For the oil and gas industry after US rejection of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, life goes on. But how?
For the climate itself, the move by US President Donald Trump matters little. Full compliance with the voluntary agreement can't change global average temperature much and isn't in prospect with or without the US. The agreement is an expensive down payment on the far more-draconian measures countries must undertake if they're to have any hope of meaningfully influencing temperature. And those measures are politically hopeless. The Paris accord is symbolic, reflecting politics obsessed with proselytizing at the expense of problem-solving.
Still, the chief executives of many large oil and gas companies supported the agreement and urged Trump not to withdraw. Most of them cited the need for predictability and for a voice in future deliberations. Those concerns were valid. They did not, however, outweigh the agreement's many defects, including but not limited to futility.
Three other defects should be particularly troubling to oil and gas companies. Too much of the agreement was shaped by extremists committed to the industry's destruction. Deliberations therefore accommodated too much nonsense about leaving hydrocarbons in the ground. And in the US, the agreement would have become the legal basis for lawsuits demanding restrictive regulation and toughened permitting, giving industry opponents a strong weapon with which to stifle work.
Obviously, some company leaders thought the disadvantages worth enduring. Others did not. Most important now is what happens next.
Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will not quit accumulating in the atmosphere, largely from human use of fossil energy and animal agriculture, because the US quit the Paris accord. Global average temperature won't suddenly plummet. Trends demanding attention but ineffectively addressed by the Paris Agreement remain in place.
The oil and gas industry must respond. It must respond before activists again commandeer debate. If it does not respond, support by individual companies for the Paris accord will appear to have been empty gestures, and the industry itself will seem negligent.
A useful discussion might start with these questions:
• What voluntary steps are oil and gas companies and service firms taking individually to limit emissions of greenhouse gases? What further steps can they take?
• Where do industry leaders agree and disagree about the nature and extent of the threat to human welfare from climate change and about what remedies might be practicable and effective?
• In what areas of agreement might the industry propose and implement collective solutions, such as through operating standards or self-regulation? What trade associations, existing or new, should be involved?
• How might the industry—individual companies and trade groups—resolve disputes about climate science and regulation?
• What areas of climate science most need research? What role should the industry play in that research?
• How should the industry formulate and propose regulatory responses to climate change?
• What technologies show promise for climate-change mitigation? How should the industry and individual companies contribute to their development?
Discussion of questions such as these should occur within and among companies and their trade associations and be oriented to action rather than politics.
Oil and gas companies supporting the Paris accord in order to secure places at the proverbial table failed to appreciate a basic problem: Oil and gas companies aren't welcome at the Paris table, where their views are treated as suspect and discarded on arrival. The oil and gas industry has to create its own framework for discussion and earn appreciation for its views by acting on them.
The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, formed last year by the chief executives of 10 large oil and gas companies, offers a pattern for collaboration that all companies should embrace. Climate politics and oil and gas activity both require adjustment.
An industry effort to coordinate greenhouse-gas ambition with economic necessity would demonstrate genuine climate leadership. The planet doesn't just need saving, as hyperbolic slogans say. It needs affordable energy, too.
