Read the latest insights and analysis from the experts at Oil Change International.
Why does the fight for justice take so long? Why is it so difficult to hold Big Oil to account? Why does it take years even decades to drag oil executives, kicking and screaming, into a court-room?
Divesting from fossil fuels and ending environmental racism goes hand-in-hand with defunding the police in the fight for racial justice and reinvestment in Black and Brown communities.
Shell’s latest grotesque greenwashing propaganda was put out for International Women’s day, when the company rebranded its logo to “She’ll”, along with the strapline: “#Makethefuture gender balanced.”
“Shell’s concern, deeper than its fossil-fuel identity and more urgent than the climate crisis, is Shell. I don’t believe it’s going to lead us to the Paris climate goals, and Shell probably doesn’t believe it will either.”
2020 is the year that the chickens finally come home to roost for Shell. It can evade justice no more. It has run out of places to hide.
It is now 24 years since the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, and other Ogoni in Nigeria in 1995. The Ogoni 9, as they are called, were murdered for their campaign against the oil giant Shell, whose rampant double standards and pollution had caused the Ogoni community to mobilise.
At a trial in the Hague, three witnesses testify they were bribed by Shell to give evidence against Ken Saro-Wiwa and the other Ogoni 9 in the nineties.
At the end of the day, Shell still cares more about its shareholders than it does about society. It cares more about profit than it does people. It cares more about cash than a safe climate.
We are struck by some parallels between the Ogoni struggle, the insistent energy of the recent School Strikes and Extinction Rebellion's actions over the past weeks.
In an historic judgement yesterday, a Dutch court issued an interim ruling that it does have jurisdiction to hear the legal case bought by four widows of the Ogoni 9, who were murdered by the Nigerian military back in 1995.
