Shell marketing consultant quits, accusing agency of ‘extreme harms’ to environment | Shell

A senior security marketing consultant has quit working with Shell after 11 years, accusing the fossil fuel producer in a bombshell public video of inflicting “excessive harms” to the setting.

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

The manager, who works for the independent 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 give up because of Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and fuel agency of “working past the design limits of our planetary techniques” and “not placing environmental security before manufacturing”.

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

“They know that continued oil and fuel extraction causes excessive harms, to our local weather, to our environment and to people. And no matter they are saying, Shell is just not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett instructed the Guardian she “couldn't marry these conflicts with my conscience”, adding: “I could not carry that any longer, and I’m able to take care of the implications.”

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

“I can no longer work for a corporation that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the dangers of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she mentioned. “As a result of, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round internet zero, they are not winding down on oil and fuel, however planning to discover and extract far more.”

Dennett – a prison justice graduate who has spent her career in analysis and consultancy – was impressed to stop working with Shell after watching news footage of Extinction Rise up local weather protesters urging the company’s employees to leave. The movement’s TruthTeller whistleblowing venture encourages oil and gasoline employees to walk away from the trade.

The advisor, who runs inner safety surveys and is based in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to stroll away and “many people working in fossil gasoline firms just aren’t so lucky”.

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

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clean vitality sector left amid reviews they were annoyed on the tempo of Shell’s shift in the direction of greener fuels.

Her announcement comes on the eve of Shell’s AGM in London on Tuesday. Its plans to cut back emissions will probably be mentioned at the meeting where the Dutch activist group Observe This will push for the corporate’s policies to be more in keeping with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has instructed traders to reject the group’s decision that asks it to set more stringent local weather objectives.

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

The Shell chief executive, Ben van Beurden, could expertise an investor riot in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet at 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 are determined to ship on our international technique to be a net zero company by 2050 and thousands of our persons are working onerous to attain this. We've got set targets for the brief, medium and long term, and have every intention of hitting them.

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

Shell also faces the prospect of a possible windfall tax to fund cuts to family bills after the energy industry reported bumper earnings fuelled by the rise in market prices, prompting opposition events to call on the government to usher in a one-off levy.

On Monday, the most important oil and gasoline producer within the North Sea spoke out against a one-off levy, arguing it could lead to the industry approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Energy’s chief govt, Linda Prepare dinner, told the Financial Times: “A better tax burden will make it more difficult for brand new oil and fuel tasks to fulfill investment hurdle rates, meaning fewer tasks will likely be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when industry is being encouraged to increase domestic UK oil and gas production and support an orderly power transition.”

Harbour has told the federal government it plans to invest $6bn in the North Sea over three years as business makes its case in opposition to the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had acquired a £4.6m “golden hello” from the agency.