This week, Christiana Figueres, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010-2016, key architect of the Paris Agreement, and longtime supporter of the idea that fossil fuel companies need to have a seat at the climate negotiations table, had an important realization: the fossil fuel industry will fight against climate action til its dying breath. Writing in Al Jazeera, Figueres came clean about her integral role in supporting the industry's narrative about transition.
"More than most members of the climate community, I have for years held space for the oil and gas industry to finally wake up and stand up to its critical responsibility in history. I have done so because I was convinced the global economy could not be decarbonised without their constructive participation and I was therefore willing to support the transformation of their business model." —
What fossil fuel companies have done with their record profits over the past 12 months, however, has changed her mind, Figueres wrote. Rather than investing those profits in decarbonization, fossil fuel companies are stepping back from their commitments to emissions reductions and transition. "On top of that, the industry as a whole is making plans to explore new sources of polluting fossil fuels and, in the United States, intimidating stakeholders who have been moving towards environmental, social and governance responsibility."
I'm sorry, but...yes of course they are! There is a mountain of evidence stretching back more than a century that that's exactly what they would do, and literally not one bit of proof that they'd ever behave differently.
Look, I had a moment in my 20s when I too anthropomorphized companies and thought we needed to give em a chance. People learn the lesson that companies are not in fact people in their own way and at their own pace, and generally I hate the sort of gatekeeper, "I discovered this band," purity test bullshit that is far too commonly found in the climate space. And yet. I think we have to look differently at this situation when we're talking about powerful people. In this case, we are not talking about your mom or the boomer neighbor down the street who's finally waking up to how the world works, we are talking about someone who weilded an enormous amount of power over how literally everyone with the power to do something about climate change has viewed the problem, during the most important decades we had to act. I've been reporting on climate for more than 20 years; during that time, I have talked to hundreds of people who have used Figueres' words and actions to justify continuing to enable fossil fuel industry deception and delay. Still today, folks like John Kerry, Mike Bloomberg, and Bill Gates echo the "we need all hands on deck" reasoning about the fossil fuel industry that Figueres promoted for years. It's wonderful that at 65 she has finally seen the light, but in my opinion accountability starts at the mea culpa. It can't end there, or it means less than nothing.
It's only been a few days since Figueres's big public turn, and listen, it does take cojones to admit that you've been wrong in a big way and to do so very publicly. I applaud that bravery! And I hope in the coming months we can count on Figueres to hip check some of the folks she's provided cover for over the years. Particularly as we hurtle toward a COP deeply coopted by fossil fuel interests, I hope to see Figueres as loudly and prominently criticizing that influece as she once welcomed it.
