Sierra & Tierra: The future and oil repel each other

Javier Sierra is a columnist for the Sierra Club

Photo: Javier Sierra / Courtesy

He who goes wrong, ends badly, and these days, the oil giants go from stumbling to stumbling.

The first occurred in Holland, where a court issued a landmark decision by requiring Anglo-Dutch oil company Shell to reduce your emissions by 45% in order to 2030 with respect to 2019 and that it adjusts its emissions and those of its suppliers and customers to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The winning argument of Friends of the Earth, the organization that presented the lawsuit, was based on the fact that Shell – by delaying for decades adapting to the demands of the climate emergency – violates human rights. In statements to the newspaper El País in Madrid, the chief lawyer of AT , Donald Pols, said that Shell has been prepared for years to undertake the reforms demanded by the court, but “it is the prisoner of its shareholders, who have so far voted against.”

Ironically, it was shareholders who scored another three historic victories for the international climate cause. Tired of seeing the world’s largest oil company, ExxonMobil, shuffling in the climate fight, activists from the financial fund Engine 1 achieved that at least three of its candidates were elected to the company’s board of directors. This is the first time that climate activism has managed to infiltrate the company’s board to force it to take the climate crisis seriously.

Likewise, the shareholders of Chevron and those of ConocoPhillips approved proposals that oblige these companies, their customers and suppliers to reduce their climate emissions.

These victories and many others are due to the relentless pressure of climate activists around the world, and not to the initiative of an industry that has known, hidden and denied for decades the catastrophic effects of its emissions on the atmosphere on which we all depend.

Just a few days before, the International Energy Agency warned that new fossil fuel development has to dig this year to meet the goal of completely eliminating climate emissions by 2050. The agency indicated that the sale of internal combustion engine vehicles should be eliminated for 2030 and global energy investments double to $ 5 trillion annually.

Faced with this avalanche of bad news, Senators Republicans, hat in hand, implored to the most powerful banks in the country to continue financing the fossil industry, and the banks gave a resounding yes.

Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) issued a stern warning saying that the climate emergency “absolutely” could cause a global economic crisis. Citing the catastrophic effects of natural disasters accentuated by global warming, the IMF concluded that “the climate crisis is an existential crisis.”

It is clear that the future and oil repel.