It’s the mining and drilling that counts: the rest is distraction.īut distraction is big business. It aims at least to double the amount of fossil fuels that are ready to be exploited here.Įvery speech and pledge and gesture at Glasgow this week is thistledown, by comparison to the hard facts of new coalmines, oil and gas fields. Last year, it offered 113 new licences to explore offshore reserves. In the UK, the government still insists on what it calls “ maximising economic recovery” of oil and gas. So either homes and forests are being trashed for no reason, or the German government doesn’t intend to honour its promise. But if Germany abides by its own rule, the mine will need to be abandoned before it reaches full production. For example, the village of Lützerath in North Rhine-Westphalia, which sits above a thick seam of the filthiest kind of coal – lignite – is currently being destroyed. Germany has promised to phase out coal production by 2038 (far too late, by the way). It’s just the kind of weakness the Republicans were hoping to exploit. Though climate campaigners argue that Biden has many other tools for preventing such leases from being issued, he immediately folded, and his government has now begun the process of auctioning drilling rights in Alaskan waters and the Gulf of Mexico.
His government was sued by 14 Republican states. In the US, Joe Biden promised to pause all new leases for oil and gas on public lands and in offshore waters. By 2030, governments are planning to extract 110% more fossil fuels than their Paris agreement pledge (“limit the temperature increase to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels”) would permit.Įven nations that claim to be leading the transition mean to keep drilling.
As the latest production gap report by the UN and academic researchers shows, over the next two decades, unless there’s a rapid and drastic change in policy, coal is likely to decline a little, but oil and gas production will keep growing.
Yet most governments with major reserves are determined to make the wrong choice.
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