> At the oil companies themselves, management has a singular duty to shareholders -- anything else is just PR blah-blah. We can debate whether that's a feature or bug of capitalism, but pearl-clutching news reports that ignore that basic fact aren't helpful in the public debate.

I agree with this, however, we know that energy harvesting potentially has negative side effects, often from byproducts such as methane production. Which can then lead to methane off-gassing.

From an investment perspective this really ticks me off, because I want that methane captured, brought to market, and sold. We should fight the idea that energy companies should be in the business of bad practices. Now, that raises a new set of questions around incidental methane capture, and the technologies needed for capture, to prevent off-gassing.

The key to this is trending - are we heading in the right directions, or not? What major and minor course corrections do we need to correctly steer the behemoth that is the energy industry?