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The appeal more or less held, too, as she won promotion \u2013 more responsibility, but a lot more rewards. After BP entered into a joint venture with Mobil\u2019s European fuels business, Cooper went on to become a senior executive, running global trading strategies: a vital cog in a machine that, in her \u201cbubble of ignorance\u201d, as she now describes it, was wrecking the climate<\/p>\n
So what changed? No sudden Damascene conversion, but rather the combination of personal pressure and dawning awareness. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, oil traders in America going to prison for price fixing, hearing that the crew on a ship whose cargo she was trying to sell had run out of water \u2013 \u201cI thought, \u2018Oh, there\u2019s people on the boat.\u2019 Which sounds ridiculous. Of course there\u2019d be people\u2026\u201d But her surprise was a measure of just how disconnected she\u2019d become from the real, physical world.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, \u201cI felt I was on a treadmill, and I couldn\u2019t get off.\u201d Metaphorically and literally: she\u2019d be up at six, on the treadmill in the gym, before a pressure-packed day. Work bled into all areas of life. Even over Christmas, every news headline triggered one thought in her head: \u201cWhat\u2019s that going to do to the oil price?\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n After 20 years in the oil industry, Cooper is now the director of Business Declares, which aims to inspire corporates to address the \u201cpolycrisis\u201d brought about by the climate, ecological and social emergency\n <\/p>\n
\u201cHowever much money you made, your [sales] targets were always going up, year after year.\u201d One year, she recalls, she hit her target, and thought,\u201c\u2018I should be on top of the world. Why don\u2019t I feel that?\u2019 I just felt empty.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shocked into reviewing her life, she explored mindfulness, finding solace in Buddhist meditation. She was able to take some time out to volunteer with women\u2019s and environmental groups. Ostensibly mentoring them on building partnerships with business, and on raising funds, she quickly found that \u201cthey were mentoring me! I had such an education from some amazing people, on social issues, equality, ecology and climate.\u201d<\/p>\n
The things she learnt, combined with the personal toll the job was taking on her, made it impossible to go back. So in 2015, after 20 years in the oil industry, she left and, with the same energy and drive that had made her such a successful oil trader, threw herself into a new career tackling the challenges which, inadvertently, she\u2019d helped to exacerbate through her work.<\/p>\n
I took a risk in leaving but I found such freedom by doing so. And I\u2019m an awful lot happier with a lot less<\/p>\n
She\u2019s now the director of Business Declares<\/a>, which aims to inspire corporates to address the \u201cpolycrisis\u201d brought about by the climate, ecological and social emergency. And she\u2019s lent her weight to Life After Oil<\/a> \u2013 a new network of former oil executives who are determined to prove to colleagues still in the industry that, like Cooper, they can leave too.<\/p>\n It commissioned research by the University of Bath, which showed that a wave of oil and gas workers are either leaving the industry, or considering doing so, in part because of concerns over climate change and their company\u2019s glacial speed of response to the threat. According to the research lead, associate professor Grace Augustine, many of those who\u2019ve left feel \u201ca lightness, a sense of relief\u201d at not having to perform the \u201cmental gymnastics\u201d required to square their growing awareness of the threat with the requirements of their day job.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a sentiment echoed by Cooper. \u201cPeople ask if I took a risk in leaving but I found such freedom by doing so. And I\u2019m an awful lot happier with a lot less. The biggest risk is to stay put.\u201d<\/p>\n Photography by Joanne Crawford<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Samantha Cooper once helped power the oil industry. Now she\u2019s fighting to end its hold on our future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608364,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[27666,246,61,60,6000,29187,82],"class_list":["post-608363","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-climate-crisis","tag-environment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-oil","tag-oil-industry","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608363","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608363"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608363\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608363"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608363"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608363"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}