{"id":609,"date":"2026-06-26T10:18:04","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:18:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=609"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:18:04","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:18:04","slug":"how-oil-execs-shaped-a-landmark-climate-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=609","title":{"rendered":"How oil execs shaped a landmark climate study"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

It is rare<\/span> that a single scientific paper shapes\u00a0how people think about a challenge as daunting as climate change. But one, known as \u201c,\u201d published 22 years ago by researchers at Princeton University, told an irresistible story.<\/p>\n

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It made solving climate change seem possible, even simple. It claimed that the world didn\u2019t have to wait for innovation because it had the tools to start work immediately.<\/p>\n

The trick was to do a little of everything and let the effects add up. Renewable energy, nuclear power and conservation were certainly pieces of the solution puzzle. But so were a slew of steps that involved using oil, gas and coal despite the carbon dioxide emissions they would continue to produce.<\/p>\n

One fix that \u201cWedges\u201d leaned especially hard on was carbon capture and storage, a technology that promised to grab carbon pollution from smokestacks and other sources and trap it forever underground. Do that enough, and climate change could be curtailed without upending the world as we know it.<\/p>\n

The paper, written by scientists Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala, became a phenomenon. Former Vice President Al Gore highlighted it in his Oscar-winning climate change documentary. U.S. presidents from George W. Bush to Joe Biden incorporated ideas from it into policy. The United Nations\u2019 panel on climate change worked it into at least three major reports over more than a decade. It was presented in classrooms at Harvard and MIT and cited more than 3,000 times in scientific papers. It was even turned into a board game.<\/p>\n

For a generation, people learning how to address global warming were taught the ideas in the \u201cWedges\u201d paper.<\/p>\n

What they didn\u2019t learn was this: \u201cWedges\u201d was significantly shaped by the British oil giant BP \u2014 one of the single global entities most responsible for causing climate change.<\/p>\n

In 1997, BP abandoned climate change denial. Instead, the company quietly launched a far-reaching effort to intertwine oil company interests and climate science, in part by using its vast resources to shape the research that major universities undertook.<\/p>\n

While its chief executive, John Browne, was rebranding his company as Beyond Petroleum,\u00a0BP sought out researchers who were already thinking about how to address climate change without replacing fossil fuels. The company found them at Princeton University, where it set about amplifying their work by donating $15 million to start the Carbon Mitigation Initiative. The research program was framed around finding solutions to climate change while keeping fossil fuels in play, focusing heavily on carbon capture.<\/p>\n

The \u201cWedges\u201d paper was the initiative\u2019s first big swing. And it succeeded beyond anything its authors could have imagined.<\/p>\n

BP executives were deeply involved throughout the paper\u2019s creation, according to an investigation by ProPublica and Drilled. Socolow and Pacala, the authors of \u201cWedges\u201d and the new center\u2019s co-directors, not only discussed ideas with the company but, in a departure from academic norms, passed drafts back and forth and welcomed extensive feedback.<\/p>\n

Like a book publisher shaping a clunky early draft into a bestseller, an executive at the company suggested the scientists punch up the language, which they did. Browne himself\u00a0suggested wording that became a part of the title. Together they helped make wonky scientific ideas more digestible for popular consumption. BP even tried \u2014 unsuccessfully \u2014 to revise a version of it.<\/p>\n

\u201cChaps, I have had a go at rewriting the paper,\u201d Browne\u2019s climate adviser wrote the researchers at one point.<\/p>\n

Then, while the paper was being prepped for publication, BP began aggressively promoting the ideas it contained. Browne touted the framework in a speech as evidence that oil and gas had \u201csustainable futures\u201d and published an endorsement of \u201cWedges\u201d in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine. BP inserted the paper\u2019s ideas into its sustainability reports promoting greater efficiency and natural gas \u2014 which it argued offered a low-carbon alternative to coal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWedges,\u201d whose ideas were turbocharged by the sort of high-level marketing scientific papers rarely get, became a regular part of thinking about climate change in classrooms and boardrooms alike. And as that happened, BP kept pouring millions more dollars into Princeton each year, in part to explicitly advance carbon capture and storage technology and, as internal documents make clear, to get the university\u2019s help in turning the idea into a bona fide government-backed solution.<\/p>\n

Gardiner Hill, a former vice president and climate executive at BP who worked with the Princeton program, told ProPublica and Drilled that BP took academic freedom seriously. It \u201cdid not oversee any of the publications\u201d that Princeton put out under its sponsorship, he said. A spokesperson for BP declined to respond to two lists of questions sent by ProPublica and Drilled.<\/p>\n

Socolow and Pacala say they were sincere in their intent to solve climate change in the best way they believed possible, at a time when it was not obvious that wind and solar would succeed the way they have today. The researchers say BP had no control over the scientific content of the paper. They rejected the view that technologies didn\u2019t exist to start solving climate change immediately and hoped carbon capture offered, as Pacala said, a way to make fossil fuels \u201cclimate safe.\u201d<\/p>\n

But \u201cWedges\u201d oversold the readiness of carbon capture and storage, describing it as \u201calready deployed\u201d industrially. Reporting by ProPublica and Drilled has found that even today, the technology\u00a0faces financial and technical hurdles and is unlikely to everwork at the scale needed to avert extreme warming.<\/p>\n

And the broader solution set that \u201cWedges\u201d promoted, including expanding the use of natural gas, has meanwhile helped perpetuate a system in which fossil fuels remain the predominant source of energy and the emissions they cause have continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cAn unfortunate consequence\u201d of the \u201cWedges\u201d paper, wrote climate scientist Ken Caldeira, New York University physics professor Marty Hoffert and others in a 2013 critique, \u201cwas to make the solution seem easy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, for the past quarter century, as research into carbon capture and storage and other industry-friendly solutions have enjoyed robust funding and attention, other ideas that might have replaced carbon-heavy energy entirely \u2014 reducing warming and potentially saving lives \u2014 were drowned out, several researchers told ProPublica and Drilled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWedges\u201d would likely never have been written without BP\u2019s funding, Socolow said. Scientists and ethicists say the paper may not have been seen as credible or earned its acclaim had the extent of BP\u2019s involvement been fully disclosed.<\/p>\n

Neither BP nor Princeton responded to specific questions about our findings.<\/p>\n

This is the story of how one of the most influential climate papers in history came to exist thanks to the support of one of the companies most responsible for causing the climate crisis \u2014 and one with a deep financial stake in how the technologies described in the paper would play out. It is part of a broader investigation by ProPublica and Drilled into how the fossil fuel industry has helped steer the global response to climate change by pouring billions of dollars into research at elite universities. Since the 1990s, oil companies have sponsored research centers, kept offices on campuses, paid the salaries of scientists and, in at least one case, held veto power over what professors and scientists\u00a0could study with their money.<\/p>\n

Today, the impacts of those efforts are everywhere, so ingrained in our understanding of what it means to solve climate change that it can be hard to conceive of another way forward. Even the U.N.\u2019s assessment of how to deal with the threat of climate change continues to pin hope on capturing tremendous amounts of carbon pollution and burying it in the Earth.<\/p>\n

So little has been done to avert fossil fuel emissions for so long, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with the research nonprofit Berkeley Earth,that there is little remaining choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve just wasted so much time,\u201d he said, that meeting goals to limit global warming has become \u201cfunctionally impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

On a sunny morning<\/span> in the spring of 1997, Browne took to the podium at Stanford University\u2019s open-air Frost Amphitheater to deliver a speech unlike anything ever heard from an oil executive.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is now an effective consensus \u2026 that there is a discernible human influence on the climate,\u201d Browne, a small, professorly man with an air of British formality, told the audience. For years, BP and the other big oil companies had been part of an industry group called the Global Climate Coalition, working to sow doubt about global warming and avert agreements that would force cuts in heat-trapping pollution. Now Browne, having pulled BP out of the group, was suddenly pledging his company would be taking \u201csubstantial, real and measurable\u201d action to fix the crisis.<\/p>\n

Still, Browne cautioned against haste even as he urged action. If governments were too aggressive in cutting fossil fuel use, he warned, their actions would \u201ccrash into the realities of economic growth.\u201d Instead, BP would seek to be more efficient \u2014 seizing \u201clow-hanging fruit.\u201d And it would experiment with capturing carbon to stop fossil fuel emissions from entering the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

This was the start of a long transition in BP\u2019s branding and in the way it worked with thought leaders to shape the company\u2019s future.<\/p>\n

By then, oil companies had already begun investing in universities\u2019 climate work. Exxon started giving money for climate research to Columbia University\u2019s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in the late 1970s. Then in 1991, the company funded the\u00a0launch of the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, according to the program\u2019s former co-director, Henry Jacoby. Chevron, Shell and BP also later supported the program, which developed influential climate-related models.<\/p>\n

Fossil fuel companies recognized that they could benefit from spotlighting the research of prominent scientists whose ideas were aligned with their interests. And they strategized to boost the influence of those ideas in the global policy response to climate change.<\/p>\n

In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute, the largest and most powerful oil industry lobbying group in the U.S., established what it called its Global Climate Science Communications Plan. described the importance of outreach aimed at \u201cestablishing cooperative relationships\u201d with \u201cscientists whose research in this field supports our position\u201d and developing \u201copportunities to maximize the impact of scientific views consistent with ours.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 1999, Browne asked his chief scientist, Bernie Bulkin, to find research programs the company could support in the U.S. Bulkin \u2014 who told ProPublica and Drilled that he had never heard of the API initiative to engage with scientists \u2014 decided to set up a climate-focused program that could test the viability of carbon capture and storage, a budding technology.<\/p>\n

For decades, oil companies had extracted carbon dioxide from the Earth and pumped it back underground to force more oil out under pressure, a process called enhanced oil recovery. If that process were adapted to store CO2 in the earth forever, then billions of tons of carbon emissions could, in theory, be captured from smokestacks and buried. Global emissions could be reduced without cutting fossil fuel use at all.<\/p>\n

A handful of scientists had been making the case that this might be doable. One of them was Socolow, a theoretical physicist who had been leading an interdisciplinary environmental program at Princeton since 1971.<\/p>\n

In 1997, Socolow ran a summer workshop for the U.S. Department of Energy in which he and other experts suggested that natural gas, coal and other fuels could be used to make clean-burning hydrogen. If the emissions from the process could be captured and stored away forever, it might be possible to use fossil fuels without contributing much to global warming.<\/p>\n

Socolow wanted to address climate change. But he was also predisposed to remedies that would not require what he described as \u201ca priori<\/em>, the sacrifice of the energy value of oil, gas, and coal.\u201d In graduate school he studied with scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project, and he worried that supporting nuclear energy could lead to the proliferation of weapons. He thought solar, wind and hydro power would each present their own environmental problems.<\/p>\n

Carbon capture and storage, though, could make switching away from fossil fuels less urgent and was something that \u201cbrings the oil industry to the table.\u201d<\/p>\n

The oil companies had doubts that carbon capture and storage technology would work. \u201cNobody had any idea what it would cost and whether there was anything practical at scale,\u201d Bulkin recalled in an interview. Still, Bulkin thought there would be little downside for BP in trying. If it didn\u2019t work for the climate, it might help the company produce more fossil fuels.<\/p>\n

Bulkin began evaluating America\u2019s top universities. It was, he wrote in his 2019 memoir, a \u201cdeterminedly elitist\u201d selection process aimed at getting \u201cthe greatest benefit to the company.\u201d Researchers at MIT and Stanford had pioneered work on carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery. But a colleague had heard Socolow give a presentation on carbon capture and was impressed. So Bulkin added Princeton into the mix, and in early 2000, Bulkin said, each of the universities submitted proposals to BP for funding of a program to expand carbon capture research.<\/p>\n

Stanford saw carbon capture and storage as a geological problem, MIT more of an engineering challenge, Bulkin said. Princeton\u2019s labs didn\u2019t have the technical expertise in carbon capture that the other two schools had. But Socolow came off as masterful at synthesizing energy challenges and\u00a0environmental concerns, and Pacala brought deep knowledge of how carbon moves between Earth\u2019s atmosphere, land and oceans. Together, they offered a more systemic way of thinking about carbon capture.<\/p>\n

That June, weeks before BP announced it was rebranding as Beyond Petroleum, Bulkin told Pacala and Socolow they had won. BP would commit roughly $15 million over 10 years to form the university\u2019s Carbon Mitigation Initiative. The program would focus roughly one third on earth sciences research, one third on carbon capture and one third on policy efforts. Pacala got Ford Motor Co. to contribute $5 million more.<\/p>\n

When it was announced that October, the $20 million gift amounted to the largest corporate grant in Princeton\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Princeton told ProPublica and Drilled that partnerships with corporations make up just over 3% of the university\u2019s research funding but help it \u201caddress real-world problems.\u201d Princeton, the spokesperson added, maintains policies that \u201cprevent outside funders from exercising undue influence over research,\u201d including not permitting sponsors to have veto power over publications.<\/p>\n

Representatives from Columbia University and Ford did not respond to requests for comment. A representative from MIT wrote that Exxon \u201cdid not direct the Joint Program\u2019s research agenda.\u201d<\/p>\n

From the start, Princeton\u2019s contract with BP was supposed to protect its academic independence, Pacala told ProPublica and Drilled. The company wasn\u2019t supposed to direct what\u00a0its money was going to be spent on, he said. \u201cBP can\u2019t tell us what to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

But BP and the Princeton researchers were eager to collaborate, and both Socolow and Pacala said they sought ideas no matter where they came from. \u201cThe university has an obligation to welcome all points of view, while fiercely protecting its own independence and the independence of its investigators,\u201d Socolow said in an email.<\/p>\n

In late 2000, Princeton researchers, BP officials and representatives from Ford gathered at the enormous Italianate mansion of Princeton\u2019s president.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent about two days just talking about what would be useful to us,\u201d Bulkin recalled in an interview. Princeton scientists \u201cthrew out ideas, and we said, \u2018Well, we could help on this\u2019 or \u2018That\u2019s maybe interesting, maybe not,\u201d he said. \u201cTell us more.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Together, the scientists and their funders hammered out an ambitious vision: According to a memo summarizing the meeting, the Carbon Mitigation Initiative would become a \u201cworld-class\u201d program focused on basic earth science and carbon capture through \u201ca new kind of engagement.\u201d<\/p>\n

It would become \u201ca place of influence\u201d that would, ultimately, \u201chelp shape government research priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n

In January 2003,<\/span> BP executives traveled to Princeton for the Carbon Mitigation Initiative\u2019s second annual meeting. The center had much to show for its work on earth systems modeling and had made technical progress on carbon capture and storage. But Pacala and Socolow quickly turned to their newest work: a simple framework they were developing to bring CO2 emissions under control immediately using methods that already existed.<\/p>\n

Climate progress was in a state of paralysis. Groups denying the evidence of climate science were eroding political support for policy action. At the same time, climate modelers were suggesting it might be too expensive to fix climate change until the end of the century. President George W. Bush, in tacit agreement, pulled the United States out of the Kyoto treaty, the 1997 legally binding agreement that 192 countries signed to reduce emissions. Instead, Bush\u2019s administration focused on expanding basic research into low-carbon energy technologies, which suggested to Pacala and Socolow that leaders didn\u2019t think they had tools to address the crisis.<\/p>\n

The Princeton researchers believed they did have tools and that failing to deploy them soon could spell disaster for the climate. They\u2019d listed the fuels, technologies and conservation approaches that would lead to lower emissions, including manufacturing cars that get 60 mpg, expanding wind and solar power, regrowing forests and developing hydrogen-based fuels. The idea was to stack them up, allowing each to account for a portion of the reductions needed to flatten the surging rate of global emissions. They diagrammed it for their BP sponsors as a big triangle beneath the rising line of future carbon emissions, what Socolow recalls describing as a \u201cwedge,\u201d cut up into equal-sized slices. Each one represented a strategy that could offset a billion tons of CO2 each year by the middle of the century.<\/p>\n

Many of the approaches remained dependent on using fossil fuels and could result in still more emissions, not less. So the plan also leaned heavily on carbon capture to remove pollution and make those approaches work. \u201cWe were CCS enthusiasts,\u201d Socolow said in an interview.<\/p>\n

But the researchers appeared to be stretching their own parameters to make carbon capture and storage fit. The \u201cWedges\u201d framework was supposed to be made up of \u201cready to deploy\u201d technologies. Yet carbon capture and storage had barely been tested, and no experts interviewed could recall a commercial power plant using it.<\/p>\n

Still, the Princeton group kept it at the center of the mix.<\/p>\n

That fall, Pacala traveled to London to present the work directly to BP CEO Browne. In the city\u2019s Westminster district, Pacala traversed the leafy St. James\u2019s Square and entered BP\u2019s brick office building, where he was shown past a pair of security guards and seated across from Browne in a busy room.<\/p>\n

Pacala, whom a colleague described as an expert \u201cpitchman,\u201d presented his chart of ideas: Use oil and gas more efficiently. Replace coal-fired power plants. Reduce emissions, ultimately, by capturing them and burying them underground. Each action, he said, would take \u201cslices\u201d out of the total amount of future carbon pollution.<\/p>\n

Browne listened attentively. The straightforward framework made a complex problem seem manageable. But the \u201cslices\u201d terminology confused him. \u201cThey\u2019re kind of wedges, aren\u2019t they?\u201d Pacala recalls him saying.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019re like, \u2018Yeah, whatever you want,\u2019\u201d Pacala remembers thinking. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re paying the bills, buddy.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

From that point forward, Socolow and Pacala were thoroughly committed to \u201cWedges.\u201d Days after the London meeting, they wrote the material up into a white paper for BP titled \u201cThe Stabilization Wedge: Consolidation of BP\u2019s Environmental Leadership.\u201d In an email to ProPublica and Drilled, Socolow wrote that the document was not a first draft of \u201cWedges,\u201d but, he added, it was the first substantial write-up of his ideas.<\/p>\n

In the months following, Pacala and Socolow refined that work, and BP remained closely involved.<\/p>\n

At one point the researchers sent an early paper draft for review, and Chris Mottershead, Browne\u2019s climate adviser, offered \u201cscathing criticism,\u201d Pacala recalls. Mottershead asked for a \u201cpunchy\u201d and \u201cnon-academic\u201d tone that might have more popular appeal.<\/p>\n

In response Pacala says he did \u201ca complete blank-sheet-of-paper rewrite\u201d and sent the revised draft back to Mottershead and Socolow four hours later. Mottershead loved it. He later replied with a question: \u201cWhat is the potential for co-branding the \u2018wedges paper \u2026 ?\u2019\u201d Socolow and Pacala declined. Mottershead wanted to change certain terms and asked for a more open-ended timeframe to reduce emissions. He was denied. Another time, he checked the researchers\u2019 calculations, finding a single error.<\/p>\n

In\u00a0late 2003, Browne himself borrowed from the \u201cWedges\u201d thinking in a speech. A few months later, records show, Socolow solicited feedback from another member of BP\u2019s management. The researchers also contributed ideas from their work for BP\u2019s internal training and corporate communications.<\/p>\n

Then in March, Mottershead wrote his own version of the two scientists\u2019 near final draft, stating in an email that he was attempting to \u201cmake the word \u2018wedge\u2019 the brand for the work.\u201d<\/p>\n

To Mottershead, Princeton\u2019s draft was too dense to break through into popular discourse. He pushed for language that would make the \u201cwedges\u201d concepts more digestible.<\/p>\n

Most significantly, the draft shows, Mottershead tried to inject language that raised doubt about the legitimacy of basic climate science, describing that science as \u201cprovisional\u201d and adding that \u201cgreat uncertainties remain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Mottershead did not convince the authors to adopt that specific text. \u201cBP tried to cross the line repeatedly,\u201d Pacala said in an interview. \u201cThey were constantly trying to push their agenda. We just didn\u2019t do any of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

But several edits would survive, including one that couched emissions in the context of economic growth and another in which Mottershead suggested moving a punchy line from lower in the article up to the very top.\u00a0All, Pacala says, were changes the researchers would have made anyway.<\/p>\n

Still, the situation amounted to what several academic researchers describe as a highly unusual level of coordination on a major scientific work on climate change. Pacala went so far as to offer Mottershead co-authorship, at one point placing his name at the top of the paper. Yet Mottershead declined. In retrospect, Pacala told ProPublica and Drilled, Mottershead contributed to the paper\u2019s style and presentation but not to its original scientific ideas. Mottershead did not respond to several messages, including a list of questions, over several months.<\/p>\n

The relationship \u201cflies in the face of the idea of academic independence,\u201d said Benjamin Franta, an associate professor of climate litigation at University of Oxford who studies fossil fuel influence in academia.<\/p>\n

Pacala and Socolow each defended their independence in several interviews with ProPublica and Drilled, saying that it is common for sponsors to be involved in sharing preliminary ideas. Socolow wrote that he was buoyed by BP\u2019s interest and thought it offered \u201ca way of amplifying Steve\u2019s and my impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pacala acknowledged that there are \u201cinevitable dangers of proximity\u201d to industry but said that BP\u2019s staff had \u201cno control over the findings.\u201d Instead, the researchers believed they were influencing BP by encouraging it to plan for climate change, which, Pacala said, \u201cwas a win.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pacala rejected the concern that BP\u2019s influence on their thinking might be subtle, stating that people who are subconsciously influenced in this way have \u201cweak character.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, decades of peer-reviewed research has found that, across fields of study, industry funding tends to bias researchers whether they are aware of it or not, affecting what people choose to study and what they find. Industry-funded studies of food or drugs are more likely to conclude they are safe. In medical settings even a small gift from a drug company \u2014 like a box of doughnuts \u2014 can lead doctors to prescribe its brands more often. One of the few studies to look at the impact of oil and gas funding in academia found that reports out of fossil-fuel-funded research centers describe natural gas\u00a0more favorably than renewables, whereas reports from centers less reliant on that funding do not. The influence of this funding, according to a working paper from Harvard researchers, is not always visible to those swayed by it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the whole subconscious bias problem,\u201d said Harvard historian of science and corporate influence expert Naomi Oreskes. If \u201ccontinued funding relies on having this good relationship and having this alignment, you are going to be influenced by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Princeton, Michael Oppenheimer, the director of Princeton\u2019s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, said that he does not believe Socolow or Pacala would have been swayed by feedback they disagreed with. But Oppenheimer, a close colleague of the two,\u00a0added that Princeton doesn\u2019t train researchers on how to navigate the influence that might come from close interactions with sponsors.<\/p>\n

And whether the researchers were affected by that proximity or not, Mottershead\u2019s persistent feedback about the article\u2019s scientific ideas \u201cgoes over the line,\u201d Oppenheimer said. \u201cThat\u2019s bad, that\u2019s unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Princeton told ProPublica and Drilled that the university provides \u201cextensive guidance and information\u201d to faculty and researchers about working with industry. Sponsors review drafts only to guard confidential material, the university added, or in cases where a sponsor is a co-author of a work. The university did not respond to a question about whether the extent of BP\u2019s involvement in \u201cWedges\u201d violated its policy and did not say whether it trains its staff on how to protect against more subtle influence.<\/p>\n

Other colleagues at Princeton encouraged Socolow and Pacala to challenge BP more. In written feedback on the original draft for BP, visiting scientist Stefano Consonni said that the researchers needed to be more blunt with BP about the difficulty of and need to move away from\u00a0fossil fuels in order to truly reduce carbon emissions. Bob Williams, a senior research scientist at Princeton whose detailed work on carbon capture inspired Socolow\u2019s, warned the researchers that the draft made solving climate change \u201csound easier than it actually is.\u201d<\/p>\n

In early May 2004, Socolow and Pacala submitted their paper to the journal Science. By then, \u201cslices\u201d had indeed become \u201cwedges,\u201d a decision Socolow says they made to \u201charmonize\u201d their vocabulary with Browne\u2019s. The paper included 15 wedges, three of which involved some form of carbon capture and eight of which involved using traditional fossil fuels, though in more efficient, or less polluting, ways.<\/p>\n

It described all of those wedges as \u201calready deployed at an industrial scale,\u201d a characterization that some experts said stretched the facts in the case of carbon capture and storage. Pacala told ProPublica and Drilled that each of the components required for carbon capture and storage were in use and just needed to be combined in a new way. He conceded the paper\u2019s description was a \u201ccommunications compromise.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the researchers made a key assumption \u2014 one that left room for the continued use of oil and gas \u2014 about how much carbon pollution the atmosphere could absorb while still avoiding disastrous warming. The number was in the mainstream at the time, but BP officials made it clear to the researchers that they supported it.<\/p>\n

In an email to Socolow after the paper\u2019s submission, Mottershead celebrated, writing that the target meant that \u201caround 50% of primary energy could still come from fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, Mottershead wrote, was \u201cTHE key piece of the framework for politicians and business, in my view.\u201d\u00a0Socolow acknowledged, in another subsequent email, that the figure would keep the fossil fuel industry a \u201cpart of things for at least another 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the July\/August 2004 edition of Foreign Affairs, Browne published his own lengthy essay, titled \u201cBeyond Kyoto,\u201d in which he introduced key elements of the \u201cWedges\u201d framework.<\/p>\n

Then, in mid-August, Science published .<\/em><\/p>\n

In a small-type footnote that comprises \u201cReferences and Notes,\u201d Socolow and Pacala list BP and Ford as sponsors of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative and thank Mottershead as a BP employee, along with several other scientists.<\/p>\n

But it is not clear that anyone understood the depth of their collaboration. In response to emailed questions, Science pointed to its policy stating that anyone contributing substantially to an article must be listed as an author. The journal does not have a policy about sponsors providing editorial feedback on drafts. And in a statement, a spokesperson wrote, \u201cScience cannot assess authorship questions based on third-party descriptions of contributions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Science also pointed to a conflict disclosure essay from 2004, which describes a \u201ccheck off form\u201d the journal supplied researchers to gauge potential conflicts. The journal said it did not keep copies of forms from that time.<\/p>\n

\u201cObviously there\u2019s a conflict of interest here,\u201d said Oxford\u2019s Franta, pointing to BP\u2019s financial interest in climate policy that might arise from the paper\u2019s conclusions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe issue is how well it is managed,\u201d Pacala said, noting that \u201calmost every researcher\u201d with outside funding grapples with such issues. \u201cOf course there is conflict of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regardless of whether explicit conflict disclosures were in place or were met, said Dana Fisher, a sociologist at American University who studies climate policy and activism, there were norms and expectations around interactions with sponsors. BP\u2019s repeated input on the \u201cWedges\u201d paper throughout its development, she said, was simply \u201cwrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not how science is supposed to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2006, former Vice President<\/span> Al Gore\u2019s movie, \u201cAn Inconvenient Truth,<\/em>\u201d exposed millions of viewers to the fact that fossil fuel use was pushing the planet toward disaster. Gore soberly presented the earth\u2019s dwindling ice, rising seas and increasingly violent weather. And then, toward the end, he shifted to optimism. Americans need not despair, he said, because \u201cwe already know everything we need to know to effectively address this problem.\u201d Behind him as he spoke, the opening words of Socolow and Pacala\u2019s paper \u2014 the same ones Mottershead had suggested moving to the top \u2014 appeared on a screen.<\/p>\n

Papers published in Science often enjoy a media moment before fading into obscurity. \u201cWedges\u201d was different. Its simple, optimistic message \u2014 polished with the help of BP\u2019s sophisticated public relations expertise \u2014 had an irresistible allure. And the media loved it. \u201cHow to save the world in fifteen easy steps,\u201d read one headline the day it was published. \u201cThe 15 ways to stop global warming revealed!\u201d read another.<\/p>\n

Socolow gave dozens of interviews and spoke at institutions including the American Petroleum Institute, Lehman Brothers and the United Nations Conference of the Parties, where representatives from more than 190 countries coordinate international climate action. When the Bush administration released a major climate change technology strategy document in 2006, it highlighted the \u201cWedges\u201d framework. \u201c\u2018I get it, we don\u2019t need pie in the sky,\u201d Socolow recalled an administration official telling him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWedges\u201d fast became part of the zeitgeist. In 2006, Pacala and Socolow wrote a popular article about it for Scientific American. BP, in lockstep, took out a full-page ad. In 2007, Princeton released a \u201cWedges\u201d game online, which Pacala built a prototype for from planks of wood in his garage. High school students, business leaders and policymakers played it. University professors folded Princeton\u2019s climate plan into their lessons across the country. Geoffrey Supran, a climate disinformation expert at the University of Miami, says that the paper was \u201cmandatory reading\u201d when he was a grad student at MIT.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was a paradigm paper for a whole generation of university students and grad students,\u201d said Franta, who was also taught the \u201cWedges\u201d paper as a graduate student at Harvard. \u201cIt was like, \u2018This is how you solve climate change.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Had a BP executive\u2019s name been on the top of \u201cWedges,\u201d the paper\u2019s message would likely have been less credible and its release met with more skepticism as a product of oil industry interests, several academics told ProPublica and Drilled.<\/p>\n

\u201cWould Gore have used it if he knew?\u201d asked Craig Callender, a philosophy professor at the University of California San Diego, referring to the details of BP\u2019s involvement. \u201cMany were already skeptical of the wedge paper\u2019s reliance on CCS,\u201d he said. \u201cIf they saw the hand of BP behind it, that skepticism would have grown.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Gore distanced him from Socolow and Pacala\u2019s work but did not directly address the question of whether knowledge of BP\u2019s role in the paper would have changed his opinion of their findings. Pacala said in an interview that he thought broader disclosure of BP\u2019s partnership would have made the paper more credible, not less.<\/p>\n

Branded as Princeton research, the paper\u2019s influence continued to expand, boosting the university program\u2019s renown and Pacala and Socolow\u2019s stature.<\/p>\n

In 2007, Time magazine touted the scientists as \u201cinnovators\u201d in its \u201cGlobal Warming Survival Guide.\u201dSocolow was offered a seat on a National Research Council committee on climate policy. He testified before the Senate Finance Committee, where, in a 2007 hearing, he touted a BP carbon capture and storage pilot project as evidence that the technology was \u201ccommercially mature.\u201d He argued that the U.S. should offer tax credits for coal power only if those plants used carbon capture technology. A year later, Congress inserted a significant carbon capture subsidy into the tax code \u2014 though it didn\u2019t require coal plants to adopt it.<\/p>\n

Pacala, meanwhile, was selected as chair of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine committees focusing on emissions monitoring and on carbon dioxide removal. In 2021, when President Joe Biden appointed him to serve on his Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, a White House press release cited the \u201cWedges\u201d paper as Pacala\u2019s standout accomplishment.<\/p>\n

The paper would go on to see an explosive degree of exposure. According to Supran\u2019s lab at the University of Miami, the roughly 3,000 peer reviewed papers that cite \u201cWedges\u201d have themselves now been cited over 210,000 times, demonstrating a ripple effect rare in the universe of published science.<\/p>\n

\u201cWedges\u201d \u201ccertainly did help them a lot,\u201d Bulkin said of the two scientists\u2019 swift rise. \u201cAnd of course, it increased the reputation of CMI and of Princeton as leading thinkers about climate change.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

This was exactly what was intended. And the benefits cut both ways.<\/p>\n

BP\u2019s investment in Princeton had proven an enormous success. \u201cWedges\u201d \u201cdrove strategy\u201d within the company, according to a 2014 internal memo. After the paper was published, BP announced it would double down on carbon capture and storage demonstration projects. It also said it would spend $8 billion over 10 years on four other wedge strategies: solar, wind, hydrogen and natural gas. (The company had nearly $240 billion in oil-and-gas-related revenues in 2005 alone.)<\/p>\n

As BP\u2019s initial commitment came to a close, Princeton and the company worked out a deal to keep it going. Princeton\u2019s proposition was that it would continue to do work that would grow political and regulatory support for carbon capture, effectively using the university\u2019s reputation to advance BP\u2019s policy interests. \u201cThe few research groups perceived by the public as relatively unbiased will have a major role to play,\u201d Pacala and Socolow wrote to BP in a 2007 funding document.<\/p>\n

In response, Pacala says that Princeton was \u201cadvancing its own interest to provide to the public unbiased information.\u201d Any \u201cpartial alignment\u201d with BP was coincidental.<\/p>\n

Another funding document stated that with BP\u2019s support, Princeton sought to become \u201cthe world\u2019s premier institution in climate and energy\u201d and suggested its graduates could one day work for the company. In addition to carbon capture, the documents showed the initiative\u2019s work had expanded in earth sciences, climate modeling and policy.<\/p>\n

Jeff Greenblatt, a former researcher for Socolow who contributed to the \u201cWedges\u201d paper, said the researchers had engaged in \u201ca delicate dance\u201d between maintaining their intellectual integrity and pleasing BP. \u201cI\u2019m sure that if they included that fossil fuels were not part of the solution to a significant extent, they probably would have seen their last year of funding,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s just the reality of these kinds of things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Socolow, in an interview, agreed that BP\u2019s funding was likely conditioned on his support for maintaining fossil fuels. \u201cThere was a synergy,\u201d he told ProPublica and Drilled in January. When the university and BP revisited their relationship for a 2016-2020 funding renewal, the parties made it explicit: \u201cA premise from the outset was that CMI\u2019s job was to invent a future where the fossil fuel industries have not disappeared,\u201d the renewal document said. \u201cThis is still our job.\u201d<\/p>\n

BP extended its funding for Princeton\u2019s Carbon Mitigation Initiative three times. It was originally slated to sunset in 2010 but was renewed through 2015, then 2020 and finally until 2025. All told, the company gave Princeton\u2019s program more than $56 million.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, for all of the paper\u2019s popular acclaim, many fellow scientists say \u201cWedges\u201d missed its target.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe thought it was wrong,\u201d Caldeira, the climate scientist and former researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, told ProPublica and Drilled. His research showed that far more carbon needed to be dealt with than \u201cWedges\u201d acknowledged and that effective solutions would require much more research.<\/p>\n

Two years before \u201cWedges\u201d was published, Caldeira and Hoffert, the NYU professor, published their own research in Science concluding that a \u201cradical restructuring of the global energy system,\u201d was needed. They thought that few of the technologies \u201cWedges\u201d focused on were mature and described \u201csevere deficiencies.\u201d In 2013, they explicitly criticized Pacala and Socolow\u2019s analysis in a rejoinder article titled \u201cRethinking Wedges,\u201d in which they wrote that \u201cPacala and Socolow gave us a way to believe that the energy-carbon-climate problem was manageable.\u201d<\/p>\n

To a lot of people, Hoffert said, \u201cWedges\u201d served a purpose. \u201cYou have to give people hope\u201d that climate change could be solved without radically disrupting society, he said in a recent interview. \u201cYet in the end,\u201d he added, if that hope is gained by convincing people they can continue without getting rid of fossil fuels, \u201cyou\u2019re gonna be driving the car over a cliff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more \u201cThe Tell\u201d never told the whole story<\/a><\/p>\n

The fact is, he added, BP \u201cgot their money\u2019s worth.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BP sponsored a Princeton research center to address the climate problem without getting off fossil fuel<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[903,904,905,214,595,906,237],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting","tag-bp","tag-climate-change","tag-george-bush","tag-joe-biden","tag-oil","tag-princeton","tag-propublica"],"yoast_head":"\nHow oil execs shaped a landmark climate study - Relocation Across America<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=609\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How oil execs shaped a landmark climate study - Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"BP sponsored a Princeton research center to address the climate problem without getting off fossil fuel\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/relocationacrossamerica.com\/?p=609\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Relocation Across America\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-26T10:18:04+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"32 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba2572fa1a7a241291fdc36bdae80fcf\"},\"headline\":\"How oil execs shaped a landmark climate study\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-26T10:18:04+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609\"},\"wordCount\":6344,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/96a371e0bb1f59c9a863e0a5804df5c2.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"BP\",\"Climate Change\",\"George Bush\",\"Joe Biden\",\"Oil\",\"Princeton\",\"ProPublica\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interesting\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609\",\"name\":\"How oil execs shaped a landmark climate study - Relocation Across America\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/96a371e0bb1f59c9a863e0a5804df5c2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-26T10:18:04+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba2572fa1a7a241291fdc36bdae80fcf\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/?p=609#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/96a371e0bb1f59c9a863e0a5804df5c2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/relocationacrossamerica.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/96a371e0bb1f59c9a863e0a5804df5c2.jpg\",\"width\":1692,\"height\":1151,\"caption\":\"LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 01: Climate change protesters blockade the entrance to the British Petroleum headquarters on September 1, 2009 in London, England. 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