Shell consultant quits, accusing agency of ‘excessive harms’ to atmosphere | Shell

A senior security marketing consultant has stop working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil gasoline producer in a bombshell public video of causing “extreme harms” to the setting.

Caroline Dennett claimed Shell had a “disregard for climate change dangers” and urged others within the oil and fuel trade to “walk away whereas there’s still 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 employees. In an accompanying video, posted on LinkedIn, she mentioned she had quit due to Shell’s “double-talk on climate”.

Dennett accused the oil and gas agency of “working past the design limits of our planetary methods” and “not putting environmental safety before manufacturing”.

She said: “Shell’s acknowledged safety ambition is to ‘do no hurt’ – ‘Goal Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable however they are fully failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gas extraction causes extreme harms, to our local weather, to our environment and to people. And no matter they say, Shell is simply not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett advised the Guardian she “could not marry these conflicts with my conscience”, including: “I couldn't carry that any longer, and I’m ready to cope with the results.”

Shell was a “major consumer” of Dennett’s business, which specialises in evaluating security procedures in high-risk industries together with oil and gas manufacturing. She began working with Shell in the aftermath of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which rocked the business.

“I can now not work for a company that ignores all of the alarms and dismisses the risks of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round web zero, they are not winding down on oil and fuel, but planning to explore and extract way more.”

Dennett – a criminal justice graduate who has spent her profession in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Insurrection climate protesters urging the corporate’s employees to leave. The motion’s TruthTeller whistleblowing project encourages oil and fuel employees to walk away from the trade.

The consultant, who runs inner security surveys and is predicated in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to be able to walk away and “many individuals working in fossil gasoline corporations simply aren’t so fortunate”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves if they actually consider their imaginative and prescient for more oil and fuel extraction secures a secure future for humanity”.

In late 2020, a number of Shell executives in its clean energy sector left amid stories they had been pissed off at the pace of Shell’s shift towards greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to scale back emissions might be mentioned at the assembly where the Dutch activist group Comply with This may push for the company’s policies to be extra in step with the Paris climate accord. Shell’s board has instructed traders to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set more stringent climate objectives.

The Shell investor Royal London has said it intends to abstain on a vote on the agency’s climate transition proposals.

The Shell chief govt, Ben van Beurden, may experience an investor rebellion in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the investment adviser Pirc urged a vote in opposition to it.

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A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in no doubt, we're determined to ship on our global technique to be a internet zero firm by 2050 and hundreds of our people are working hard to attain this. We've set targets for the quick, 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 gas for many years to come back in sectors that may’t be simply decarbonised.”

Shell additionally faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to family payments after the energy industry reported bumper earnings fuelled by the increase in market prices, prompting opposition events to name on the federal government to herald a one-off levy.

On Monday, the largest oil and fuel producer within the North Sea spoke out against a one-off levy, arguing it could result in the industry approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Energy’s chief executive, Linda Cook dinner, informed the Financial Times: “A better tax burden will make it tougher for new oil and gas projects to fulfill funding hurdle rates, which means fewer initiatives might be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when industry is being inspired to extend home UK oil and gasoline manufacturing and support an orderly power transition.”

Harbour has told the federal 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 dinner had acquired a £4.6m “golden hi there” from the agency.