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ProPublica: BP influenced Princeton's landmark 'Wedges' climate study

scienceJun 30, 202614549

ProPublica reports that BP sponsored an elite Princeton research center and exerted influence over the creation of the landmark “Wedges” paper by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, published about 22 years ago. The investigation says BP helped shape the paper’s framing and handpicked or supported scientists whose work steered solutions toward carbon capture, bioenergy, and other approaches that avoided recommending a phase-out of fossil fuels. The Wedges paper became a widely cited blueprint for climate mitigation and was later invoked to argue against rapid fossil-fuel phaseouts and to justify carbon capture and storage and large-scale bioenergy deployment. ProPublica portrays this as a case in which oil-industry funding altered the research agenda and the policy options emphasized by a highly influential Princeton study. The reporting has prompted renewed scrutiny of the paper’s origins and of university-industry sponsorship in climate research, and it has reignited debates over whether past policy choices were shaped by industry-aligned academic work.

George Monbiot
@georgemonbiot.bsky.social

The famous "Wedges" paper was used repeatedly to shut us up when we argued against the continued use of fossil fuels, and, esp, against carbon capture and storage and the mass use of bioenergy. "But these eminent scientists say ..." Now we learn BP co-authored it. www.propublica.org/article/wedg...

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