. Deliberate and desperate attempts to find, exploit and sell more of oil and gas while pretending to care about the future is not just wrong, it’s sick.



It’s also likely to end very, very badly for everyone, including BP.