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Five of the world’s biggest oil companies made £100 billion in 2023 - that’s nearly £11.5 million per hour. Extreme weather damage is costing on average £13 million per hour, so climate-wrecking oil companies’ profits could have paid almost this entire bill in 2023.
As Shell gains more money than any of us could make in a lifetime, people are paying the highest of prices for companies like Shell’s destructive profiteering.
Lives and livelihoods are being destroyed by climate catastrophes. Thanks partly to a global economy that is predicated on draining money and resources from the global south, governments in Africa, Asia and Latin America can’t pay to repair the damage from one climate disaster and prepare for the next one.
This is before we even factor in the damage of fossil fuel extraction. Take the Niger Delta, where Shell dominated oil exploration, causing untold environmental devastation and wreaking havoc on the lives of many people in the surrounding areas.
Shell founded its operations in Nigeria in 1936, 24 years before Nigerians kicked out the British colonial state. The first approval for oil exploration in Nigeria was granted by the colonial British government.
Oil extraction has caused untold harm over decades, right up to the present day. In 2020 and 2021, 822 oil spills were recorded in the region, resulting in almost 30,000 barrels of oil pouring out into surrounding areas.
These oil spills have ruined water and land in an area where livelihoods depend on farming. Studies have also shown that oil spills in the Niger Delta have “acute and long-term effects on human health”. And, for all Shell’s talk of how fossil fuels are the answer to energy insecurity, 85 million people in Nigeria still live without access to electricity.
Shell has just sold its shares in its Nigerian subsidiary. And as its executives pocket the cash and head out the door, the Niger Delta is left one of the most polluted regions on earth.
This is just one example of the injustice of corporate fossil fuel systems. For so many reasons, the fossil fuel era must end, and it must end with a just transition.
Everyone has the right to secure sources of food that aren’t repeatedly polluted. Everyone has the right to energy access. Everyone has the right to a livable environment for the entirety of their lives.
Right now, people from Nottingham to the Niger Delta are being denied these rights so that Shell can keep making billions. We must stand together for a globally just transition that answers for the injustices of the fossil fuel era. The Fossil Fuel Treaty can help get us there.
Please sign our petition to party leaders today.
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