Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines – BP CEO Bob Dudley admitted that concern over climate change has caused his daughter’s friends to start taking antidepressants.
Dudley, who will step down from his position with the oil company in February, said he hates seeing “young people so unhappy, so anxious,” and blamed these mental health issues on global warming.
And as someone who works for the oil industry, Dudley said he recognizes it’s been hard on his daughter.
She reportedly asked him: “’How you can work for a company that in five years won’t be selling petrol?”
In response, he told her that he wished “young people today would get more involved in energy … Because it’s the easiest job to throw rocks. It is just such fun. But you have to have some responsibility for these things and that’s not what everybody’s doing.”
BP has certainly contributed to the gradual rise of carbon emissions, but it has also made significant investments in clean energy alternatives, according to Reuters. (Some of those investments may have been compulsory due to its role in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that wrought havoc on the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi.)
Royal Dutch Shell, Total and BP have all increased spending on wind and solar power, as well as battery technologies, in an attempt to slash carbon emissions.
But this isn’t enough, according to the radical climate activists.
BP produces nearly 3.7 million barrels of oil a day, according to the Daily Mail, and is indirectly responsible for up to 491 million tons of carbon emissions every year, so its efforts to invest in other energy alternatives account for almost nothing, said Jeanne Martin, a climate activist with ShareAction.
“This 1 percent figure pales in comparison with the amount of money Big Oil spends blocking climate initiatives and regulations, and invests in fossil fuel projects that have no place in a well-below 2 degree Celsius world,” she said.“Investors need to step up their engagement and tell fossil fuel companies to align their business models with the goals of the Paris Agreement.
