Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to staff at the met office in Exeter, to discuss the UK’s ongoing response to extreme heat, wildfires and drought, August 14, 2026
Burnham urged to stand up to the fossil fuel giants and reject plans to drill Britain’s largest untapped oil fields
PRIME MINISTER Andy Burnham was urged to stand up to profiteering fossil fuel giants and reject plans to drill Britain’s largest untapped oil field as consultations on them drew to a close today.
Labour faces a key environmental test as the final decision over the future of the Rosebank oil field, which lies about 80 miles west of Shetland, is left with ministers.
Production at both Rosebank and Jackdaw had been approved by the previous Conservative government, but those decisions were quashed after a legal challenge from Greenpeace, leaving the government to decide whether or not drilling should go ahead.
The decision on the two projects comes after a summer that has seen soaring temperatures and devastating wildfires in both Britain and Europe.
Environmentalists warn that allowing the development of the Jackdaw gas field off the coast of Aberdeen, whose consultation ended last week, would produce more than 250 million tonnes of CO2 — equivalent to 70 per cent of Britain’s annual emissions.
Greenpeace campaigner Maja Darlington said: “The PM wants to be pragmatic, but there is nothing pragmatic about watching communities be battered by climate chaos while the Prime Minister flirts with expanding the very industry driving it.
“More drilling means more heatwaves, more droughts, more wildfires, and more suffering for the communities Burnham represents. The climate crisis is already hitting working people hardest — firefighters on the front line, bus drivers exposed to inhumane heat, nurses collapsing on the job.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsGreenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)Orcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels.
Climate activists from Greenpeace and Uplift during a demonstration outside the Scottish Court of Session, Edinburgh, on the first day of the Rosebank and Jackdaw judicial review hearing, November 12, 2024
STICK to the spirit of Labour’s manifesto commitments, climate campaigners told the Prime Minister as the public consultation on Rosebank closes on Monday.
Stop Climate Chaos Scotland (SCCS) demanded Andy Burnham block proposed new North Sea oil fields, claiming their lifetime carbon emissions could result in up to 65,495 excess heat deaths by the end of this century.
Made up of more than 70 organisations with a total of about one million supporters, SCCS wrote an open letter to Mr Burnham and his Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh ahead of the consultation closure for Rosebank, the largest untapped oil field in the North Sea which lies some 80 miles north-west of Shetland.
A similar exercise for the planned Jackdaw gas field, which lies in waters about 150 miles east of Aberdeen, finished on August 10.
Production for both fields had been approved by the previous Conservative government, but a legal challenge from Greenpeace has now left the current government to decide whether or not drilling should go ahead.
SCCS reminded the new PM, who recently issued a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues and brought in the military to help deal with wildfires, that 2,700 excess deaths were linked to heatwaves in May and June alone.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsDonald 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.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him and his Deputy Richard Tice. He says that Reform UK has received £Millions and £Millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
Without action on climate crisis, far greater numbers will also experience floods, wildfires and droughts, according to report
Eight times as many children around the world will be exposed to extreme heatwaves in the 2050s, and three times as many will face river floods compared with the 2000s if current trends continue, according to the UN.
Nearly twice as many children are also expected to face wildfires, with many more living through droughts and tropical cyclones, according to the annual state of the world’s children report.
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The report, released on Wednesday, World Children’s Day, forecasts how the climate crisis, demographic shifts (sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia are projected to have the largest child populations in the 2050s) and breakthrough technologies will affect children’s lives in the future.
The report said technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) will bring benefits and risks to children, who are already interacting with AI embedded in apps, games and learning software. The digital divide remains stark, however. In 2024, almost 95% of people in high-income countries are connected to the internet, compared with about 25% in low-income countries.
“Children are experiencing a myriad of crises, from climate shocks to online dangers, and these are set to intensify in the years to come,” said Catherine Russell, Unicef’s executive director. “The decisions world leaders make today – or fail to make – define the world children will inherit … Decades of progress, particularly for girls, are under threat.”
Much of the emphasis of the report is on the impact of the climate crisis on children, nearly half of whom (approximately 1 billion) live in countries that face a high risk of environmental disasters. Even before they take their first breath, children’s brains, lungs and immune systems are susceptible to pollution, disease and extreme weather. As they grow, their education, nutrition, safety, security and mental health are shaped by the climate and environment.
Greenpeace activists display a billboard during a protest outside Shell headquarters on July 27, 2023 in London. (Photo: Handout/Chris J. Ratcliffe for Greenpeace via Getty Images)
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsOrcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Second version, corrected text.
Conservative MP Priti Patel speaking at the Heritage Foundation in 2021. Credit: GB News / Facebook
The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint proposes sweeping anti-climate policies.
New Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel earlier this year welcomed into Parliament a radical U.S. organisation behind Donald Trump’s hard-right plan for a second term as president.
As reported by DeSmog, Conservative MP Patel met with Kevin Roberts and Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation in March, praising the pair on her Facebook page as “our friends across the pond” who stand for “Conservative values and beliefs at home and abroad”.
Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation, while Gardiner is the director of its ‘Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom’.
The Heritage Foundation is an ultra-conservative group that authored the controversial Project 2025 blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, which proposes a range of radical anti-climate policies, including slashing restrictions on fossil fuel extraction, scrapping investment in renewable energy, and gutting the Environmental Protection Agency.
Project 2025 has been accused of being “extreme” and “authoritarian” for setting out a plan to rapidly “reform” the U.S. government by shuttering bureaus and offices, overturning regulations, and replacing thousands of public sector employees with hand-picked political allies of Trump. The agenda also proposes radical tax cuts, and a crackdown on reproductive rights.
On Wednesday (6 November), following Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election, Roberts sent an email on behalf of the foundation, saying that: “starting now, we will execute our plans to dismantle the administrative state.”
At least 140 authors of Project 2025 worked for the last Trump administration, according to CNN, while several are expected to hold positions in the next Trump White House.
Patel also gave a speech about national security to the Heritage Foundation, hosted by Gardiner, in November 2021. Patel was at the time serving as home secretary, and her address was published on the UK government website.
This news comes as the Conservative Party realigns itself after the election of new leader Kemi Badenoch, positioning itself as having better relations with the incoming Trump administration.
In her first Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) this week, Badenoch called on Labour not to oppose a Trump address to Parliament, and asked whether Foreign Secretary David Lammy had apologised to the Republican for labelling him as a “neo-Nazi sympathising sociopath” in 2020.
Patel was appointed to Badenoch’s new shadow cabinet earlier this week, alongside Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick, who also has ties to the Heritage Foundation.
In February, Jenrick – who came second in the recent Tory leadership election – gave a speech to the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC entitled, “Securing Sovereign Borders in an Age of Mass Migration”.
Project 2025 proposes new sweeping restrictions on immigration into the U.S., while setting the foundations for mass deportations – a key promise of Trump’s 2024 campaign.
After being introduced by Roberts, Jenrick praised the foundation, and described meeting with and learning from Heritage while working as an intern for Condoleeza Rice, who served as secretary of state under Republican President George W. Bush.
Jenrick also praised the event’s co-host Gardiner, whom Jenrick described as “the special relationship made flesh”. He said Gardiner, who writes a regular column for the Daily Telegraph, “creates links between conservatives here and in the UK”.
As revealed by Democracy For Sale and Byline Times, Donald Trump and U.S. Republican campaigns received more than $45 million (£35 million) from donors who have funded the influential network of hard-wing Tufton Street think tanks in the UK.
“That senior Conservatives would take time out to travel halfway around the world to give talks at a pro-Trump think tanks is very revealing,” said Peter Geoghegan, editor of Democracy For Sale. “We need to be aware that the dark money that fuelled the likes of the Heritage Foundation is washing up in Britain, where secretive Tufton Street think tanks refuse to declare their donors but take millions from pro-Trump U.S. conservatives.”
A Heritage Foundation spokesperson previously told DeSmog: “Project 2025 is a coalition of conservatives who wrote ‘Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise’ which was published in April 2023, before any candidate declared a run for office. Project 2025 does not speak for any candidate or campaign.”
Project 2025 and Climate Denial
Project 2025 proposes replacing green investment with the further deregulation of the oil and gas industry.
Speaking at an event co-hosted by the Heritage Foundation and the Hungarian Danube Institute in September, key Trump ally Robert Wilkie – who served as U.S. veterans’ affairs secretary from 2018 to 2021 – confirmed that his former boss would “kill” climate budgets.
The Heritage Foundation received over £4.9 million between 1997 and 2017 from groups linked to the fossil fuel giant Koch Industries. The brothers behind the company, Charles and the late David Koch, have been the principal funders of climate denial groups in the U.S. since the 1980s.
As revealed by DeSmog, advisory groups working on Project 2025 have received at least $9.6 million from Charles Koch since 2020, along with at least $21.5 million from the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which is funded by the Mellon oil and banking fortune.
The Heritage Foundation has disputed these figures, though has not offered its own calculations. A spokesperson previously told DeSmog: “Heritage research is independent and accurate, these numbers are not.”
At a 2022 Heritage Foundation event, Nile Gardiner said: “I do think the British government needs to rethink the whole green energy agenda. It’s not a conservative agenda, in fact it’s a socialist agenda”. He added: “I think net zero has become basically a form of religion, and anyone who questions the dogma on this immediately is accused of being a heretic.”
As DeSmog has reported, Kemi Badenoch has regularly criticised the UK’s green ambitions, describing herself as a “net zero sceptic” during her Conservative conference speech in October.
During the leadership contest, Badenoch published a 40-page manifesto that cited the Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a U.S. group led by former advisors to Trump, which has likened climate science to believing the earth is flat.
Jenrick has also attacked net zero policies and has advocated for increased fossil fuel extraction, including the development of new coal mines.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark RichardsOrcas comment on killer apes destroying the planet by continuing to burn fossil fuels. Second version, corrected text.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham speaks to staff at the met office in Exeter, to discuss the UK’s ongoing response to extreme heat, wildfires and drought, August 14, 2026
