Making sense of corporate environmentalism - An environmental contestation approach to analyzing the causes and consequences of the climate change policy split in the oil industry

The threat of climate change has elicited divergent climate policy responses from the world's major oil multinationals, splitting the oil industry into two factions. This article analyzes the causes and consequences of this split in the oil industry. First, it demonstrates that oil companies made divergent assessments of the market risks and opportunities related to climate change based on the scientific networks and policy fields in which they were embedded rather than on rational economic criteria. Second, it documents that although the climate policy split in the oil industry has had few effects on oil company operations, it changes the terms of debate over profitable corporate action on climate change, with significant material consequences for climate regulation and patterns of energy production. This analysis contributes to the debate between treadmill of production and ecological modernization theorists by highlighting the midrange processes of contestation shaping the long-term environmental trajectory of capitalism.