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ed miliband
A Groundbreaking UK Climate Win Shows Why Elections Matter
On Wednesday Ed Milliband, the new Labour energy secretary, announced that the government would not back the companies that want to develop two huge new North Sea oilfields.
Aug 30, 2024
I’m pretty sure this newsletter will be obsessing over the American election between now and November—it is the most crucial contest in the crucial years, after all. But this has already been a year of democracy around the globe with half the world’s people going to the polls, and the results have so far been not as bad as they might have been—Prime Minister Narendra Modi rebuked in India, the far right checked in European elections and in France, and a smashing victory for Labour in the U.K., which is already yielding serious climate benefits.
On Wednesday Ed Milliband, the new Labour energy secretary, announced that the government would not back the companies that want to develop two huge new North Sea oilfields. This takes a bit of explanation, so bear with me. Oil giants Shell and Equinor want to develop the vast Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields. The Tory government backed these projects, even though it led former Energy Secretary Chris Skidmore to resign from the party. In June, a court ruled that the environmental review for the projects was insufficient, because, crucially, the companies had failed to account for the emissions not just from the oil wells themselves, but from the eventual combustion of that oil in cars around the world. These so-called Scope 3 emissions are obviously the key problem with new gas and oil projects, but the industry has worked hard to keep them off the table—and after the court ruling the then-Tory government announced they would back those companies in court. Now the new sheriff, veteran environmentalist Milliband, has said no.
The fight isn’t over—the companies are appealing the court rulings. But here’s my prediction: This will be one of the first large oilfields that humans decide to leave in the ground because of climate concerns.
I say this because Labour has just won its massive majority, and can now govern for as much as five years before they have to face the voters again. Let’s say they don’t call a new election along the way and govern until 2029; with the massive growth in renewable energy now firmly underway, I don’t think that there will be the appetite among financiers for new oil fields then. They’ll certainly try—as Desmog Blog pointed out Thursday, a leading candidate for the new head of the beleaguered Tory party, Tom Tugendhat, has been merrily collecting money from various oil interests and is plumping for new North Sea drilling. But I think that by the time he or someone likes him returns to 10 Downing Street, the moment will have passed.
Here’s how the Tory MP for East Surrey and shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho put it on Twitter Thursday morning:
The final blow for the North Sea. No other major economy is taking this approach to its domestic energy supply.
She’s right that it’s groundbreaking, but she’s wrong that it’s entirely novel. Yes, too many rich countries continue to pump out hydrocarbons for export—tiny Tuvalu called out its Pacific neighbor Australia today for its endless willingness to serve as coal and gas merchant to the world. But there are signs of seismic shift. Remember that last fall in Dubai the world’s governments agreed in Dubai that the time had come to “transition away” from fossil fuels. A few weeks later the Biden administration paused approval of new LNG export terminals, which if it became permanent would in effect keep some serious portion of the gas in the Permian Basin of the southwest permanently underground. That is an even bigger climate bomb than North Sea oil, and though the pushback from fossil fuel interests has been fierce the White House has so far kept its nerve—and the basic issue (along with the ferocious justice impacts on Gulf communities) is the same Scope 3 emissions. It’s just too much carbon and methane to let loose in the atmosphere.
I fear that America’s noble stand may not last. In the wake of the Harris victory I’m working hard to help achieve, I think a lame duck session of Congress might well adopt the proposal from Big Oil Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barasso (R-Wyo.) to trade permitting reform that will help expand renewables with new permits for those LNG facilities. I hope they don’t; important as those permitting reforms are, this one is a bad deal, as a new Sierra Club report released Thursday makes clear:
The LNG projects that would likely be immediately subject to the 90 day review deadline if this bill passes would have climate-damaging emissions equivalent to 154 coal-fired power plants. For comparison, as of August 2024, there are 145 coal plants left in the entire U.S. that don’t have a retirement date by 2030. When looking at all the projects that DOE is likely to review in the coming years, the climate toll goes up to that of 422 coal plants.
There are, again, two equally important and interlinked parts of the climate fight: keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and building out renewable energy to replace that locked-away coal, gas and oil. And the fight is unavoidably global.
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'Dangerous and Desperate': Sunak's Net-Zero Flip Condemned by Left, Right, and Center
"Sunak's U-turn today will be devastating for the people of the U.K. and for the planet we call home," warned one Scottish Green. "It's nothing short of evil."
Sep 20, 2023
Critics across the political spectrum—from Conservative members of Parliament and corporations to Greens and climate campaigners—reacted with anger and resolve Wednesday following the announcement by U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak that his Tory government would retreat from some of its key net-zero commitments.
Speaking Wednesday at the Downing Street Press Briefing Room in London, Sunak said his government is still committed to reaching net-zero by 2050, but in a "more proportionate way" that would bring a "greener planet and a more prosperous future."
The rollback will reportedly include delaying a ban on the sale of petrol- and diesel-powered vehicles from 2030 to 2035, pushing back the phaseout of gas boilers, scrapping energy efficiency targets for some homes, dropping recycling plans, and canceling a planned air travel tax.
"This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection."
"No one can deny climate change is happening," Sunak said, adding that the county needs "sensible green leadership" instead of false choices that "never go beyond a slogan."
However, Conservative peer Lord Zac Goldsmith—who resigned his ministerial post earlier this summer due to what he called Sunak's climate "apathy"—called the prime minister's reversal "a moment of shame."
"His short stint as PM will be remembered as the moment the U.K. turned its back on the world and on future generations," he added.
Shadow Climate Secretary Ed Miliband led Labour condemnation of the reversal, which he called "a complete farce from a Tory government that literally does not know what they are doing day to day."
Brighton Pavilion Green MP Caroline Lucas slammed what she called Sunak's "coordinated, calculated, and catastrophic rollback."
"What this all reveals is that Sunak really doesn't seem to care about the climate in the slightest—it's little more than an afterthought," Lucas wrote in a Guardian opinion piece published Wednesday.
Sunak must call a general election by January 2025, and his Tories are trailing the opposition Labour Party in opinion polls amid persistently high inflation, slow economic growth, and rising inequality.
"If Sunak mistakenly thinks the climate is merely a political device to draw dividing lines between his party and Labour, he will fail on his own terms," wrote Lucas. "All it will do is draw an ever-greater divide between him and the people he seeks to govern."
Climate campaigners roundly condemned Sunak's decision.
"The government needs to double down now, not U-turn," Kennedy Walker, a U.K. organizer with the climate action group 350.org, said in a statement. "We have the opportunity to show what a transition to a greener economy that works for people and the planet can look like; we need to hold leadership to account to make sure it happens and they follow through on their own promises."
Riffing on the government's "long-term decisions for a brighter future" slogan, Extinction Rebellion U.K. wrote on the social media site X: "Short-term decisions for a shitter future. Remember, this government took £3.5 million in donations from Big Oil and other industries before licensing new gas and oil."
Many companies including automaker Ford and energy giant E.ON joined in criticism of the rollback.
"Our business needs three things from the U.K. government: ambition, commitment, and consistency. A relaxation of 2030 would undermine all three," Ford U.K. chair Lisa Brankin said Wednesday. "We need the policy focus trained on bolstering the EV market in the short term and supporting consumers while headwinds are strong: infrastructure remains immature, tariffs loom, and cost-of-living is high."
Some critics noted that Sunak's announcement came on the same day the leaders of many nations—but not Britain or the world's two top carbon polluters, China and the United States—gathered in New York for the United Nations Climate Ambition Summit.
"We're in a climate emergency. The deadly impacts of climate change are here now and we have to act urgently," Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan—the only U.K. speaker at the summit—toldThe Guardian Wednesday. "We have seen record high temperatures in London earlier this month and the hottest ever July. Over the last two years, we have experienced unprecedented wildfires and flash floods, destroying homes and livelihoods."
"This government's response flies in the face of common sense and shows they are climate delayers," Khan added. "It beggars belief that not only are they watering down vital commitments, but they are also passing up the opportunity to create green jobs, wealth, and lower energy bills—as well as failing to give investors the certainty they need to boost the green economy."
Sunak's reversal also infuriated many people in Scotland.
"Rishi Sunak has blood on his hands," National Union of Students Scotland president and Scottish Young Greens co-convener Ellie Gomersall toldThe National. "His excuse? It's too costly. Well then all the more kudos to the Scottish government who are still moving forward with net-zero policies like low-emission zones, phasing out gas boilers, cheaper public transport, all the while on a budget severely restrained by the confines of devolution."
"And of course when the Scottish government does try to implement simple yet effective measures like a deposit return scheme, Westminster comes along and blocks it," she added. "Sunak's U-turn today will be devastating for the people of the U.K. and for the planet we call home. It's nothing short of evil."
Alistair Heather, a Scottish writer and TV presenter, told The National that he was "almost pleased" by Sunak's announcement.
"This is a U-turn that will leave the Tories facing in the opposite direction of almost everyone, and finally end their hopes of reelection," he explained. "For mainstream voters, who understand that a clear, urgent movement of travel towards a green future is the best chance we have of mitigating the worst effects of the climate collapse, the Tories have made themselves completely unelectable. Good... Fuck the Tories. Mon the independence."
"With the Left AWOL, our species is being quick-marched to extinction."
The outrage was felt far beyond U.K. shores.
"At a time when the U.K. should be providing global leadership in transitioning off fossil fuels, especially in recognition of the impact its historical emissions have had in bringing about the climate crisis, the U.K. government is considering backtracking on already insufficient commitments," 350.org Europe regional director Nicolò Wojewoda said in a statement.
Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister who heads the left-wing MeRA25 party, wrote on X that "Sunak's U-turn is a reflection of the total Europe-wide collapse of the market-based, neoliberal consensus on how to tackle the climate crisis. It marks the center‐right's new path."
"And with the Left AWOL," he added, "our species is being quick-marched to extinction."
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