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Fossil fuel CEOs are pulling from slavery’s playbook. Whilst witnessing the CEO of Shell on stage advocating for continued investment in oil, today’s guest couldn’t help but be reminded of similar arguments from 200 years ago regarding the existence of slavery. On why looking back can help us ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself, here’s social philosopher Roman Krznaric on Climate Curious.
If you enjoyed this short, listen the full Climate Curious episode with Roman Krznaric, How history unlocks climate solutions for today.
Watch Roman’s TED Talk here.
Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Introduction to Climate Quickies
00:50 Historical parallels: fossil fuels and slavery
03:06 The great Jamaica slave revolt and its impact
04:11 Modern movements and historical disruptions
05:19 Conclusion and final thoughts
Transcript
Introduction to Climate Quickies
[00:00:00] Maryam Pasha: Welcome to Climate Quickies, bite sized nuggets of climate goodness from our TEDxLondon experts in under five minutes.
[00:00:08] Ben Hurst: In this week’s Climate Curious Quickie, we’re gaining perspective by taking a look back through the history books. When the CEO of Shell took the stage at TED Countdown 2021. To [00:00:20] justify continued investment in fossil fuels, today’s guest couldn’t help but be reminded of similar arguments from over 200 years ago regarding slavery.
[00:00:31] History may not be your favourite subject in school, but Roman Chrysleric shows us how looking at the past can help us make sense of the [00:00:40] present. On watching out for historical pitfalls, let’s head over to Roman now. Stay curious!
Historical parallels: fossil fuels and slavery
[00:00:50] Roman Krznaric: I was at a TED conference in Edinburgh a few years ago, and I was, we were all there , right? We were all there and up there on the stage [00:01:00] was the CEO, the head of shell guy called Ben Van Burn. Yeah. And very slick. He’d been in the oil industry for 38 years. Very good at his talking about how Shell was, you know, so advanced, revolutionizing.
[00:01:18] It was very, very green. [00:01:20] And, you know, his children said that he must, you know, make his company more green and all that kind of stuff. And then when I was listening to him closely, I noticed something because he kept on saying, well, look, we realize that the climate emergency is a big. Problem, but we can’t transform our company too quickly and get off the production of gas and oil too quickly because [00:01:40] otherwise tens of thousands of jobs in shell will be at stake and consumers are still dependent on the fossil fuel energy we supply them.
[00:01:47] So we need to go gradually. So we’ll try and be kind of net zero, whatever it was by 2050. And when I heard that, I thought, Oh, my God, I’ve come across this argument before almost exactly the same thing. 200 [00:02:00] years earlier, in the 1820s, slave plantation owners and financiers were making almost exactly the same arguments when it came to the slave economy, because back in the 1820s, over 700, 000 enslaved people were working on British owned sugar plantations in the Caribbean, in the [00:02:20] West Indies.
[00:02:21] And back then that’s exactly when the plantation owners were saying, well, look, we, we admit that slavery is morally questionable, but let’s not end it too quickly because otherwise our economy would just so dependent on slavery may well collapse. So instead we need to go gradually and it might take several decades for us to move away from this.
[00:02:39] And I [00:02:40] thought this is exactly the same foot dragging arguments. Made by today’s fossil fuel executives that I heard at that Ted conference. So suddenly I thought, so there are these parallels between the past and the present. And there’s this other really interesting parallel, which I kind of realized at the time, because, you know, in the [00:03:00] 1820s, all these arguments were being made about why Britain had to still have these, these slave plantations and things like that.
The great Jamaica slave revolt and its impact
[00:03:06] Roman Krznaric: But then something really interesting happened because in 1833, there was an abolition of slavery act in Britain, which made Plantation slavery illegal. Now, it wasn’t perfect by any means. There were reparations or payments [00:03:20] made to slave plantation owners for their so called lost property and, and also enslaved people had to keep working for several years as what they called apprentices, which was a kind of forced labor.
[00:03:31] But there was quite a shift then. But why did it happen? And one of the reasons that explain the timing of the 1833 act was something that happened in 1831 in Jamaica, which was the [00:03:40] great Jamaica slave revolt. Whenever 20, 000 enslaved workers rose up in rebellion, they set fire to over 200 plantations.
[00:03:49] Now the revolt was. brutally crushed. Um, but it sent a message to the political and economic elite, which was this, that basically the elite [00:04:00] started fearing, panicking that if they didn’t give emancipation to the slaves, then they may well lose control of the whole colony of Jamaica. And this tipped the policy.
Modern movements and historical disruptions
[00:04:11] Roman Krznaric: Context into then having this, um, Abolition of Slavery Act of 1833 and what I realized was that [00:04:20] actually when you think about today’s, you know, the more radical wing of the climate movement, you know, Extinction Rebellion and just up oil or end a calendar in Germany, these organizations in a way they’re part of the same disruptive traditions.
[00:04:33] I’m going back to the slave revolts of the 1830s or to the suffragettes campaigning for women’s votes in the early 20th [00:04:40] century or the movement for Indian independence or the civil rights movement in the US. They’ve always been disruptive movements, which have sometimes broken the rules and sometimes the law as well to create change to change the conversation.
[00:04:53] And, uh, so, yeah, I mean, I think in a way history, so. Alive when you think about it like that [00:05:00] and you know today, there’s what there’s that I think nearly 20 people in Britain in prison for you know going on climate protests and things like that and Actually, they are part of these this kind of long tradition of People fighting for justice now ecological justice, and I think it’s a real travesty Thanks for
Conclusion and final thoughts
[00:05:19] Ben Hurst: [00:05:20] listening to this quickie.
[00:05:21] Maryam Pasha: This episode was created by our superstar podcast team at TEDxLondon until next time
[00:05:26] Ben Hurst: stay curious
