No going back on climate

We may really have turned the corner on climate change. The oil and gas industry is putting more chips on the table and there will be no going back.

BP led the way earlier this year with its announcement of plans to reduce its carbon emissions to net zero within the next 30 years. Now the news comes out that other industry companies are looking for ways to reduce their emissions — and the technology industry is climbing aboard.

Let’s hope my optimism is not unwarranted but it seems to me that once things move in the right direction, the public will not allow the companies to turn back.

And lest the cynics try to convince people that the energy industry is insincere in its pursuit of a clean fuels future, rest assured that the future is almost certain to make any significant retreat impossible.

There are those who still insist that it’s unlikely human activities are causing the climate to change and that warming temperatures are messing up both fish fortunes and the weather.

We can wish they were right but there is too much contrary evidence to justify avoiding the necessary changes. Some climate change is almost certainly natural but there is too much evidence to be ignored that human activities are accelerating the process.

The lives and fortunes of our children, grandchildren and other future generations are at stake in this issue. The downside is unthinkable.

The latest evidence that important changes are afoot came earlier this week when columnist Charles Kennedy wrote this for the oilprice.com website: “A growing number of oil and gas companies are looking to measure and reduce their carbon emissions under increased pressure from shareholders to join the fight against climate change — and the result is that the tech industry is starting to get into the oil and gas game.”

With the technology industry joining the effort, the primary obstacles to nailing the problem down and making progress in fixing it seem certain to fail — perhaps sooner than later.

And the pressure is on for the energy industry to resolve the problem and reduce hydrocarbon impacts on the natural world as quickly as possible.

Some will claim that the companies are simply engaging in an insincere public relations effort. But I am certain that is not the case. I worked with all of the major oil companies operating in Alaska over a career of 30-plus years in public relations — ARCO, BP, ConocoPhillips, Exxon and Shell. I can testify that they are all governed by honorable people.

The only large company operating here now that I have no experience with is Hilcorp, but I am confident that its leaders are in the tradition established by my former colleagues. Such companies do well by doing right — and you can be sure Hilcorp will want to prove itself.

Columnist Kennedy noted in his article this week that technology companies of all sizes are competing to produce software for tracking carbon emissions and their impacts on the environment.

The tracking will be conducted on companies and operations impacted by and involved in energy-related operations at all levels, from field operators to those who use energy to deliver mail and packages at the far end of the distribution chain.

The times they are a-changing. It would be nice if such developments occurred years ago but that was impossible for a variety of reasons.

Those vary from the fact that the capability didn’t exist to the reality that the world wasn’t ready. The technology is being developed and the world seems to be ready now.

Tom Brennan is an Anchorage columnist and author of five books. He was a reporter/columnist for The Anchorage Times and an editor and columnist at The Voice of The Times.