Show Notes
Five years ago, a 21-year-old activist stood on a TED stage next to the CEO of Shell and accused him of making ‘evil decisions’ wreaking ‘devastation on communities around the world’. And then walked off.
Christiana was moderating. She went into that panel believing dialogue itself could be the mechanism for change - that an honest conversation could move a company like Shell. What she didn't know is that the activist, Lauren MacDonald, had a different plan. It wasn't a quiet moment to be talking about oil and gas. A couple of weeks later, COP26 would openan hour away, in Lauren's home city of Glasgow. Five months earlier, the International Energy Agency had said something it had never said before: if the world is serious about net zero, there's no room left for a single new oil field, anywhere. Lauren was campaigning to stop Cambo, one of the biggest North Sea developments in a decade. Ben van Beurden, Shell's CEO at the time, was there to argue that oil and gas revenue was what would fund the transition away from it.
Five years later, this is the first time Christiana and Lauren have spoken together publicly about that day. Cambo is paused, but it isn't dead. Its larger neighbour, Rosebank, is still waiting on a government decision - more than 80 UK MPs and MSPs signed a pledge against it this week alone. So what has actually changed - for Christiana, for Lauren, and for the fight itself?
Learn More:
📺 Watch Ted Countdown: Decarbonising Fossil Fuels 🔎 The IEA's Net Zero by 2050 report 📊 Institute for Government's explainer on the Jackdaw and Rosebank decision 📋 Uplift's guide to the Rosebank oil field
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation: Instagram @outrageoptimism LinkedIn @outrageoptimism Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks and Caitlin Hanrahan Edited by: Miles Martignoni Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
*This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.* Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
More from Outrage + Optimism
In Digger, Tom Cruise plays an oil tycoon whose rig sets off a tsunami. Within days of release, it was written off as a flop. Christiana Figueres has seen it twice, and she has questions about how quickly that verdict arrived. As she sees it, the film puts the fossil fuel lobby squarely in the frame.
Before she was Christiana Figueres, architect of the Paris agreement, who was she? What did believe in 2015 that she no longer believes?
A ship rams a canoe. The canoe starts to sink. The ship's crew lean over the rail and offer a loan to repair it.
Net Zero was once a radical idea. Now it’s both an accepted global target, and an increasingly toxic political faultline.
The news cameras may be following rising tensions between President Trump and President Pezeshkian of Iran, but deep in the bowels of the United Nations, fifteen countries are about to choose, in private, the person who speaks for 8 billion people.