Honorary Fossil Award: BP-USA

11 June 2010

BP-USA is awarded an Honorary Fossil Award from CAN International for fostering our addiction to fossil fuels, an 
addiction that is driving global warming towards dangerous climate change and lies behind the disaster unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico.

The consequences of forgoing a global agreement to move off fossil fuels and invest in a low-carbon future are clear – scientists have run the numbers.  Unless warming is checked temperatures will increase way beyond the threshold for catastrophic climate change. For some countries the toll is already mounting.

As the negotiations began here in Bonn, hundreds died in India and Pakistan during the hottest heat wave on record, with temperatures shooting over 50 C (122 F). This is bitterly ironic given that we have alternatives. Each year we delay, we pass by opportunities to invest in clean energy. The International Energy Agency has calculated the cost of passing by those opportunities at $500 billion a year. At same time $100 billion a year in subsidies are paid to fossil fuel companies worldwide.

Checking climate change and sustaining economic growth depends upon an international agreement to invest in clean energy. BP-USA, a leader in fossil-fuel development that has played out so disastrously in the Gulf of Mexico, is awarded an Honorary Fossil for failing to fulfill its responsibility to help break the fossil-fuel addiction it has fostered and address climate change.