It was one thing when Google chairman Eric Schmidt told the world that Google was leaving a lobbying group called ALEC for “literally lying” about climate change. It’s another for one of the world’s fourth largest oil companies to follow suit. BP just left ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which teaches state politicians to deny climate change and deploys them to fight against climate policies at the state level.
BP is the second large oil company to ditch ALEC in recent months, after Occidental Petroleum. These companies weren’t as explicit as Google in clarifying exactly why they left ALEC, but it was generally understood that ALEC’s denial of climate science is unacceptable for Google, Yelp, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, SAP, and even major industrial polluters like BP, Occidental, International Paper and Emerson Electric.
This is a big blow to ALEC, who is increasingly relying on the most shameless companies to drive demand for ALEC’s state-level lobbying, like Koch Industries, Peabody Energy, Shell Oil, and ExxonMobil. In the game of climate denial chicken, apparently BP couldn’t handle what Koch and Peabody have to offer. Neither could ALEC’s national chairman.
This step to clean up BP’s image won’t clean their operations. It indicates how ALEC’s misinformation seminars for legislators and model policies against any potential solution to climate change are becoming political hazards. Ironically, ALEC’s hardline anti-climate stances over the years contradict ALEC’s “free markets” mission statement, which can be awkward for ALEC staff.
And who could blame BP on this one? Even ALEC’s corporate chairman quit, after his company SAP America condemned ALEC’s denial of climate change, promotion of racist voter ID laws and Stand Your Ground gun laws linked to increased homicide rates.
BP has previously ended its participation in other climate denial public relations like the Global Climate Coalition, and even spent a time re-branding from “British Petroleum” to “Beyond Petroleum,” but BP kept oil at the core of its business and has since ditched its wind power investments and spilled millions of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, which remains heavily polluted.
BP is the 102nd company in recent years to abandon ALEC’s ranks.
