Summary
The International Energy Agency has added its voice to those calling for the end of fossil fuels. The dramatic intervention from the body which helps keep global oil supplies moving is music to the ears of many scientists and environmentalists. Shareholder activists too are pushing from within companies for an energy transition so we ask what the future looks like for the oil and gas sector. Why are some companies resisting the call to go green faster and harder? We’ll look at what happened to the autonomous driving revolution we were all promised. Are driverless cars ever going to be more than an experiment? The hospitality sector may be opening up across the world once more, but who is going to be waiting the tables and cooking the meals? Many staff who were laid off in the first wave of the pandemic have since found new jobs or even moved countries creating a huge staff shortage. And all work, no play? Our workplace commentator extols the virtues of a little play at work. Business Weekly is presented by Lucy Burton and produced by Clare Williamson. (Image:Oil field, Azerbaijan, Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Business Weekly with Lucy Burton. |
| 0:07.6 | Welcome to the programme. |
| 0:09.4 | Today, we'll be asking, whatever happened to the driverless car revolution? |
| 0:14.2 | Weren't we all supposed to be cruising around in hands-free vehicles by now? |
| 0:18.3 | We'll speak to one of the company's testing autonomous cars on the streets of |
| 0:22.4 | San Francisco, as well as a transport minister who points out that safety really is paramount. |
| 0:28.1 | I'll also be chatting to the woman who set up an online platform to champion women of |
| 0:32.9 | colour in business. She's calling for more diverse role models to combat bias in the business world. |
| 0:39.1 | First, though, oil company annual general meetings wouldn't really be oil company |
| 0:43.7 | agms without an environmental lobby group holding a protest. |
| 0:47.2 | Community services cleaners. However, shareholders of the oil giant shell backed its plan to reduce carbon emissions to net zero by 2050. |
| 0:58.4 | The company says it's going to slowly reduce oil and gas output. But frankly, that's not enough for many people. |
| 1:06.8 | Shareholder activists at recent meetings of Shell and BP want emissions cut harder and faster. |
| 1:13.2 | And this week, investors will be lobbying for a change at the world's biggest oil company, ExxonMobil, |
| 1:19.0 | which continues to focus on fossil fuels and has been slow to adapt to climate change. |
| 1:24.5 | Charlie Kinnock is a senior climate advisor at Greenpeace. |
| 1:30.0 | He says oil companies are facing an existential threat if they don't change. The oil industry is between a rock and a hard place. Right now, |
| 1:37.0 | the world's community is signed up to the objectives five years ago of the Paris Agreements in 2015. |
| 1:43.1 | This year at the delayed conference of the parties of the |
| 1:46.5 | Climate Treaty, they're going to review those commitments. But what they signed up to, what we've all |
| 1:50.8 | signed up to, would be to try to limit global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees by the end of this |
| 1:57.5 | century. And the only way, according to the world scientific community, that we can do this, is to massively reduce the end of this century. And the only way, according to the world scientific community, |
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