Two of Britain’s best-loved museums have been forced to defend their financial ties to BP after the company announced this week that it was abandoning its climate targets to focus on growing fossil fuel production.
The British Museum and the Science Museum, which have sponsorship deals with BP, said the company’s decision to grow its investments in oil and gas by cutting back on green spending would not alter their relationship with it.
The two museums have come under fire from campaigners for their ongoing association with the company, which said this week that its optimism in the green transition had been “misplaced” and it would now invest the vast majority of its capital in fossil fuels.
How can a science museum accept sponsorship from a fossil fuel company after all the fake science and climate denying they have funded? I get that at the end of the day, money is money, but that really makes be question the validity of anything related to climate in the museum.
Fossil fuel to fuel the fossil display.
BP brought on Bernard Looney as CEO to help steer the company from oil to ‘energy’ and renewables. By all accounts he did a bang-up job of it, but was forced to resign after a messy scandal involving relationships with coworkers.
The replacement CEO promptly undid all the work and did a hard U-turn back into hydrocarbons.
So all these museums that thought they were accepting funds from a renewable energy champion are now stuck holding the bag for a good old ‘Drill Baby Drill’ company.
