The Age of Corporate Environmentalism

Surprise--big business has learned that it's pretty easy being green.

Katherine Mangu-Ward from the February 2006 issue

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On the company's Web site, casual visitors can select from the following tabs: "About BP," "Environment and Society," and "Products and Services." In that order. Never mind that BP's spending on green projects constitutes less than half of 1 percent of its revenue. It publicly supports stricter pollution regulations and the Kyoto Protocols, the international agreement calling for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and gives money to groups that lobby for both. BP is selling itself as the anti-ExxonMobil.

ExxonMobil has long been a favorite target of environmental activists, especially since the tanker Exxon Valdez sank off the coast of Alaska in 1989, covering all those adorable Arctic animals in oil. Unlike BP, the company publicly opposes the Kyoto Protocols and has done so for years. That isn't its biggest problem, though. According to Robert L. Bradley Jr., president of the Houston-based Institute for Energy Research, one major reason environmentalists go after ExxonMobil is the company's history of funding free market groups such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heartland Institute (and Bradley's own organization).

Ironically, Exxon is also one of the biggest investors in clean technology. Their recent safety record is also significantly better than BP's. Says George Washington's Rivera, "The surprising thing about Exxon is that their facilities are run very well." Better, in fact, than BP's: After a March explosion at a BP plant in Texas City that killed 15 people and injured 170, the EPA and other agencies concluded that the deaths were preventable and that they were primarily the result of carelessness by BP management. The Houston Chronicle editorialized that "BP's carefully nourished image as an environmentally sensitive, innovative company is at odds with its history, particularly in the Houston area."

The Azure-Winged Shaggy Dog Story

But while Exxon spends its money on free market think tanks, BP has chosen more picturesque causes. Delve into its Web site and you'll find that BP is funding the Conservation Programme, which, among other things, sends students to Colombia to study "a species of parrot threatened with extinction." After an "intensive search across the Andes for several of Colombia's threatened parrot species" in 2002, "the team was the first to discover nests of the azure-winged parrot, the rusty-faced parrot and other threatened bird species."

If the rusty-faced parrot and his fine feathered friends aren't your thing, there's always the Iberian lynx. BP is "trying to involve our customers in the campaign to save the species by awarding them loyalty points that can be used to purchase guided tours through the lynx preserve or other promotional materials including t-shirts and calendars." It is also "mobilizing Malaysians to take action on climate change." One might be forgiven for wondering how BP is managing to take in hundreds of billions in oil and gas revenue, apparently in its spare time.

By exceeding expectations a little--and then making a big deal out of it--BP avoids getting singled out as a bogeyman. If environmental groups are going to choose someone to target, why not encourage them to choose your competitor? And if shareholders question the money spent "mobilizing Malaysians," they'll be glad enough when the next protest against the oil industry is held outside Exxon's headquarters instead of BP's.

The trouble is, there will always be someone who wants you to do more. Bradley has found allies against BP in an unlikely place: the far left. "They are very critical of BP because they know that 99.5 percent of their capital expenditures are related to fossil fuels, and a small increment is related to solar," he reports.

"ExxonMobil is still the bad guy, but we are getting increasingly frustrated with BP and Shell, which talk about climate change but put their money into" oil and gas, Roger Higman, an activist at Friends of the Earth, told The Guardian in 2003. "We are not going to be cozy with them because they are doing bad things."

The money BP spends to "partner" with environmental groups might look, from a certain angle, like a bribe to prevent protests. But the bribery goes both ways. Corporations are learning to respond to what Tom Murray of Environmental Defense says are "carrots in a system which is, in many ways, all sticks."

For the moment, the marriage of convenience between BP and environmental activists remains intact and fairly functional. But both sides recognize that they have struck a delicate balance.

Greening Home Depot

Home Depot offers another, perhaps more sustainable model of green-corporate cooperation. It decided to use its power in the lumber market to do some good--after a little gentle prodding from the Rainforest Action Network.

Ron Jarvis, now Home Depot's vice president of merchandising for lumber products, enjoys recounting the tizzy his career trajectory caused in environmental circles. In 1999 Jarvis' bosses asked him to leave his position as a regional merchandise manager and come to their Atlanta headquarters to serve as the environmental global product manager. A "shock wave went through some of the environmental groups," he says. They were aghast that "Home Depot had just taken one of their lumber guys and put [him] over the environment."

Politically speaking, the late '90s had been rough years for the company. The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) had targeted it for selling wood from illegally cut rainforests and old-growth forests. And when RAN targets you, expect more than a letter writing campaign. On May 25, 1999, the group announced a day of "ethical shoplifting" and encouraged its members to "borrow" timber from Home Depots across the country, which they later handed over to the FBI. A guy in a black bear costume affixed himself to one store's rafters and hollered through a bullhorn about Home Depot's failings. It wasn't clear that Home Depot, a national chain frequented by suburban men primarily interested in low prices and the horsepower available in competing models of riding lawnmowers, would have the will or the energy to transform itself.