Image of the Green Party’s Carla Denyer on BBC Question Time.
Green Party co-leader Carla Denyer reacts to the resignation of Tory environment champion Chris Skidmore:
“As the world burns, the Tories turn in on themselves. The government’s green credentials are truly in tatters.
“The climate crisis is here and now and being experienced by people across the country, but the Prime Minister can’t hold on to anyone who has any good intentions toward the environment.
“Labour has to be held to account as well – it refused to block Rosebank and other new oil and gas licences. How long before Labour’s own green champions feel their principles are too compromised to continue?”
In the ‘coming soon’ notice announcing this article I said that “[t]here aren’t any real climate deniers anymore”. I was mistaken and there are a very few people like Jeremy Corbyn’s brother Piers Corbyn. I’ve only met and spoken with him once but I’m satisfied that he’s genuine in his beliefs despite them being misguided. He and others like him have the right to believe whatever they like and he’s harmless enough – while he may persuade a few people the vast majority will understand that he’s mistaken and wrong.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak reads 1% RICHEST 100% CLIMATE DENIER
So apart from Piers Corbyn and a few similar people, there is no such thing as a climate denier nowadays. The Capitalists profiting from climate destruction have known for 60 years of more that they were profiting from destroying the planet and were forcing future generations to endure intolerable climate conditions, annihilating many thousands of species of plants and animals and generally totally fekking everything.
Governments are controlled, directed, owned by a very few extremely rich and powerful people, the very people that are profiting and maintaining their wealth, power and influence from destroying the planet. According to this perspective we do not exist in a democracy and it is instead a pretence hiding the influence of the rich and powerful. We exist in a plutocracy – we have a wealthy ruling class that politicians serve.
It cannot be accepted that politicians like UK’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak or our expected next Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the like are mistaken true believers like Piers Corbyn believes. Rather they are climate deniers in the sense of the fossil fuel industries – Exxon, Shell and BP – who know fully well that they are destroying the planet but deceive and mislead to continue making a filthy profit. It’s obvious to see that these politician cnuts serve this rich elite’s interests – Tory and Labour UK governments have answered to media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, sucking up to him, grateful to accept his orders.
Image of InBedWithBigOil by Not Here To Be Liked + Hex Prints from Just Stop Oil’s You May Find Yourself… art auction. Featuring Rishi Sunak, Fossil Fuels and Rupert Murdoch.
Sunak, despite being fully aware of the climate crisis is continuing to destroy the planet. Announcing the go-ahead for the Rosebank oil field he said that he intends to get every last drop of North Sea oil.
The UK government is facing two separate legal challenges over its approval of the massive Rosebank oil project in the North Sea.
Both Greenpeace UK and climate group Uplift argue the approval of the oil field breaks the Government’s net zero pledges and fails to acknowledge the project’s environmental harm and emissions impact.
Uplift claims the Energy Secretary failed to prove how the oil field was consistent with the UK’s legally binding net zero emissions target and argues, the government did not provide a good enough assessment of the environmental impact of Rosebank on marine life.
In Greenpeace UK’s application, it argues the Environmental Impact Assessment used to approve the oil field did not consider downstream emissions, and is therefore invalid. The campaign group also argues that there is no evidence Scottish Ministers were consulted on the impacts of Rosebank, which it claims breaches Conservation of Offshore Marine Habitats and Species Regulations.
Greenpeace also argue oil contamination could affect whales and wild birds, while the drilling and cable laying under the sea could destroy habitats for species that live on the seabed.
Rishi Sunak gave the go-ahead for the controversial undeveloped oil field in September, set to be the UK’s largest untapped oil field containing an estimated 500 million barrels of oil. With Norwegian owner Equinor set to receive £3 billion in tax breaks.
Left Foot Forward has an exclusive with Caroline Lucas. She is set to resign as an MP at the next general election.
Caroline Lucas Green Party MP for Brighton Pavilion. Official image by David Woolfall Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.
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While she is unsurprisingly damning about the prime ministers who have been in office over her 13 years in the House of Commons, Lucas has had to work closely with MPs from other parties. By virtue of being the only MP for her party, working cross-party has been central to much of her work. As a result, she offers strong praise for MPs on the opposition benches who she has worked with over the years.
She tells Left Foot Forward: “I work really closely with people like Nadia Whittome and Clive Lewis on the Green New Deal, and we have an all party group on the Green New Deal and we work very closely together on that. I enjoy working with Barry Gardiner actually on the Environmental Audit Committee just because he’s such a terrier when it comes to cross-questioning ministers. From the Liberal Democrats I work very closely with Wera Hobhouse on environmental issues, green issues. Plaid [Cymru] are very good on social issues and I’m probably closest to them of all the parties in Westminster.”
However, such praise is definitely absent from her assessment of the likely next prime minister – the Labour leader Keir Starmer. She starts by acknowledging that she and the Green Party would “prefer to see a Labour government than a Tory government”, but goes on to ask “what kind of Labour government” we are likely to get.
“I think there are real concerns over the U-turns that Keir Starmer has been performing – whether that is on what was originally a £28 billion commitment for green investment, he was going to scrap tuition fees, things like the two child benefit cap which is a really, really obscene policy and his own frontbench have said its obscene yet he has now said that he is not going to reverse that.
“He’s better on oil and gas to the extent that he’s said he won’t give licenses to new oil and gas. But then there’s a totally incoherent position of saying that he will allow Rosebank to go ahead. Whereas if he had said were he to get into government he would have tried to roll back that decision it would never have been taken in the first place, because the signal that would have given to Equinor, the Norwegian investor who is going to go ahead with Rosebank would have thought twice. So on oil and gas, there’s a problem there.”
Lucas says that on the economy and other issues, Starmer is operating with a “lack of ambition” which is “so desperately disappointing because he seems to think that if he just plays it incredibly safe, then he can tip-toe into Downing Street”, before going on to say “I think he needs to worry as well about the number of people he simply won’t be inspiring to get off their chairs and down to the polling station at all – and right now it is incredibly hard to say what Keir Starmer stands for”.
Given that Lucas spoke to Left Foot Forward the day after the major vote in parliament on whether the government should call for a ceasefire in Gaza, she also criticises Labour for failing to vote to support a ceasefire. “I think it was incredibly disappointing that Labour is on the wrong side of history on this”, she says.
New areas for oil and gas development on the UK’s North Sea continental shelf are to be made available through annual licensing rounds subject to net zero tests. These proposals by the UK government, outlined in the 2023 king’s speech to parliament, fly in the face of recommendations by the Climate Change Committee – the government’s own independent advisers.
The move should not be summarily dismissed as “political posturing” ahead of a general election, however. It may cause significant damage, not least because it distracts from critical questions surrounding how the UK will transition to low carbon energy.
Licences, under the 1998 Petroleum Act, are how the UK government grants companies exclusive rights “to search and bore for, and get, petroleum”. Companies are invited to bid for access to areas on the UK continental shelf which are pre-selected by the regulator (in consultation with industry).
The government plans to introduce a bill aimed at granting new oil and gas drilling licences in the North Sea. Henk Honing/Shutterstock
Wrong answer, wrong question
The licensing system in place has arguably done the job of allocating access to the UK’s oil and gas. What’s questionable is whether, considering the climate emergency, annual licensing rounds will revive interest in what has long been a declining basin.
Handing out licences on its own is insufficient to attract investment. There is growing recognition among financial analysts of the risks of stranded assets in oil and gas. Shell’s withdrawal from the Cambo oil field northwest of Shetland in 2021 showed licence holders are willing to withhold their final investment decision if deemed economic or politically expedient.
The government’s focus on new licences is a red herring, as the bulk of remaining resources are in areas that are already licensed. It will be regulatory approval of field development plans, via a process known as consents, that will allow these existing licences to actually start producing oil or gas.
The recent decision to approve Rosebank (an oil field first licensed in 2001) is a case in point.
Annual licensing rounds will not ensure the UK’s energy security either. Recent licensing rounds have yielded relatively small volumes of gas that do not substantially add to UK reserves. Any oil and gas developed as a consequence of new licences is unlikely to come to market quickly and will be sold at international market prices. Producing oil and gas domestically has not insulated the UK from high prices.
The energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, has acknowledged that UK production “wouldn’t necessarily bring energy bills down”. The Skidmore Review of the UK’s net zero plans and the Climate Change Committee have made clear that the most effective method of helping households afford energy is to “cut fossil fuel consumption … improving energy efficiency, shifting to a renewables-based power system and electrifying end uses in transport, industry and heating”.
Offshore workers need training and support to transition to green jobs. Kichigin/Shutterstock
The government’s claim that two new “tests” will ensure the compatibility of new licences with the government’s net zero goal, too, does not bear scrutiny.
The first, whether oil and gas imports are projected to be larger than domestic production, is a very weak test as it captures the UK’s default position and will lock in dependence on fossil fuels rather than accelerate the transition.
The second, “that the carbon emissions associated with the production of UK gas [must be] lower than the equivalent emissions from imported liquefied natural gas (LNG)”, ignores the emissions associated with burning gas (known as scope 3 under the international accounting protocol for greenhouse gases).
These scope 3 emissions account for 65%-85% of the total emissions and are often omitted from statements about the lower carbon content of UK gas. Instead of comparing the carbon footprint of UK gas with imported LNG, pipeline gas from Norway would be a more appropriate (and lower-carbon) comparison.
In any case, the UK oil and gas industry’s targets for decarbonisation set out in the North Sea transition deal signed in 2021 have been criticised by the Climate Change Committee as insufficiently ambitious.
The government plan proposes the carbon emissions of producing UK gas be compared with those of imported LNG. The Mariner 4291/Shutterstock
The prominence of oil and gas licensing in the government’s legislative plans is striking. Fossil fuel licensing is a potent political symbol, and not only for campaigners who have worked for years to get licensing onto the agenda. Sunak and Starmer are now harnessing that symbolism for political ends.
A fixation on new licensing, however, is a distraction. It offers comfort in the possibility of conserving oil and gas production through developing new fields, rather than grasping the challenge of a rapid transition.
It leaves untouched the pressing issue of how to phase down oil and gas production from existing licences in a just and equitable way. It deflects from the enormous challenge of decommissioning offshore infrastructures, and the questions that need to be asked about what the North Sea is for and how it can sustain our collective future.
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