A few weeks ago I chanced across an oil company executive who was expounding earnestly on his company's "social licence to operate". I raised an eyebrow at the time because it struck me as a case of big oil adopting the language of the environmentalists.
Interestingly though, it turns out that the whole concept of a social licence was introduced by a mining company executive:
[Jim] Cooney was racking his brain for a concept to describe why projects from Peru to Angola were getting delayed and shut down by protests. The companies lacked “social license,” he told the audience.
Not that this changes my views on the idea. In my opinion it's a trap for the extractive industries - one that will only add to the delays and lead to more projects being shut down by protests. In the face of a concerted campaign of disinformation from environmentalists and their supporters in the mainstream media, what business can ever hope to win over public opinion? The only way to do this is to start operating and show that it is safe and clean or whatever. That it has become impossible to do so is worrying. As so many small government types have pointed out over the years, the kind of regulation that prevents someone engaging in their chosen business simply because somebody else doesn't like it is the start of the road to serfdom. In a free country, you should be able to get on with a harmless business regardless of public opinion.
The extractive industries don't seem to have grasped that the environmentalists don't want them to operate in a clean manner or a transparent manner or a socially responsible manner. They don't want them to operate at all.
Still, at least it looks as if the current incumbents in Westminster are going to ignore (£) concerns about social licences as regards the development of a domestic shale gas industry. Sometimes there's a bigger picture.