As the 29th annual United Nations Climate Change Conference is getting under way in Azerbaijan, I’m on a train from Devon to Edinburgh to attend court hearings into the Rosebank and Jackdaw North Sea fields. The last government permitted exploitation of these two oil and gas fields in 2023 and 2022 respectively but was challenged by two campaign groups. Those cases will be heard this week and the Scottish Court will decide whether this approval was lawful.
While these long-drawn-out political and judicial processes take their course, the Earth keeps heating up. It is virtually certain that 2024 will be the warmest year on record, and that the annual temperature for 2024 will be more than 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
The target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C was agreed at a previous UN Climate Change Conference, in 2015. How did it get breached so soon? Because the powers that be have decided we don’t need to let this limit actually limit us. We can simply ‘overshoot’ 1.5 degrees of warming, then, thanks to technologies which barely exist yet in any practical form, bring the temperatures back down some time in the future.
This approach is explored in a new book, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown, the authors of which, Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, gave a seminar at Exeter University’s Global Systems Institute last week. They explained how this crazy concept took hold.
It would of course be far easier to stop the temperature rising than to let the world heat up and attempt to cool it down again later. But that would mean a rapid end to the use of fossil fuels – something economists and politicians can’t countenance. While the fossil fuel industry can make vast profits from continuing to exploit the fossil carbon under our feet, it’s easier just to kick emissions cuts down the road. The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, which is meant to provide policymakers with objective scientific advice, has capitulated to the economists, and its pathways projecting future greenhouse gas concentrations involve overshooting 1.5°C for a while, but magically arriving back there by 2100.
This is madness. Even if we did somehow succeed in bringing temperatures down in the future, we have to live through the overshot phase first. And meanwhile, tipping points, which trigger much faster and less predictable climate impacts, will kick in at 1.5°C. One example is the collapse of the West Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets, which it’s generally agreed will become unstoppable above 1.5°degrees of warming, and will contribute up to five and seven metres respectively to average global sea-level rise. That policy-makers think this is preferable to cutting fossil fuel companies’ profits is a symptom of the delusion and denial affecting almost everybody.
Burning coal, oil and gas has brought us to the brink of climate chaos. The only sane solution is to stop new fossil fuel production right now, and to wind down fossil fuel use as fast as possible, while greatly increasing investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Yet far from acknowledging this reality, fossil fuel companies are still seeking to find and develop new fields. As if there were no tomorrow. Which there may not be. The only producer country that has pledged to leave its coal and oil in the ground is Colombia.
But there is hope that the UK may be nudged in the same direction. This is thanks in part to my win in the High Court.
My case, brought on behalf of the Weald Action Group, concerned permission granted in 2019 for 20 years oil production in the Surrey countryside. I argued that the approval was unlawful as the planning authority had failed to consider the climate impacts of when the oil is inevitably burned. After a five-year legal battle, the Supreme Court found in my favour.
This ground-breaking judgment is now having implications for new fossil fuel projects across the UK. The first big result was that the planned new coalmine in Cumbria, approved by Michael Gove in 2022, had its planning permission quashed in September this year. A number of other onshore oil and gas sites have also been found unlawful, or conceded before they came to court, on the same grounds.
Now campaigners hope that Rosebank and Jackdaw will suffer the same fate. Rosebank, off the Shetlands, is the biggest undeveloped oil field in UK waters and if developed threatens massive climate harm. It’s estimated that more than 200 million tonnes of CO2 will inevitably result from burning Rosebank’s oil reserves. Greenpeace and Uplift it are challenging it on these grounds, as well as others including the disastrous impacts it would have on the marine environment.
Following the ruling in my case, the new government conceded that Rosebank and Jackdaw were approved unlawfully, and won’t defend the case in court on this ground. But the oil companies – Equinor, Ithaca Energy and Shell – are still fighting and the decision will be made by the court.
Now the government is consulting on new guidance for the offshore oil and gas industry following my Supreme Court judgement. The guidance is expected to be published in Spring 2025. In the meantime, decisions on environmental impact assessment of offshore oil and gas fields will be deferred.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has pledged not to issue any new licences for oil and gas exploration. If the new guidance is strong enough to mean that sites that have already been licensed but not yet developed are shelved, we could actually halt all new drilling.
If the UK – as an advanced developed economy – were to do this, it would send ripples around the world, inspiring other countries to follow. That would be a tremendous achievement and we could all move on to the next challenge: rapidly decarbonising our economies and making sure it is done so fairly. The energy transition brings huge opportunities for investment and jobs and these must be directed where they are needed most. Communities in areas across the world that currently rely on fossil fuels for a living need new opportunities in new greener industries.
The tide has turned on fossil fuels – the next steps are clear. We need to say goodbye to fossil fuels and bring in a safer future for everyone.
