Pecunia non olet laddie

The BP-funded scheme provided 16 to 25-year-olds with £5 tickets to RSC productions. That’s a noble cause but in 2019 BP looked like an odd sponsor. Why should young people accept free theatre tickets from a company that is contributing to the destruction of their futures?

One answer being that pecunia non olet - money has no smell. If cheap tickets are of value then it doesn’t matter where the money is coming from.

But rather more important is that it’s not BP doing the damage. It’s the people using BP’s products that are - whatever damage that may be. It is not the person who extracted the petrol responsible for the emissions of my driving to the shops. It’s me, the person doing the driving to the shops.

The youngsters taking a diesel powered bus - a fossil fuel produced electricity powered Tube, Shank’s Pony or bicycle fed on fossil fuel derived foods - to the theatre are the people producing the emissions being complained of.

Climate change isn’t an imposition upon us all by some capitalistic ogre, it’s us causing whatever the problem is.