|
Sometimes I wonder what it’s going to take to make the UK Government take climate change seriously. We’ve spent this miserable, sodden Scottish summer watching holiday destinations in the Mediterranean combust. The news is full of floods and typhoons. Records are broken every day. The climate emergency is here now.
|
|
|
We have created the climate crisis. And we can fix it, but only if our political leaders are prepared to take hard decisions and apply a degree of honesty and common sense which has so far escaped them.
|
|
|
|
Of all the utter bollocks talked by Sunak’s government, their approach to new oil and gas exploitation takes the biscuit. Despite committing to a policy of reducing oil and gas, we’re told it’s okay to massively increase drilling and extraction in the North Sea. This is an affront to common sense. The dogs in the street know you cannot reduce something by having more of it.
|
|
|
|
The UK government's crass idiocy on new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea shows why these decisions must be devolved to Scotland #Rosebank.
|
|
|
To be clear, what is now being considered is massive. The Rosebank oilfield contains an estimated 500 million barrels – about 10 litres for every man, woman and child on the planet. If burned it would produce 200 million tonnes of CO2. That’s the same as running 56 coal-fired power stations for a year – or the combined output of the 28 lowest-income countries in the world.
We are told that this will increase our energy security because we will not need to import gas from Russia or elsewhere. Nonsense. All the oil taken out of Rosebank by the Norwegian energy giant Equinor would be sold on the global market. Unless the Government was to nationalise the fields, it will have no control over where the output goes – or the price we pay.
|
|
|
Proud to have signed this cross-party letter alongside more than 50 MPs and Peers to Grant Shapps urging him not to approve the Rosebank oil field.
|
|
|
|
Another example of the nonsense of UK Government policy is biomass. When I first heard the term, I thought it was an innovative biotechnology. It isn’t. It’s burning trees. We’re not talking a few logs in your home wood burner here. Drax power station in Yorkshire burns 20,000 tonnes of trees every day. That’s a lot of forest being felled in the southern US, Estonia and other countries from where the wood is imported.
|
|
|
|
Time to end this grotesque distortion of energy policy which does nothing to tackle the climate emergency.
|
|
|
Drax pumps more than a million tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere every month. Incredibly, we are paying for it. It receives millions every day from electricity bill payers. Why? Because in a perverse distortion of science, the Government believes this is renewable energy as the carbon released in burning is equal to the carbon used in growing the tree in the first place. That it takes 50 years to grow and 50 seconds to burn is simply ignored. Go figure.
|
|
|
Of course, we can’t have a conversation about the deceitfulness of UK energy policy without discussing the Government’s obsession with nuclear power – the most expensive method ever devised for generating electricity.
|
|
|
|
The Government claims nuclear is renewable. It isn’t. At current rates, there is maybe 90 years’ supply of uranium left. They claim it is clean. It isn’t. The toxic radioactive waste needs to be isolated from living things for centuries. They also claim it provides energy security. It doesn’t. The UK has no uranium. Yet the UK Government, supported by its Labour opposition, is preparing to rapidly expand nuclear power at vast expense to the taxpayer.
|
|
|
Cartoon by Neil Slorance
|
|
|
British energy policy is deceitful – and it is simply inconsistent with a commitment to net zero. Thankfully, though, there is an alternative.
|
|
|
|
More than most countries, Scotland is blessed with renewable energy sources in abundance. We just need the political and financial commitment to develop them at a scale never before seen. That commitment won’t come from this UK Government, nor it seems the next one.
So, perhaps more than any other area of policy, the need for Scotland to have control over its energy production makes a compelling case for our political independence.
|
|
Need help or advice?
As the cost-of-living crisis continues, we are absolutely here to help if you need it. You can email me at [email protected] or call 0131 661 8023.
|
|
|
|
|
|
