An Oil Company Proves Bush Wrong On Climate Change

Speaking at Stanford Business School on March 11, 2002, BP chief executive John Browne announced that his company had met its self-imposed target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions -- nearly eight years ahead of schedule, and at no net cost to the company.

It was Browne who, five years earlier at Stanford, had sent shock waves through the energy industry by announcing that his company had decided that the risks of climate change justified precautionary action. The following year, Browne set another first in the energy industry by pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from his firm's operations by 10 percent below 1990 levels by 2010, nearly twice the average cut called for by the Kyoto Protocol. At Stanford, he revealed that "we've delivered on that target," well ahead of time. BP had reduced emissions by more than nine million tons below their 1990 level.