On Monday, a Shell adviser resigned with an email denouncing the oil giant for “failing on a massive planetary scale” to restrict climate hazards.
Caroline Dennett, who has prevailed as a U.K.-based safety adviser for Shell for roughly 11 years, said she could no longer work for the company provided its plans to expand fossil fuel extraction.
Through an email sent to the administrative committee and more than 1,000 employees, she wrote that as “continued oil & gas extraction is causing extreme harm” to the planet, Shell was “failing on a massive planetary scale” to provide on its pledge to cause “no harm” with its operations.
“Shell is operating beyond the design limits of our planetary systems. Shell is not implementing steps to mitigate the known risks. In her email, the shell is not putting environmental safety before production,” Dennett wrote, as seen by POLITICO.
She illustrated the International Energy Agency’s findings that no new gas or oil fields should be cultivated to reach net-zero emissions by the beginning of the century and stay within relatively safe levels of global warming.
“It pains me to end this working relationship which I have greatly valued, but I can no longer work for a company that ignores all the alarms and dismisses climate change and ecological collapse risks,” Dennett wrote.
She called on the company’s management “to look in the mirror and ask themselves if they really believe their vision for more oil & gas extraction secures a safe future for humanity” and asked employees who can do so to “please walk away and towards a more sustainable career.”
