No, Not Making This Up: Shell Sponsoring An Exhibit On Global Warming At London Science Museum

[hatrack]

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Although many other great institutions – such as the National Galleries in London and Scotland, the Tate Galleries, the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Southbank Centre, the American Museum of Natural History and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam – have cut their ties with fossil fuel industries, the Science Museum seems determined to tar and feather itself. Its director, Sir Ian Blatchford, told journalists: “Even if the Science Museum were lavishly publicly funded I would still want to have sponsorship from the oil companies.” Something tells me this will not age well.

The exhibition, called Our Future Planet, emphasises the technologies that might capture the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels, or extract it from the air once it has been released. The Science Museum tells me that Shell had no influence over its design or content. I believe it, but to my eye the exhibition aligns neatly with oil company agendas. For years, oil firms have sought to delay the retirement of their reserves for as long as possible by emphasising technofixes. If carbon dioxide can be captured, this could buy time in which their discovery and drilling, landgrabs and leaks, pollution and profits can continue for longer than society might otherwise permit.

As Culture Unstained (which seeks to bring oil sponsorship to an end) points out, most of the technologies the exhibition promotes are either speculative, extremely expensive or, despite ample opportunity, simply not happening. For example, carbon capture and storage (CCS) – extracting carbon from the exhaust gases of power stations, then piping it into geological formations – has been noisily promoted as a leading solution for 20 years. But so far only 26 plants of any kind are using it, and 22 of these are rigs using the CO2 they pump underground to drive more oil out of the rocks (a process called enhanced oil recovery).

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When I challenged the museum, it pointed me to an article by Blatchford, in which he argued, “we believe the right approach is to engage, debate and challenge companies … to do more to make the global economy less carbon intensive.” So do I. But how does accepting their funding help? It doesn’t exactly enhance your power, does it? “Do what we say or we won’t take your money any more.” This, I believe, is a zero-sum game. The credibility that Shell might gain from its association with the Science Museum is credibility the Science Museum loses. What Shell seeks, as its CEO admits, is “a strong societal licence to operate”. By sponsoring august cultural institutions, oil companies hope to normalise an ecocidal business model. In doing so, they contaminate anyone foolish enough to take their money.

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/21/science-museum-shell-money-exhibition-climate

[abqtommy]

1. Take their money and use it well to see that they all burn in hell!