T.Getting money from fossil fuel companies is like taking money from tobacco companies in the 1990s. The damage that public institutions cause themselves by receiving this sponsorship exceeds all benefits. Just as their hands were once stained with nicotine, they are now stained with oil. The tobacco experience suggests that it can take many years to get rid of these damned spots and restore their reputation.

This is where the Science Museum is now. It does not seem to have learned anything from the reputational damage it has suffered from accepting money from the self Oil companies BP and Equinor. Last week it announced that Shell is funding – wait for it – it’s new Exhibition on climate change.

Though many have other large institutions – like the National Galleries in London and Scotland, the Tate Galleries, the National Theater, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Southbank Center, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam cut ties with the fossil fuel industryThe science museum seems determined to balance and bounce itself. Its director, Sir Ian Blatchford, said journalists: “Even if the science museum was given ample public funding, I would still want sponsorship from the oil companies.” Something tells me this is not going to age well.

The exhibition is called Our future planetEmphasizes the technologies that can capture the carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels or extract it from the air once it is released. The science museum tells me that Shell had no influence on its design or content. I think so, but in my opinion the exhibition fits in well with the agendas of the oil companies. For years, oil companies have tried to delay the closure of their reserves for as long as possible by emphasizing technofixes. If carbon dioxide can be captured, it could cost time in which its discovery and drilling, land grave and spills, pollution and profits can take longer than society would otherwise allow.

As Culture Unstained (aiming to end oil sponsorship) points out, most of the technologies the exhibit advertises are either speculative, extremely expensive, or despite numerous possibilities just don’t happen. For example, carbon capture and storage (CCS), in which carbon is extracted from power plant exhaust gases and then directed into geological formations, has been vigorously promoted as the leading solution for the last 20 years. But so far only 26 plants of all kinds use it, and 22 of them are oil rigs that use the CO2 they pump underground to drive more oil out of the rocks (a process known as improved oil recovery).

The Obligations to CCS in Shell’s most recent annual report are vague and general. However, many of its promises to reduce net emissions are based on a combination of this technology and offsets. While capture technologies generally don’t come to fruition, the magnitude of the carbon savings required means that Offset emissions is no longer viable. We need to both maximize fossil fuel shutdowns and maximize carbon uptake, preferably through that Reconstruction of ecosystems. One is no substitute for the other.

Yes, we should study any technology that could help prevent climate collapse. However, we should not allow them to be used as greenwash. Unless fossil fuel companies shut down their reserves at a rate commensurate with preventing more than 1.5 ° C of warming, they will remain a deadly threat to human well-being and the survival of other life forms. So far, none of them have any plans, not even on paper, to prevent warming above 2 ° C. let alone 1.5 ° C.. Shell’s program was criticized by environmental groups last week as hazy and half-hearted.

The Company arguesrightly so that its goals depend on being “in harmony with society”. Otherwise, it is “trying to sell products that our customers don’t want”. But by producing ads that exaggerate his commitment In order to reduce emissions, public opinion should be calmed down and, in my opinion, the demand for a transition from fossil fuels should be delayed. From my point of view, the exhibition in the Science Museum has the same effect.

Worse, while Shell has severed ties with some lobby groups, it is still a member of several, like that Consumer Energy Alliance and the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Associationwho have searched Hinder climate policy. She hopes that much of her future profits will come from increasing production of plastics. Last year the American Chemistry Council, which also includes Shell, campaigned for trade rules that would tear down Kenya’s strict measures on single-use plastic and force the country to continue accepting plastic waste from other nations. It wanted to make Kenya a “hub for the supply of chemicals and plastics made in the USA to other markets in Africa”.

When I challenged the museum, it referred me to an article by Blatchford in which he argued, “We believe the right approach is to engage, debate and challenge companies … do more to make the world economy less carbon intensive do. ”Me too. But how does it help to accept their funding? It doesn’t exactly improve your strength, does it? “Do what we say or we won’t take your money anymore.”

I think this is a zero sum game. The credibility Shell might gain by associating with the Science Museum is the credibility that the Science Museum loses. What Shell is looking foras the CEO admits, is “a strong corporate license”. By sponsoring cultural institutions in August, the oil companies hope to normalize an ecocidal business model. In this way, they contaminate anyone foolish enough to take their money.