Who is popular today?

Friends of the Earth (FOE) has been slowly ringing up quite impressive successes. In its latest, last week, a Dutch court judged that Shell, the giant British-Dutch owned multinational oil company headquartered in the Hague, has individual responsibility for the emissions it produces and for reducing the level, along with its partners and clients.
The Dutch arm of FOE joined forces with six other environmental groups and 17,000 named Dutch citizens and co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which resulted in Shell being ordered to reduce its emissions by 45 per cent from its 2019 level by the year 2030.
That is much faster than Shell’s planned zero emissions by 2050. The Climate Accountability Institute in the USA calculates that just 20 multinational and state-owned oil companies, including Shell, contributed 35 per cent of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide since 1965, which is driving the environmental urgency.
The Dutch judgement, which essentially legally recognises an oil company’s contribution to global warming for the first time, is a gamechanger for the entire industry and pumps new life into President Biden’s plan to significantly advance global warming amelioration. As FOE points out, it is also the first time a company has been legally obliged to align its policies with those of the Paris Agreement on climate change, in which around 200 nations agreed to keep global temperatures "well below" 2C above pre-industrial levels.
The ruling applies only in the Netherlands, but environmental pressure groups have already begun trying to force companies and governments to comply with the accords through the courts elsewhere, and this will certainly increase that push.
For its part, Shell has rejected the ruling, asserting that governments, not it, must set policies that companies follow, and has indicated that it will appeal, but it cannot fully expect to win against this landmark ruling. Although Shell is not the world’s largest energy polluter, it is not surprising that it is the company involved in this legal test case, since it has the largest footprint in Nigeria, Africa’s largest oil producer, where Shell’s operations in the oil-rich Niger Delta since the 1950s have produced an inestimable degree of pollution; and there is also precedence of legal victory of local people over Shell’s operations there.
I recall the death of environmentalist Ken Saro-Wiwa in the mid-1990s and the attention his movement, the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP), and his demise brought to the matter of the dirty underbelly of oil business in Nigeria, and the active response from Shell in London to the allegations made against the company of corrupt involvement in Saro-Wiwa receiving a wrongful death penalty for a murder for which he and some of his fellow top activitsts were allegedly framed.
MOSOP was arguing that oil extraction practices were too environmentally costly and that local people were not receiving a fair share of income from oil production, while being deprived of their livelihoods because of the severe environmental damage caused by poorly maintained, old pipelines that constantly leaked.
Shell, then as now, claimed that the extreme pollution of lakes and rivers and destruction of natural habitats that once supported extensive farming was due to sabotage and theft.
Whatever the reasons, in 2011, a UN report stated that oil spills in the Niger Delta were so frequent and extensive that it would cost US$1 billion to clean up and it would take 30 years to complete.
Local people, without the backing and expertise necessary to correct the environmental destruction, have been trying for decades to have their day in court, with no success until 2013. Supported by FOE, a group of Nigerian farmers, after appealing an 2008 judgement, won an important case against Shell Nigeria which was ordered to pay them compensation. The subsidiary and its parent company, Royal Dutch Shell, were reportedly ordered to instal equipment to prevent future spills and damage. That turned out to be the thin end of the wedge for Shell in Nigeria.
Oil exploration and production is a high-risk business. BP, with a better record of environmental damage, also came unstuck in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, when a cement cap on the Deepwater Horizon oil well blew, sinking the platform and killing several workers. The disaster unleashed millions of gallons of oil, into the sea before the well could be recapped many months later. The oil slick extended along the US coast from Texas to Florida. BP had to pay tens of billions of dollars in compensation for loss of livelihoods, and the environmental damage remains incalculable.
People, economies and societies have benefited massively from fossil fuel power, but that source of energy is enduring a popularity crisis from which it is unlikely to recover. It has been slow, but the cost to the planet, humans and wildlife is now widely accepted, and governments and companies are already on the path to renewable energies. The Dutch court ruling just quickens the pace, and the eco-activists will ensure it gets quicker still.
The post Unbalancing the energy scorecard appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.