Image copyright Deb Shotton, MMXXV.
Since last month’s review of the past and peer at the future, things have gone from bad to worse. President Trump is bent on exceeding predictions as he dismantles state support for tackling climate change and pledges to “Drill, baby, drill”.
There is little we can do to influence those actions, but here in Britain we have a government for which, in the words of the Chancellor Rachel Reeves, “Economic growth is more important to the UK government than net zero”. This brings to mind the apocryphal story of the coach driver being hailed by a highwayman saying “Stand and Deliver – your money or your life” to which the coach driver replies “Take my life, I need my money for my old age”.
Our national treasure, David Attenborough, stated during a presentation at the Royal Geographic Society, that “Anyone who thinks that you can have infinite growth in a finite environment is either a madman or an economist.” It is certainly mad to push for growth by supporting the development of new oil fields when the planet is already overheating.
At COP21, as part of the 2015 Paris Agreement, world leaders pledged (and are legally bound) to keep global warming to well below 2C above pre-industrial levels, and to pursue efforts to keep the change below 1.5C
For the first time in 2024 global temperature was sustained at more than 1.5C. Professor James Henson, who in 1988 sounded the alarm about climate breakdown to a US Congressional Committee, says the pace of global heating has been significantly underestimated, and the international 2C target is “dead”.
Climate breakdown is apparent around the world, with increased numbers and force of storm events, forest fires exacerbated by prolonged dry spells and fanned by strong winds, severe flooding and drought. The Los Angeles fires are likely to be the most expensive single climate event to date.
The burning of fossil fuels, in particular oil, is by far and away the biggest contributor to climate change. Increasing extraction in the face of this catastrophe is madness. So why do apparently sane people continue to push for more and more oil extraction?
In a word, money.
Oil makes a large number of wealthy people even wealthier, and some of that wealth is directed at lobbying politicians to maintain the status quo. The money also pays for advertising, ‘research’, newspaper articles and social media posts to push the use of oil and to rubbish the scientific consensus about the problems it causes.
Large numbers of lobbying organisations around the world exist purely to increase our dependence on oil and spread misinformation about its harms. For example, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (based in Tufton Street, London) describes itself as “a non-partisan think-tank and a registered educational charity that focuses on climate and energy policy” but most of its funding originates from oil companies and oil investors, and it funds politicians, such as our previous South Thanet MP Craig Mackinley, to spread the pro-oil message and deny climate change or delay implementation of measures to address it.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Britain could, instead of subsidising foreign oil companies, be putting the same amounts of money into supporting green energy manufacturing and production, providing thousands of jobs and insulating our economy from the vagaries of foreign fossil fuel pricing. We could become world leaders in the skills and manufacturing capabilities needed in the future, rather than saddling our economy to the myth of growth from an industry that is already starting to lose share to green energy (and is fighting tooth and nail to keep it).
Among the misinformation is the message that ordinary people will suffer for us to achieve Net Zero. This need not be the case. Fossil fuel production and use currently enjoy massive government subsidies. In 2022 this amounted to around $1.5 trillion worldwide in explicit subsidies. Rather than support the production and consumption of fossil fuels this money, which comes from the public purse, could be better employed developing green energy solutions and supporting the World’s most vulnerable citizens and habitats.
At COP28 in November 2023 a new initiative was launched, the Global Solidarity Levies Task Force. This task force aims to encourage nations to raise money to tackle climate change by levying charges on polluting activities. At COP30 this year options for implementing progressive international levies will be presented. The efforts are supported by worldwide organisations including the IMF, World Bank, UN, UNCTAD, OECD, G20, G24, European Commission, African Union and Coalition of Finance Ministers.
For more information see: https://globalsolidaritylevies.org/
Phil Shotton,
Lead on Environment and Climate Change
