Originally published on Radical on 2024-05-26.
In 2021 I watched aghast as Nacho Gimenez, then Managing Partner of BP Ventures, spoke to a packed room about BP’s commitment to decarbonisation. This was during Carbon13’s venture builder programme of which BP was a major sponsor. A key part of his rationale behind BP’s commitment, was the notion that his colleagues at BP are today experiencing the same plight the British coal miners did under Thatcher’s government. He poetically drew a parallel across time and space between the prospect of BP being asked to reduce drilling with the miner’s strikes that took place in the eighties.
I remember my jaw literally dropping.
Did he really believe what he was saying? Was he really comparing his suited, pampered, highly paid colleagues with the unionised coal miners on minimum wage who literally hacked at the coal face? Was he somehow comparing the unprofitable and small coal mining operations with a multinational juggernaut who that year would go on to make an annual profit of USD 12.8 billion? A company that ended the previos year, 2020, with USD 34 billion in cash reserves.
I cornered Nacho after the talk and attempted to debate him on some of the issues he had raised. I was inexperienced and he wasn’t. With a few smooth smiles he batted me off and was out of the building quickly. (He needed to catch a plane for a family vacation. Or he was tired coming back from one, I forget which.)
This was my first glimpse into how the mind of a multinational works.
And so, while many are celebrating the ratification of the CS3D directive by the European Parliament, I am less impressed.