Climate catastrophe is on our doorstep – yet Labour’s impending approval of further drilling will bring more pain for negligible gains
Pinch yourself, it’s happening again. Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending decision to approve further gas and oil drilling in the North Sea – it is happening under Andy Burnham. You rack your brains to explain it, but no rational explanation comes.
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the two greatest threats to the global economy might now be climate breakdown, which, as a wide range of economists and eminent organisations forecast, threatens comprehensive economic collapse, and the AI bubble, which the governor of the Bank of England warns could burst with dire consequences. Then people will really be struggling. Yet our government and others cheerfully accelerate both forces – claiming, as ever, that the industries driving them will unleash “growth”. Growth in home repossessions, perhaps.
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The sense in almost every nation is of governments failing to take seriously the most serious of issues, while spending immense political resources on topics that scarcely affect our welfare (such as a few thousand people crossing the Channel in small boats). Or even – as is the case with North Sea oil and gas – using their scarce political capital to make things worse for everyone, including themselves.
Our government is not a doomsday cult like the Trump government, creepily fascinated by the “end times”, as the US vice-president seems to be. But in terms of outcome, is there much difference?
UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham says that he’s going to permit the Jackdaw and Rosebank North Sea fossil fuel projects. He urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like himRapture, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah-da, it’s the final countdown (actually a pre-final countdown).Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.
A person holds signs during a nationwide protest against AI data center expansion outside Peace Hall in New Port Richey, Florida on July 18, 2026. (Photo by Thomas Simonetti / AFP via Getty Images)
One critic said the Trump administration was “bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do.”
President Donald Trump’s administration is making an aggressive push to find public lands to use for building artificial intelligence data centers, according to a Friday report in The Washington Sun.
The US Department of the Interior, under the leadership of Secretary Doug Burgum, has pushed the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to “identify public land ripe for data center development,” and provide lists to department leadership, reported the Sun.
Leaders at the Interior Department gave state BLM leaders just three days to compile their lists, emphasizing this was a “top priority,” the Sun’s sources said.
Additionally, reported the Sun, Burgum has been meeting regularly with Big Tech executives to discuss ways to accelerate data center development.
The department’s aggressive push stems from a Trump executive order signed in July 2025 that tasked the government with identifying federal lands that could be used to build data centers.
Mary Jo Rugwell, president of the Public Lands Foundation and former BLM state director, told the Sun that she’s concerned that the Trump administration is “bending knee to the tech oligarchs and letting them do whatever they need to do” without asking the right questions about data centers’ impact on public lands.
Rugwell added that the BLM during Trump’s second term has shed nearly half of its staff, leaving few experts available to evaluate the environmental impact of data centers.
“Where are they going to get people to do the analysis especially when you have a technology that’s relatively new and not well defined?” Rugwell asked. “It’s a headache BLM doesn’t need.”
Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Nevada chapter, told the Sun that the nationwide backlash to data center construction has gotten so intense that the tech industry might see using public lands as their best option for building out capacity.
“A lot of elected officials in Nevada on both sides of the aisle are really hesitant to approve data centers in their local jurisdiction,” said Tanager. “I would imagine in some cases, despite the environmental review being heightened in a lot of instances being sited on federal public land, there’s more political will to move those projects forward.”
Jayson O’Neill, spokesperson for Save Our Parks, accused Burgum of trying to “exploit our parks and public lands” for the benefit of wealthy tech donors.
“Data Center Doug Burgum is actively shopping America’s public lands to data center developers, the AI industry, and big energy companies lining up to power them,” O’Neill said. “And he’s keeping communities in the dark, hiding the details from Congress and the public.”
Humanoid and quadruped robots attend a demonstration calling for the regulation of artificial intelligence development in Warsaw, Poland on September 7, 2026. (Photo by Sergei Gapon/AFP via Getty Images)
“Until the AI starts killing people, unfortunately, history would suggest we’re not going to do anything.”
Calls to regulate the development of artificial intelligence are growing louder days after multiple industry insiders warned that the technology could wipe out humanity within years.
In an op-ed published by The New York Times on Friday, journalist Stephen Witt said that he’s detected a “vibe shift” among AI researchers who are worried that the technology is becoming too powerful for them to understand, let alone control.
“Swarms of AIs are breaking out of their containers, colluding in secret, covering their tracks, cheating on tests, and even mounting assaults on other computers,” Witt wrote. “AI has gone rogue.”
Witt said these incidents have convinced him, and many others inside the industry, that there needs to be a global pause on AI research and development.
The journalist noted there has been widespread support among industry insiders for an open letter titled “Pacing the Frontier,” which calls on the US government to take the lead in building an international regulatory body that would set guardrails to deliberately slow down AI development.
Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher in OpenAI’s governance division, told Witt that he’d like to create “an international, open monitoring system” that would act like an air traffic control system for AI development.
Under Kokotajlo’s plan, all AI researchers would be required by law to post information on training runs into a public database that can be monitored in real time.
“If we had this sort of total research transparency,” Kokotajlo told Witt, “then there would be this whole ecosystem of academics, third-party auditors, nonprofits, and rival corporations who would all be able to see what was going on inside the giant data centers of these big companies. Insofar as something scary or problematic was happening, anyone could sort of point it out and start a conversation about it online.”
The US is not the only country where lawmakers are proposing new regulations for AI.
As reported by Time on Tuesday, Alex Sobel, a member of Parliament from the UK’s Labour Party, unveiled a bill this week that would ban artificial superintelligence, defined by the legislation as “a system that could disempower state authorities.”
Sobel’s bill is similar to legislation proposed in the US earlier this month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), which would ban artificial superintelligence to “stop AI oligarchs from building machines humans cannot control.”
In Warsaw on Tuesday, activists deployed several robots outside Poland’s Digital Affairs Ministry to demand the country do more to regulate AI.
Around 30 robots demonstrated outside Poland's Digital Affairs Ministry in Warsaw, chanting 'we want law, we want rules' to demand stronger AI oversight pic.twitter.com/GGUoOCS7JO
According to Notes from Poland, the robots were programmed to chant slogans such as “We want regulations, we want rules, we want law” and “Don’t wait, regulate, protect jobs.”
Democratism, the group that organized the robot protest, argued that the AI industry has the potential to completely upend human society, and demanded to know “who is responsible for preparing people for these changes, how workers should be protected during the transition, and how reskilling should work.”
Even though demand to regulate AI is surging, there is little indication so far that governments are preparing to work collectively to place guardrails on the industry.
Greg Jensen, chief investment officer of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, told Bloomberg on Friday that he doesn’t believe governments will act until after a tragedy happens.
“Until the AI starts killing people, unfortunately, history would suggest we’re not going to do anything, but we are going to face that,” said Jensen, who likened the current risk environment with AI to the risks posed by Covid-19 in February 2020. “That’s going to happen, and it’d be much better if we started dealing with it before then.”
In a previously unreleased Freedom of Information reply the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology said it does not hold information about which companies, organisations or bodies are using the UK’s largest data centres nor the purposes for which they are used.
The government plans to massively expand data centres across the UK using powers to overrule community opposition by categorising them as items of “critical national infrastructure”, yet told campaigners last September that it holds no information about who or what they are being used for.
The rapid growth of Generative Artificial Intelligence has fuelled an unprecedented need for new and much larger data centres which have massive water and energy needs.
Green party leader Zack Polanski (Green Party of England and Wales). Image: Bristol Green Party Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
Zack Polanski, Green Party leader said::
“How can the government designate new data centres as ‘critical national infrastructure’ when they don’t even keep records on who is using them and what they are being used for?
“The government plans to steamroller over local opposition so private companies can build these facilities – yet they can’t even explain what the benefits are and who is benefitting.
“What is more ‘critical’ than peoples’ access to water? What is more ‘critical’ than our need to transition to a low energy, low pollution world so we can put the brakes on climate extremes?
“The government must end this wrong-headed ‘critical national infrastructure’ designation and make sure UK citizens are given priority access to water as we move into an increasingly drought-prone future.”
The revelations come after Zack Polanski’s call last week for an end to the designation of any new data centres as national infrastructure, and for a tightening of planning rules to prevent a rash of new data centres taking precedence over households for water and energy usage.
Campaign group Global Action Plan who filed the Freedom of Information requisition are leading on a UK-wide call for a moratorium of new data centres. Their Parliamentary Campaigns Manager, Anisah Khan, said:
“Big Tech’s government-endorsed expansion of AI data centres prioritises corporate profit over community need. This reckless, rapid rollout is having a detrimental impact on the environment and housing targets, side-lining local people and politician’s concerns.
“At a time when individuals across the country are facing hosepipe bans and essential housebuilding is being delayed because data centres are gobbling up grid connections, what we need is not more chatbots at any cost.
“We need the UK Government to announce a moratorium on data centre developments until a clear framework is in place to address environmental and social concerns and impose transparency around these developments and their proposed societal use.”
US President Donald Trump holds an image showing the size of Meta’s new data center in Washington, DC on August 26, 2025. (Photo by Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
“Donald Trump is actively trying to help as many Democratic senators as possible get elected,” said one polling expert.
President Donald Trump on Monday warned Americans that they risk becoming “backwards and poor” unless they allow Big Tech companies to build artificial intelligence data centers in their communities.
In a social mediapost, the president expressed indignation that any town or city wouldn’t welcome data centers, which have drawn nationwide opposition for generating pollution and jacking up utility bills.
“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
In reality, AI data centers create very few jobs once they are completed, as most of their functions are fully automated.
Trump then said that Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they “kill the Golden Goose” that is AI data centers.
“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement,” Trump wrote. “Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
Building AI data centers has become massively unpopular throughout the US.
A poll conducted by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro earlier this month shows that 75% of Americans now oppose building AI data centers in their area, including 61% registering strong opposition.
While Republicans polled in the survey were more supportive of data centers than Democrats and independent voters, it nonetheless found that opposition among Republicans outweighed support by 43 points.
Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris marveled at how politically tone deaf the president sounds when it comes to data centers, commenting that “Donald Trump is actively trying to help as many Democratic senators as possible get elected.”
Longtime GOP operative Frank Luntz similarly noted data centers’ unpopularity, citing a recent Gallup poll showing 63% of Republican voters oppose having one of the facilities built in their communities.
“We’re about to see whether President Trump can sway those voters to support them, as he’s done on many issues before,” Luntz remarked.
Democratic US Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed wasted no time tying the president’s position on data centers to his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers.
“Make no mistake—this is Mike Rogers’ position on data centers,” wrote El-Sayed. “He’s got up to $2.6 million invested in companies cashing in on the data center boom, all while Michiganders watch their utility bills soar. You can’t trust a word out of Mike’s mouth because he’s only out for himself, for Donald Trump, and for Big Tech—not Michigan.”
Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), observed that Trump is merely “sharing the perspective of Wall Street and Big Tech” and is showing “no interest… in grappling with the mass revolt across American communities, or to learn anything from them.”
Screenwriter David Simon, creator of the acclaimed television series The Wire, accused Trump of brazenly lying about data centers’ economic benefits.
“If data centers are a geographic benefit to communities, you can be sure they’d be siting and building them in affluent and politically connected environs,” wrote Simon. “Curiously, they’re dumped in poorer, less influential places. Go fucking figure.”
Republican Kentucky state Rep. Savannah Maddox took issue with the president disparaging communities opposed to data centers, which include many of the rural communities that voted for him in three presidential elections.
“Rural doesn’t mean ‘backwards and poor’ and development doesn’t always equate to being ‘successful and rich,’” wrote Maddox. “President Trump wouldn’t be president without the rural voters who inhabit America’s heartland. It is not wrong of us to question the sudden and wide-scale effort to convert arable land into data centers. We are not stupid for wanting to protect our rural way of life.”
Orcas discuss rotting brain, front Orca says he wishes someone would lock him up, small Orca speaks bluntly.Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Donald Trump explains why he established his Bored of Peace
