Lobbyists for oil and gas companies have no place at COP26, said a climate activist disappointed by the lack of mention of a phase-out of oil and gas in Wednesday’s draft agreement between nations in the climate talks of Glasgow.
However, hundreds of fossil fuel lobbyists, including two people from Suncor from Canada, were admitted as attendees to the conference, said Pascoe Sabido, a researcher at Europe corporate observatory, a group dedicated to exposing fossil fuel lobbying.
The lobbyists who came were able to work in the halls of the Scottish Event Campus, where world leaders are negotiating a plan to limit global warming to 1.5 C.
They were admitted despite the fact that the companies they represent are largely responsible for the climate crisis,
The Corporate Europe Observatory was one of the climate groups that reviewed the list of approved attendees to COP26 in search of links with the fossil fuel industries. The group published a report earlier this week detailing his findings.
“If the fossil fuel industry were a country here, it would be the largest by far,” Sabido said.
He singled out Canada by noting that there were two representatives of the oil sands extraction giant in the ready.
One of them is Martha Hall Findlay, sustainability director and former Suncor MP. The other is Jacqueline Moore, vice president for foreign affairs.
Also on the Canadian list were two members of the FortisBC gas company: Jordan Bell, manager of government relations and public relations; and Karen McCarthy, vice president of communications and corporate affairs.
It is not known how many of the invited lobbyists actually attended the talks.
No place for oil and gas lobbyists at COP26, say climate #activists disappointed with a draft agreement released by negotiators on Wednesday. # COP26 COP26xCO
Other large oil companies were also well represented on the list, Sabido said. In the run-up to the COP, Shell and BP stated that they did not feel welcome at the COP26 talks and indicated that they would not attend, Sabido said. “However, our research shows that they are clearly still in place, as in previous years, in part thanks to membership from their many fossil fuel lobbying associations.”
Shell has at least eight people here, BP another seven, he said. In total, there are twice as many delegates with ties to fossil fuel companies as there are indigenous delegates, he added.
Sabido said oil and gas companies “put coal under the bus” years ago, but are pushing hard to keep their companies out of any official carbon reduction deal. So far, it seems to be working.
Reference-www.nationalobserver.com