The NewStandard has an excellent article by Michelle Chen on the many dimensions to the Berkeley-BP 500 million dollar deal. (See previous post for more detail.) On the whole, I think this is a good thing for environmental science. I guess that’s because I’m an optimist, and I think corporations will eventually need to take responsibility for the cost of environmental research. But one critic questions why, if BP cares about funding research, they do not give the money to the National Science Foundation or some other entity that can distribute it where it is needed. From the article:

[…]But Professor [Ignacio] Chapela said there is a precedent for public financing of crucial research. If the industry were genuinely concerned about the environmental consequences of its actions, he said, it would simply hand funding to a public agency less burdened by corporate influence. BP could follow the model of the federally chartered National Science Foundation and “put this money into a fund for the legislature to actually distribute to the places where it’s necessary.”

Opponents of the partnership say BP’s history of “greenwashing” its damaging practices – from intense oil drilling in northern Alaska to last year’s massive spill at Prudhoe Bay – should be reason enough to reject the deal. BP’s track record has doubly outraged environmentalists, as it has overlapped with its “Beyond Petroleum” media campaign, touting supposedly eco-friendly corporate initiatives.

Some critics of oil corporations say that for all the hype surrounding university partnerships, the industry has shown little interest in seriously investing in research. The five major oil companies devoted less than 2 percent of total cash flows to research and development activities in 2004, according to an analysis commissioned by the American Petroleum Institute.

Merrill Goozner, director of the Integrity in Science Project at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said corporations with a financial stake in research could act as gatekeepers instead of stewards for the alternative-energy sector.

“These are oil companies; they get the vast majority of their revenue from oil,” he said. [full text]