There’s a lot to be said for relying on the FT as your dominant source of world-scale news, but that it will make you a happier person is not among them, unless perhaps you are already a member of its target demographic (which I am decidedly not). Here’s a bit from a medium-long read about the frankly mindboggling profits of the big fossil firms over the last couple years:

This week BP, the oil major that had gone the furthest in its commitments to the energy transition, announced that it would slow the pace it reduces oil and gas output this decade, meaning its emissions would also decline more slowly.

The U-turn dominated headlines, stirring anger from environmentalists and adding more fuel to calls for windfall taxes. Yet the market approved — BP’s shares rallied more than 10 per cent over the following 48 hours, reaching their highest level in three-and-a-half years.

“Yet the market approved”; great tombstone epitaph for a civilisation, no?

Of course, there’s always someone willing to step in there and explain patiently that no no no, black is white and white is black:

The adjustment by BP need not be seen as the death knell for Big Oil’s effort — at least in Europe — to become Big Energy, says Nick Stansbury, head of climate solutions at Legal & General Investment Management, a BP shareholder. “I definitely don’t think that what we’re seeing at BP tells you that it’s the wrong thing for a big oil company to try to transition its business model in the right way to make it fit for the future.” 

The challenge for chief executives, Stansbury says, is how to transition while protecting financial performance during what promises to be an era of extreme commodity price volatility, as the world’s energy system moves from fossil fuels to renewable power.

“We want these businesses to develop in such a way that they are resilient and poised for success in a net zero world,” Stansbury adds. “Investors are not yet confident of that today, in part because of the lack of certainty and clarity that exists around what the energy system of the future is going to look like.”

Shorter Stansbury: the challenge for chief executives is to keep the gravy train rolling for as long as possible.

But this also highlights my long-running concern with all the fossil fudges: CCS, “green” hydrogen, electric vehicles, whatever else. Even assuming that they are being offered in good faith—which I suspect they are, in many cases—the copious investments being poured into them at present serve only one function, which is that of buying more time for Business As Usual, with a stretch goal of retaining the grotesque economic and political dominance of the firms in question. “Big Energy” will not save us from Big Oil, because Big is the general expression of the problem, while the Oil part is merely the current particular expression. “Big Energy” will do whatever extractive stuff it has to do to keep the shareholders sweet, until such a time as it becomes untenable, when it will be replaced by something else, assuming there’s anything else of use left.

That has no chance of changing until there’s some sort of popular mandate for the change… and some days, this being one of them, I wonder if there ever will be. No investors will ever invest in the project of making a world where investment is no longer effective. We will leverage everything, until all we have is lever, and no firm place to stand.