Given all their carbon dioxide absorbing potential, any efforts to plant more trees should be warmly welcomed by climate campaigners, surely?

It doesn’t matter who’s doing the planting, right? Individuals in their back garden, councils, national governments, companies, you name it. Even if the oil industry grabbed a spade and started helping out, you’d pat them on the back, wouldn’t you?

Well, it turns out that’s exactly what’s been happening, as an investigation we published this week shows.

European oil giants have begun spending millions on “nature-based solutions”, with Shell leading the pack: the company last year pledged to invest $300 million in “natural ecosystems”.

Environmental groups have concerns, to put it mildly, and some are accusing the companies of greenwashing their fundamentally unsustainable activities.

For a start, the amounts of money being put into the schemes are tiny compared with what Big Oil spends on new fossil fuel developments every year, and nowhere near enough to offset the emissions these produce.

Experts also warn that trees only gradually absorb CO2 over decades and decades, when we need action now. To make matters worse, there’s no guarantee they’ll survive all that time anyway.

Still, that doesn’t mean it’s a completely lost cause – if the right rules are put in place, experts say, there’s potential.

But they also planting trees is no substitute for moving away from fossil fuels as fast as possible. We need both.

As Tracey Cameron from Ceres, an organisation which helps big investors force companies to become more sustainable, told DeSmog:

“If you’re just looking at offsetting business as usual and not changing your fundamental business model, it’s like eating a sundae on a treadmill.”

Dig into the full investigation:

The Problem with Big Oil’s ‘Forest Fever’

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Over the past year, BP, Total, Eni, Equinor and ConocoPhillips have invested millions of dollars in forest projects to offset their greenhouse gas emissions. Shell, in particular, has taken a lead, promising to spend $300 million on “natural ecosystems” as part of its market-leading net-zero emissions plan. Read more…

Data published by the government’s export credit agency at the end of June show the Department for International Trade helped to finance a total of 51 oil and gas projects. Read more…

CCLA, a leading fund manager which invests on behalf of charities including Anglican dioceses, said it had dropped its investments in oil giants Shell and Total earlier in the year for financial reasons. Read more…

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