An oil platform standing amongst other rigs that have been left in the Cromarty Firth near Invergordon in the Highlands of Scotland, February 15, 2016
BUSINESSES across Britain have backed the Labour government’s ban on new oil and gas licensing in the North Sea, according to new research today.
The study, carried out by Public First on behalf of fair transition think tank Uplift, found that 70 per cent of British business leaders and 65 per cent in Scotland backed the policy, 54 per cent believed it would benefit their business, and 77 per cent believed phasing out fossils fuels was in the public interest.
In Scotland, the heart of Britain’s fossil fuel industry, 82 supported wider UK government efforts to end use of fossil fuels for energy.
And despite 47 per cent believing the pace of change to be too slow, a majority believe it will be achieved by the government’s 2050 target.
Fifty-two per cent of business leaders in Scotland expressed confidence that new jobs would be created to replace the tens of thousands lost as North Sea oil and gas production dwindles.
But echoing the views of trade unions, they argue it is governments’ responsibility to support workers through that shift.
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)
Storm Bert caused serious flooding in UK, particularly in the South Wales town of Pontypridd. Gross Capitalists scum and governments scum refuse to accept responsibility for their actions in destroying the climate at COP29. Yet more false solutions pushed by the fossil fuel industry pursued by governments …
It seems like nothing changes. Our climate is fekked. The fossil fuel industry and politicians are responsible for it since they have known since the 1960s. Governments and politicians are supposed to protect their populations. Instead they are controlled and quite willingly work for the rich and powerful. Despite the UK government committing to radical action to address climate, they still pursue false solutions i.e. carbon capture and nuclear power.
Four Greenpeace activists are pictured on a Shell vessel in the Atlantic Ocean on January 31, 2023.
ed: We are at 1.5C increase now, the limit proposed by the Paris Agreement. We’re flying past it because gross Capitalists and Capitalist politicians are refusing to address the climate crisis. We are on course to far more and far more severe extreme weather events because of these cnuts.
Activists demonstrate against industrial agriculture and agribusiness lobbyists on day eight at the UNFCCC COP29 Climate Conference on November 19, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“By the end of the UN climate talks, we must see at least a trillion dollars in public finance on the table,” said one campaigner.
As the clock winds down at the UN climate summit taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan, green groups are sounding the alarm Thursday following the release of a draft climate finance deal that they say falls short of what’s needed to support climate-vulnerable countries and adequately address the planetary crisis.
“The clock is ticking. COP29 is now down to the wire,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres on Thursday, just a day before the two-week conference is set to conclude.
Finance has been a major focus of this year’s summit. Under the 20125 Paris Agreement, countries are supposed to come up with a “new collective quantified goal”—or NCQG in COP jargon—that will govern how much money from rich countries will be transferred to developing countries in order to help the latter cut their emissions and adapt to climate change.
No equivalent climate finance arrangement has been agreed to before, though countries at the summit broadly agree that richer countries, who are responsible for much of historic CO2 emissions, should help poorer and more climate-vulnerable nations deal with natural disasters and their transition to green energy.
The draft text that dropped early Thursday, however, was received poorly.
Oxfam International’s climate justice lead, Safa’ Al Jayoussi, said “COP29 must do more than simply repeat the same threadbare promises. Rich countries have spent decades now stalling and blocking genuine progress on climate finance. This has left the Global South suffering the most catastrophic consequences of a climate crisis they did not create. The draft text scandalously misses the crucial element of declaring a clear public commitment to a new climate finance goal.”
Instead of specifying how much annually should be funneled towards developing countries via climate finance, the NCQG draft text displayed “X” in place of any actual figures or monetary commitments.
Oscar Soria, a director at the Common Initiative think tank, told the Guardian: “The negotiating placeholder ‘X’ for climate finance is a testament of the ineptitude from rich nations and emerging economies that are failing to find a workable solution for everyone.”
“By the end of the UN climate talks, we must see at least a trillion dollars in public finance on the table,” added Andreas Sieber, 350.org associate director of policy and campaigns. Economists told the summit attendees last week that developing countries need at least $1 trillion annually by 2030 to deal with climate change.
A specific and shared concern from campaigners was the draft text’s inclusion of carbon market schemes as a way “to scale up” climate finance. While the draft promotes “high-integrity voluntary carbon markets” and other “instruments that mobilize new sources of climate finance and private finance” as part of the equation, critics have long warned that these market-based approaches are nothing but false solutions designed to benefit corporate investors, wealthier nations, and the fossil fuel industry itself.
“Labelling carbon credits as climate finance—which they are unreservedly not—should be axed from the text or risk creating a dangerous escape route for polluters. The same goes for explicitly allowing investments in fossil fuel infrastructure. This is fundamentally incompatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement,” said Laurie van der Burg, Oil Change International’s global public finance manager, in response to the draft text.
While Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allows for the international transfer of carbon credits, groups warned the changes in the COP29 draft would dramatically strengthen the foothold of such schemes.
“Shockingly, COP29 is set to agree to carbon markets that are even worse than the voluntary carbon markets,” said Kirtana Chandrasekaran, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth International. “We know these markets have failed. They are riddled with fraud and they do not reduce emissions or provide finance. Communities everywhere and, in fact, the planet itself is on the line.”
Without addressing these concerns, advocates of a meaningful deal at the conference say COP29 is headed for failure.
As 350.org‘s Sieber argued, paying the “historic debt that rich countries owe will enable all nations to take action on climate at home and meet the collective goal agreed last year at COP28—to triple renewable energy, and transition away from fossil fuels. Right now, we only see cowardice and a void in leadership, ignoring the undeniable science that we can’t keep polluting our planet with dirty oil, gas and coal.”
“The time to course correct is now—the European Union and other rich countries must stop playing poker with the planet and humankind’s future at stake,” Sieber added. “It’s time to put their cards on the table and commit real, transformative funding—no more excuses, no more delays, it’s time.”
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.
Activists protesting against fossil fuel lobbyists in attendance at COP29 hold a demonstration on November 15, 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan. (Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
“It is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” a coalition of scientists and advocates wrote as more than 1,700 fossil fuel lobbyists swarmed COP29 in Azerbaijan.
The crushing influence of petrostates and fossil fuel industry lobbyists has rendered the annual United Nations climate conference unfit to deliver the kinds of sweeping changes needed to avert catastrophic warming, a coalition of leading scientists, advocates, and policy experts warned in an open letter released Friday as the first week of the COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan came to a close.
Acknowledging that the COP process has achieved “important diplomatic milestones” and “a remarkable consensus” on climate targets over nearly three decades of international negotiations, the coalition wrote that the policy framework produced by dozens of U.N. summits is not sufficient to solve the pressing crises facing humanity in an age of runaway warming and large-scale climate devastation.
“Science tells us that global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 7.5% annually to have any chance of staying within the 1.5°C threshold, a prerequisite for the stability of our planet and a livable future for much of humanity. In 2024, the task is unequivocal: Global greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 4 billion tonnes,” reads the letter, whose signatories include former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Christiana Figueres, Club of Rome global ambassador Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and Potsdam Institute for Climate Action Research director Johan Rockström.
“Twenty-eight COPs have delivered us with the policy framework to achieve this, but it is now clear that the COP is no longer fit for purpose,” the letter continues. “Its current structure simply cannot deliver the change at exponential speed and scale, which is essential to ensure a safe climate landing for humanity.”
The letter calls not for a complete abandonment of COP but rather “a fundamental overhaul” that would enable the U.N.-led summit “to deliver on agreed commitments and ensure the urgent energy transition and phase-out of fossil energy.”
The coalition of experts and advocates recommended a number of reforms for future COP summits, including “strict eligibility criteria to exclude countries who do not support the phase-out/transition away from fossil energy,” new “mechanisms to hold countries accountable for their climate targets and commitments,” and changes to limit the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists and ensure equitable representation.
“At the last COP, fossil fuel lobbyists outnumbered representatives of scientific institutions, Indigenous communities, and vulnerable nations,” Figueres said in a statement Friday. “We cannot hope to achieve a just transition without significant reforms to the COP process that ensure fair representation of those most affected.”
Rockström added that “there is still a window of opportunity for a safe landing for humanity, but this requires a global climate policy process that can deliver change at exponential speed and scale.”
“Planet Earth is in critical condition,” he said. “We have already crossed six planetary boundaries.”
“2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry.”
The open letter was released in the wake of a new analysis from the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition showing that at least 1,773 fossil fuel lobbyists have been granted access to the COP29 summit—giving the industry primarily responsible for the global climate emergency more representation than nearly every country present at the talks in Baku.
According to the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition, the fossil fuel industry has more representation at COP29 than the 10 most climate-vulnerable nations combined.
Additionally, The Guardian reported Friday that “at least 132 oil and gas company bosses and staff were invited” to COP29 as “guests” by Azerbaijan’s government and “given host country badges.”
“2024 marks yet another year at COP where we see those fighting the climate crisis outnumbered by those that have contributed to it the most—the fossil fuel industry,” said Joseph Sikulu of 350.org. “How can we achieve the ambition that is needed to save our homes when these negotiations are continually flooded with fossil fuel lobbyists? There is a ban on tobacco lobbyists from attending the World Health Organization’s summit, why is that not the case for the fossil fuel industry at COP?”
“We demand that the upcoming COP presidencies set clear rules against the presence of fossil fuel interests at the negotiating table,” Sikulu added. “Our lives depend on it.”
Al Gore, the former U.S. vice president, joined climate advocates on Friday in decrying Big Oil’s capture of the U.N. climate summit.
“It’s unfortunate that the fossil fuel industry and the petrostates have seized control of the COP process to an unhealthy degree,” said Gore.
Lamenting that the follow-through on COP28 commitments to transition away from fossil fuels has been “very weak,” Gore said he believes “one of the reasons for that is that the petrostates have too much control over the process.”
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
UK Labour government’s budget by Rachel Reeves doesn’t really matter in the bigger picture. While we have Israel’s continuing genocide (genocides?) with the UK Labour government a major active participant the real big issue is the hugely devastating floods in Spain. ‘This Is Climate Change’: Devastating Flooding Kills More Than 70 in Spain.
The problem is that World governments are going to do very little to address climate change until they are forced to. It’s only getting worse since it’s not addressed despite fossil fuel industries and governments being aware for 60 years. Climate campaigners are imprisoned instead of the real climate criminals.
