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

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

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

The executive, who works for the unbiased 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 mentioned she had stop due to Shell’s “double-talk on local weather”.

Dennett accused the oil and fuel firm of “operating past the design limits of our planetary methods” and “not putting environmental security earlier than manufacturing”.

She mentioned: “Shell’s acknowledged safety ambition is to ‘do no hurt’ – ‘Aim Zero’, they call it – and it sounds honourable however they're completely failing on it.

“They know that continued oil and gasoline extraction causes excessive harms, to our climate, to the environment and to individuals. And whatever they say, Shell is solely not winding down on fossil fuels.”

Dennett told the Guardian she “could not marry these conflicts with my conscience”, including: “I could not carry that any longer, and I’m able to cope with the implications.”

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

“I can not work for a corporation that ignores all the alarms and dismisses the dangers of local weather change and ecological collapse,” she stated. “Because, opposite to Shell’s public expressions round net zero, they are not winding down on oil and gasoline, but planning to discover and extract much more.”

Dennett – a prison justice graduate who has spent her profession in research and consultancy – was impressed to cease working with Shell after watching information footage of Extinction Insurrection climate protesters urging the corporate’s employees to depart. The motion’s TruthTeller whistleblowing undertaking encourages oil and gasoline employees to walk away from the trade.

The marketing consultant, who runs internal safety surveys and relies in Weymouth, Dorset, acknowledged she was “privileged” to have the ability to walk away and “many individuals working in fossil fuel firms just aren’t so lucky”.

She urged Shell’s executives to “look within the mirror and ask themselves in the event that they really believe their vision for extra oil and fuel extraction secures a protected future for humanity”.

In late 2020, several Shell executives in its clean energy sector left amid reviews they had been pissed off at the pace 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 shall be discussed at the meeting the place the Dutch activist group Follow This can push for the corporate’s insurance policies to be more in keeping with the Paris local weather accord. Shell’s board has advised traders to reject the group’s resolution that asks it to set extra stringent local weather goals.

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

The Shell chief executive, Ben van Beurden, might experience an investor insurrection in opposition to his £13.5m pay packet on the AGM after the funding adviser Pirc urged a vote in opposition to it.

Signal up to the every day Enterprise Right this moment electronic mail or follow Guardian Business on Twitter at @BusinessDesk

A Shell spokesperson stated: “Be in little doubt, we are determined to deliver on our world strategy to be a web zero firm by 2050 and thousands of our persons are working exhausting to realize this. We have now set targets for the brief, medium and long run, and have each intention of hitting them.

“We’re already investing billions of dollars in low-carbon energy, though the world will still want 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 family payments after the energy trade reported bumper income fuelled by the increase in market prices, prompting opposition events to name on the government to herald a one-off levy.

On Monday, the biggest oil and gasoline producer within the North Sea spoke out in opposition to a one-off levy, arguing it would result in the business approving fewer tasks.

Harbour Energy’s chief executive, Linda Prepare dinner, advised the Financial Occasions: “A higher tax burden will make it tougher for brand new oil and gas initiatives to fulfill funding hurdle charges, which means fewer initiatives might be sanctioned.

“This is at a time when business is being encouraged to extend home UK oil and fuel manufacturing and assist an orderly vitality transition.”

Harbour has informed the federal government it plans to speculate $6bn within the North Sea over three years as industry makes its case against the tax. The Guardian revealed this month that Cook had received a £4.6m “golden hey” from the firm.