Head of Shell Oil Worried About Planet
The chair of Shell, one of the world’s largest oil companies, says that global warming has him “really very worried for the planet.” In an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Ron Oxburgh was forthright about the dangers of climate change, unusually so for someone from an industry that is typically cautious on the subject. He spoke of an urgent need to store carbon dioxide underground, saying “[carbon] sequestration is difficult, but if we don’t have sequestration I see very little hope for the world.” Some enviros kvetched that Oxburgh failed to mention reducing fossil fuel use, or renewable energy, but others hailed his statements and urged him to follow up by, as Greenpeace’s Robin Oakley put it, “making the case to his peers in the oil industry who are still skeptical of climate change.” As recently as 2002, ExxonMobil chair Lee Raymond said his company does not “believe that the science required to establish this linkage between fossil fuels and warming has been demonstrated.”
