Rosebank, Cambo, and the Conversation Christiana Never Got to Have

About this episode

Christiana Figueres and Lauren MacDonald discuss the impact of a pivotal TED moment on climate activism and the ongoing fight against new oil developments.

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…

People in this episode

Host: Christiana Figueres

Guest: Lauren MacDonald

Topics covered

• climate activism
• oil and gas
• dialogue for change
• energy transition
• environmental policy

Keywords

• climate change
• activism
• Shell
• Cambo
• Rosebank
• COP26
• energy policy
• dialogue

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Shell, International Energy Agency

Places: Cambo, Rosebank, Glasgow

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