Shell PLC (SHEL, Financial), the global oil giant, declared another poetically hefty volume of profit on Halloween and in return, the company received Halloween frights outside of its London office. While Shell announced that it made $6 billion in the third quarter, up 12% from what analysts expected, protesters in Halloween masks denounced the company's profit motive.
On October 31st, wearing vampire and ghoulish outfits, Fossil Free London stormed Shell's offices. They went as far as to name the company ‘a bloodsucker' that sucks the life out of both the community and environment. Unlike this performance, which was no arbitrary show, it highlighted a common concern regarding Shell's constant issuance of shareholder returns; this quarter alone, there was $5.7 billion, an amount set for share buybacks of $3.5 billion.
Such protests are an element of a larger “Make Polluters Pay” mobilization campaign, demanding the UK government ensure key polluters like Shell pay for the environmental and communal destruction. Climate activists used the recent damaging floods in Spain that killed over 200 people as evidence of a worsening climate problem caused by fossil fuel extraction and use.
The demonstrators' message was clear: Shell's profits derived from operations which play a major role in climate change and putting the lives of many people at risk, represent a macabre story of corporate profits at the cost of planetary survival, prosperity, and sustainable development. Their protests call for Shell to accept economic liability for the climate change consequences, and to promote an early, just shift from fossil fuels.
