Shell guide quits, accusing firm of ‘extreme harms’ to environment | Shell

A senior security advisor has give up working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil fuel producer in a bombshell public video of causing “excessive harms” to the atmosphere.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for local weather change dangers” and urged others within the oil and gasoline industry to “walk away while there’s nonetheless time”.

The executive, who works for the impartial agency Clout, ended her working relationship with Shell in an open letter to its executives and 1,400 staff. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she stated she had stop because of Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and gasoline agency of “operating beyond the design limits of our planetary techniques” and “not placing environmental security earlier than production”.

She said: “Shell’s stated safety ambition is to ‘do no harm’ – ‘Objective Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable but they are utterly failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gasoline extraction causes extreme harms, to our local weather, to our environment and to folks. And whatever they say, Shell is solely not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett told the Guardian she “couldn't marry these conflicts with my conscience”, including: “I couldn't carry that any longer, and I’m ready to take care of the results.”

Shell was a “major client” of Dennett’s enterprise, which specialises in evaluating security procedures in high-risk industries together with oil and fuel manufacturing. She started working with Shell within the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which rocked the industry.

“I can not work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the risks of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she said. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions around web zero, they don't seem to be winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to discover and extract way more.”

Dennett – a prison justice graduate who has spent her career in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Insurrection local weather protesters urging the company’s staff to go away. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing project encourages oil and gasoline employees to stroll away from the industry.

The marketing consultant, who runs inner security surveys and is based in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to walk away and “many people working in fossil gasoline corporations just aren’t so lucky”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves if they really imagine their imaginative and prescient for more oil and gasoline extraction secures a safe future for humanity”.

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clear vitality sector left amid stories they have been annoyed at the tempo of Shell’s shift in direction of greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to reduce emissions might be discussed on the assembly where the Dutch activist group Observe This can push for the company’s policies to be extra in step with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has advised buyers to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set more stringent climate goals.

The Shell investor Royal London has stated it intends to abstain on a vote on the firm’s local weather transition proposals.

The Shell chief government, Ben van Beurden, may expertise an investor riot in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote against it.

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A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in little question, we are decided to deliver on our global strategy to be a internet zero firm by 2050 and 1000's of our people are working exhausting to attain this. We have set targets for the short, medium and long term, and have each intention of hitting them.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon power, although the world will nonetheless need oil and fuel for decades to come in sectors that may’t be simply decarbonised.”

Shell also faces the prospect of a potential windfall tax to fund cuts to household payments after the vitality industry reported bumper earnings fuelled by the rise in market costs, prompting opposition parties to name on the government to herald a one-off levy.

On Monday, the largest oil and fuel producer within the North Sea spoke out in opposition to a one-off levy, arguing it would lead to the industry approving fewer projects.

Harbour Power’s chief govt, Linda Cook, instructed the Financial Times: “The next tax burden will make it more difficult for new oil and fuel tasks to satisfy investment hurdle charges, that means fewer projects can be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when business is being inspired to extend domestic UK oil and fuel production and support an orderly energy transition.”

Harbour has told the government it plans to invest $6bn within the North Sea over three years as industry makes its case towards the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had obtained a £4.6m “golden howdy” from the firm.