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Royal Dutch Shell PLC had a poll for consumers this week: What habits are individuals willing to give up to cut emissions, it asked.
A stampede of Twitter responses had a follow-up for the oil-and-gas super major: Are you serious?
Some comments, which eventually topped 4,000 as of Tuesday, made note of the less than 200 poll responses (for an account that has some 550,000 followers) to this four-answer query:
Many accused the company RDS.A, +0.75% RDS.B, +1.63% RDSA, +1.24% of gaslighting with this marketing initiative. The implication that individual actions even as a collective — and not industry culpability and a corresponding product shift — will be enough to slow global warming is reckless, the critics cried. “Y’all put the gas in gaslighting,” one response read.
Teenage protesting celebrity Greta Thunberg was part of the Twitter flurry, slinging an accusation of “endless greenwash.”
Also replying: U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Democrat of New York and co-author of the most-progressive version of a Green New Deal that stalled in Congress. She said Anglo-Dutch Shell can’t shirk decades of climate-change responsibility. Her tweet was liked more than 380,000 times.
“Changing the energy system requires everyone to play their part,” Shell chimed in. “That’s what today’s #EnergyDebate was about. As for our part, we said last week that Shell will reshape its portfolio of assets and products to meet the cleaner energy needs of its customers in the coming decades.”
The climate update was part of the company earnings report. Already, sustainable-investing advocates had largely commended Shell for its relatively more ambitious climate-change pledges than U.S. rivals including Chevron CVX, -0.56% and Exxon-Mobil XOM, -1.70% .
Related:Shell joins BP with plan to cut emissions — leaves analysts asking where are Exxon and Chevron?
The London-traded stock price of Royal Dutch Shell has been cut by more than half this year, as the COVID-19 pandemic has crushed demand for energy. Environmental advocates say the pandemic recovery is the best time to rethink greener infrastructure and transportation, including U.S. Republicans who want a mix of energy including renewables and historically cheap natural gas.
Read:Royal Dutch Shell Stock Has Been Battered by the Pandemic. Here’s Why It Just Got 2 Upgrades
For President Trump and challenger Joe Biden, their wide gap on the future of energy markets, including fracking, a national climate-change response and the U.S. part in international efforts, has been a major feature in the competing campaigns that come to an end with Tuesday’s election.
