Oct 17, 2021 Hot Take

Say It to Their Faces

Say It to Their Faces: Q&A with Lauren MacDonald

By Mary Annaïse Heglar

Next month, Glasgow, Scotland will host the U.N. Climate Change Conference (or COP, to all you climate buffs out there), which will pick back up on the fate of the 2016 Paris Agreement. But the real action happened this week at the TED Countdown Conference in Scotland where Lauren MacDonald had some choice words for the CEO of Shell—and said them TO HIS FACE. I mean, homegirl held EYE CONTACT. #goals

Lauren is a climate activist with both Green New Deal Rising and Stop Cambo, a group organized to stop a new oilfield proposed in Scotland from going forward.

I had to have watched that video at least a dozen times. Idk what the conference was thinking when they invited the Shell Guy, and frankly, I don’t care. I wanted to know what was going on in Lauren’s head, and heart, as she spoke truth DIRECTLY to power. So, I slid in her DM’s, and well, here we are:

(Lauren is actually an excellent writer, so while interviews like this are usually “edited for brevity and clarity,” we kept this completely in tact.)

1. How did you get involved with the confrontation at TED Countdown?

A group of activists who were invited to the TED Countdown summit realised that Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell, would be speaking at the conference. This caused a storm amongst the Stop Cambo community, as we were outraged that Van Beurden was given a platform whilst there was a severe lack of representation of both directly impacted and BIPOC activists. Also, there were almost no Scottish people invited to the summit, despite it taking place in Edinburgh.

We arranged a call with the TED organisers, who were very taken aback by our demand that Shell be removed from the event. However, hearing our concerns about representation, they did give out some extra passes for the conference, and offered for a Scottish activist to speak on the panel with Van Beurden.

2. I heard they wanted you to tone your speech down. What sorts of things were they okay with you saying?

For context, I was originally (albeit only two days in advance) asked to give a three-minute speech before the panel. This was changed, the day before it took place, to my integration into the panel in discussion with the CEO.

The day before the panel, I was in four hours worth of meetings with the speaker training staff at TED, where we planned out word-for-word ‘what I was going to say.’ They wanted to cut out a lot of what I wanted to expose. For example, they encouraged me not to speak about the Ogoni 9 (the Nigerian activists I mentioned who were assassinated by Shell in the 1990s).

3. I think the most affecting part of the video was the moment you broke into tears. Can you let us in on what was going on for you in that moment?

Looking straight at the CEO of one of the biggest oil companies in the world and exposing him for the atrocities he is responsible for was an unbelievable situation to be in. I fully felt the intensity of that moment and the immense opportunity to speak up for people who have suffered at the hands of Shell’s evil practices.

All morning, I was visibly shaking and my heart was beating very quickly. I experienced a completely new level of anxiety. However, as soon as Van Beurden walked backstage and I saw him with my eyes, I knew I was ready.

A couple of older women attending the conference approached me afterwards to say that I should never get emotional in front of a powerful man, but I disagree. I was terrified about the potential exposure, and not doing the situation justice, but I was not scared of showing my emotions. I never want to censor myself for the benefit of looking powerful in the eyes of someone like him. I’m sure my authenticity just made him more uncomfortable.

4. What would you say to anyone who thinks your confrontation was too aggressive and that we won't convince Shell with harsh language?

After the speech, there was a party to mark the last night of the summit. Unfortunately, despite literally witnessing the most stressful day of my life, a lot of my time and energy was taken up by older white men waiting in line to tell me what I could have done better: noting that I shouldn’t have walked out, and that my language was too personal. I wanted to challenge those people to think to themselves: could they really have done better under those circumstances? But I didn’t, because I had already used up every single ounce of my courage and power that day doing the bravest thing I have ever done.

If their first instinct is to tell me, as a man at least twice my age, what I should have done… they may have more affinity with Van Beurden than they do with me.

This Can’t Possibly Be What Democracy Looks Like

By Georgia Wright

Joe Manchin is trying to unilaterally rule: no future for you, kids!

Late Friday night, news broke that White House staffers are drafting a rewrite of the enormous budget bill currently stuck in Congress, with one massive change: they’re removing the clean electricity program, which policy advisor Dr. Leah Stokes calls “absolutely the most important climate policy in the package.” Why? Manchin, the corrupt West Virginia senator pumped with fossil fuel money due to clearly exposed ties to the coal industry, says so. That’s it. That’s the entire fucking reason.

Personally, getting the New York Times breaking news alert late on Friday night provoked one of the most visceral responses I’ve ever had to climate news. First: an adrenaline rush of fear, shaky and nauseating. Then, a potent disgust for Manchin, who among other misdeeds has been audacious enough to cite “the negative effects on our children and grandchildren” of the package's $3.5 trillion pricetag to defend his corrupt, extreme, and conservative climate stance.

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Economics vs. Environment = Bullshit

By Amy Westervelt

For the past several weeks, every time we see anything about the Build Back Better infrastructure bill, it's that tired old trope pitting the economy against the environment. It's the same thing we hear *any* time climate policy is floated in Congress: it just costs too damn much. Never mind that the costs of doing nothing are mounting every day, this very fixed framing of economy or environment creates deadlock every time.

Exactly as the fossil fuel industry hoped it would. Yep, surprise! this whole thing was cooked up by Big Oil too. Beginning as early as the 1920s and ramping up in a big way from the 1950s onward, the oil industry began pushing the idea in elementary and high school curricula that we must always make tradeoffs between the economy and the environment, and that only primitive people put the environment first. They accused environmentalists of putting "pristine nature" above jobs and affordable energy, and here's where it takes an even darker turn: they funded all the economic studies that politicians still rely on today to say that climate action is too expensive.

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