This week, BP was given an award for being a good corporate citizen.  By Forbes Magazine.  (Stop.  Read those first two sentences again. OK, on we go.)

Forbes, that bastion of tree-hugging liberalism, has ranked the 100 largest companies based on their commitment to social and environmental goals.  They took a hard and presumably unbiased look at the way these corporations are run, how their officers are rewarded, and how their business impacts the planet.   After much research, can you guess who they determined to be “the good guys”?  Four petroleum companies.  Two auto-makers that rely somewhat on petroleum.  Three banks that invest heavily in unregulated, developing markets.  Oh, and one cell phone company.

Let’s take a closer look at BP, the newly-christened “MOST ACCOUNTABLE COMPANY IN THE WORLD.”  In 2000, after acquiring ARCO and AMOCO, BP changed its name from “British Petroleum” to “Beyond Petroleum.”  It adopted a pretty flower as its icon and gave all its service stations a fresh coat of paint.  In 2007, BP announced that they would spend $8Billion in R&D for solar and other alternative forms of energy.  BP’s new CEO Tony Hayward took over in May 2007 amid claims of dedication to alternative energy and social responsibility.

BP is also the primary shareholder of a new 1000-mile pipeline through Russia and Turkey, which has been cited for 173 environmental and social violations in the design stage alone.  BP was recently found guilty of terrorizing Columbian farmers to protect a pipeline there.  BP is under investigation by the US Justice Department for manipulating propane prices.  In July, the state of Indiana and the EPA awarded BP numerous exemptions from the Clean Water Act, which will allow BP to pollute Lake Michigan; the Chicago Sun-Times responded in August with a call for a BP boycott.  And as late as 2006, BP was named one of the 10 worst companies in the world by Multinational Monitor.

So how’d they get that award?  Perhaps it has something to do with that massive media buy that they have made at Forbes Magazine.  Or perhaps a lot of powerful people are staring, glassy-eyed, at a pretty little flower and repeating slowly, “BP is a good company, BP is a good company, BP is a”……