viii: The Climate Column
Jackdaws and catastrophes Patrick Dunne
At the beginning of June, the British government and its regulators approved the new Jackdaw oil and gas field in the North Sea. Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng tweeted that the field was originally licensed in 1970, and claimed that it will support Britain's 'energy security' while the government turbo charges renewables and nuclear energy sources for the future (Kwarteng, 01.06.22). The fact that Jackdaw was previously rejected on environmental grounds appears to have slipped his notice. The 'energy security' argument seems to be linked to the conflict in Ukraine and, on the surface, it does seem sensible. Of course we shouldn't be reliant on the whims of Vladimir Putin for oil and gas, common sense cries— just look at the current price increases, look at the cost of living crisis. It is obvious that we should produce our own energy in Britain, and here's a way to do it. But this argument ignores other factors that are influencing prices, and the precarious global energy supply systems. In the UK, many of our economic challenges are linked to Brexit: slowing trade, for one thing, and the loss of millions of workers— having made our European cousins thoroughly and shamefully unwelcome politically. But no Tory minister will identify Brexit as the problem. Just as important is the fact that the world has, in the past few years, turned away from the idea of endless oil and gas being the only solution. The rise of excellent activism in the form of Fridays for Future, Extinction Rebellion, and the Sunrise Movement has added mass movement and social media savvy to decades of work by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and others. This activism has helped to shift the collective consciousness regarding these energy systems. The biggest mover of opinion has arguably been the droughts, fires, floods, and storms that have been wracking communities in every part of the world. California is experiencing its worst drought in 1,200 years 32
(Rogers, 2022); climate-driven bleaching events have affected over ninety-eight per cent of the Great Barrier Reef (Rosane, 2021); the current heatwave in India is ravaging communities (Carrington, 2022). With all this climate turmoil, there is the likelihood of one billion climate refugees by 2050 (Ida, 2021). While the conversation about the climate crisis used to focus on saving endangered species like orangutans, now even mainstream newspapers are talking about a societal catastrophe taking place in our lifetimes (Harvey, 2022). But the British government is still approving oil and gas fields, in the face of comments by the Secretary General of the UN (UN.org, 04.04.22), and in the face of reports from the International Energy Agency (Farand, 2021). We are all old enough to remember the impassioned speeches by a certain Prime Minister Johnson at COP26 last year, about the seriousness of the climate challenge we face, about our responsibility for it, and about our ability to fix it should we so choose. But Britain has not chosen to fix this crisis. We have not chosen to seriously reduce our emissions, or even our energy use. We arrest people who demand that we insulate houses— incidentally, an excellent way to reduce reliance on Russian gas (BBC News, 14.09.22). We criminalise protestors whose howls of outrage make a bit too much noise (Sky News, 27.04.22). We quietly approve, late at night on the eve of a bank holiday weekend dominated by Jubilee coverage, new oil and gas infrastructure. The Chancellor did impose a windfall tax on energy companies in May (Stewart, 2022)— surely that's a silver lining? Unfortunately, but entirely unsurprisingly, there was a tax loophole in that policy which will allow oil and gas companies to avoid millions of pounds in tax on their investments in the future. Not long ago, when asked about the possibility of a windfall tax, the Chancellor expressed his concerns about frightening off investors from
