Activists Disrupt Occidental Petroleum CEO’s Interview at New York Times Climate Event

NEW YORK—Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum, had barely stepped on stage for her interview at the New York Times’ Climate Forward event when an audience member leapt up into her path. 

“You are not welcome here,” he said. “Tricky Vicki, you can’t hide, we charge you with ecocide.”

Hollub was quickly shepherded off the stage as a dozen other demonstrators with the direct-action organization Climate Defiance wearing suits jumped up to join the chant, and unfurl a banner that read “DON’T TRUST TRICKY VICKI,” and two others that read “LIAR” and “SNAKE OIL.”

Some Climate Forward attendees began clapping for the protesters, while others watched in silence or pulled out their phones to record it. There was little audible criticism of the action from the audience, although some attendees voiced annoyance or disappointment at not seeing Hollub speak as they exited and others said they had expected a protest.

The event organizers paused the proceedings and cleared guests from the auditorium as New York Police Department officers arrived, warned the protesters that they were trespassing and prepared to arrest the group. Ten activists were taken into police custody.

Times staff brought guests back into the auditorium about 10 minutes after the demonstrators had been removed, but after five minutes they asked everyone to leave again, announcing that the rest of the program, including Hollub’s interview, would be presented online only. The Climate Forward interview with Michael Regan, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was canceled due to the delay. 

“Climate criminals should not be allowed in polite society,” said Climate Defiance’s Michael Greenberg after the event. “It is outrageous that the New York Times is hosting a fossil fuel CEO at a supposed climate event.”

Hollub was invited to Climate Forward for an interview with David Gelles, managing editor of the Times’ Climate Forward newsletter, titled “Can an oil company lower its emissions?”

“The New York Times Climate Forward is a live journalism event designed to bring together influential newsmakers for rigorous and challenging interviews around climate change and political policy,” wrote a Times spokesperson in an emailed statement. “This afternoon, a small group briefly disrupted an on-stage session at Climate Forward. The last interview was streamed live, and a recording will be available on our website and events YouTube page.”

In the recorded interview, Hollub responded to the protest.

“Here at Occidental we are working for solutions to the climate change situation that our world faces,” she said. “It’s the greatest crisis that our world has ever faced and we have to come together to work on solutions for that and so, to me, to have those that are seeking headlines rather than solutions interrupt discussions that need to be had is a sad day for them, and I feel bad that they have nothing better to do with their time.”

Later in the interview, Hollub said that as long as companies are “offsetting” emissions, there is no reason to stop producing oil and gas until the resources themselves run out.

A handful of scattered demonstrations disrupted other events at Climate Week NYC, which brings government, business and NGO leaders, along with thousands of others working in climate and related fields, to the city for 600 environmental events and activities. For activist groups like Climate Defiance, which specialize in disruptive action aimed at powerful individuals, the week provides myriad potential targets.

This week, Climate Defiance confronted New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli twice, calling on him to divest the state’s retirement funds from fossil fuel, and also challenged Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy at the Concordia Annual Summit, a separate event from Climate Week, for taking funds from the oil and gas industry. Greenberg, Climate Defiance’s founder, also chased down Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau after spotting him on the street and questioned his support of the Keystone XL pipeline and Canada’s recent purchase of the Trans Mountain Pipeline. 

Other activist groups disrupted events throughout the week. New York Communities for Change interrupted a speech by New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is running for mayor, and called on him to divest the city from private equity funds and asset managers with fossil fuel investments, including Blackrock and KKR. And Planet Over Profit confronted National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi on Monday, objecting to the Biden administration’s continued approval of oil and gas leases.

Activists have said that they are trying to denormalize continued expansion of fossil fuels by disrupting individuals they see as enabling the industry’s social license to operate. Evan Drukker-Schardl, a Climate Defiance activist who helped organize several of the week’s actions, said that he hoped to call out what he sees as greenwashing at Climate Week and highlight the urgency of the climate crisis. 

“Climate Week is great because it brings all the people who really want to get the message about the urgent need to avert the climate crisis to New York City at the same time as the U.N. General Assembly, to elevate this global problem to global prominence,” Drukker-Schardl said. “The problem is that people who are actively making the problem worse get platformed during climate week.” 

Occidental Petroleum, known as Oxy, garnered headlines in 2020 when it outlined its “Pathway to Net Zero” strategy. To reach net zero emissions of greenhouse gases, the company projected it would rely heavily on carbon capture projects that use costly and largely unproven technologies many climate activists have said are slowing the implementation of renewable energy. The company also stated it would be “expanding low-carbon fuel products” to meet its goals. 

This year, a report from Carbon Market Watch, a nonprofit tracking corporate and government carbon policies, called these plans “vague and not aligned with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

The Times’ Climate Forward event featured a series of panelists from global political, corporate, and activism sectors participating with Times journalists in what the company called “live journalism,” with panelists answering real-time questions from Times reporters about climate change tradeoffs, bottlenecks and solutions. Earlier in the day, audience members heard from Zaidi, renowned conservationist Jane Goodall, Bangladesh’s interim leader Muhammad Yunus and Roy Cooper, governor of North Carolina, among others. 

Tension in the audience was palpable during Gelles’ interview with Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, about Project 2025. Gelles pressed Roberts for answers about the Heritage Foundation’s plans to curb pollution and keep America’s water and air clean, which Roberts asserted was a goal of the project. The U.S. would stay on its current track of producing “the cleanest air and water” if Heritage policies were implemented, Roberts claimed, offering no explanation as to how the federal government could achieve those standards with a crippled Clean Air Act and an Environmental Protection Agency stripped of much of its authority, as Project 2025 calls for, which Gelles pointed out. 

At many points throughout the interview, Gelles asked Roberts to answer his questions more directly. He concluded noting that Roberts had not answered a question about whether there was any level of planetary warming that the Heritage Foundation would object to.

Sheila McMenamin, a Climate Forward attendee who works for a solar design software company, commended the action by Climate Defiance.

“I personally am a fan of what Climate Defiance does, I think it encourages some forced dialogue about the urgency of the problem,” McMenamin said. “Climate week is just a strange week because there’s so much exciting work going on but at the same time it feels very blasé or very naive about the urgency of the problem, and we have to get off fossil fuels.”