Rosebank Oilfield: Environmental Impacts

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 28th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Member will not be surprised to hear that I do indeed agree. Unfortunately, an awful lot of greenwashing goes on when it comes to this debate.

Secondly, it is not just the UK that must reach net zero by 2050 if we are to avoid the worst effects of global heating. According to the sixth assessment report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the whole world must be there by 2050 to stay below 1.5°. If we are to act in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities—which was, let us remember, a central tenet of the Paris agreement—it is clear that the UK, as one of the first countries to industrialise using fossil fuels, must go much further and faster than many others.

Thirdly, the Government’s so-called climate checkpoint fails to take account of scope 3 emissions. In other words, the checkpoint simply ignores all the emissions that are produced when the oil and gas are actually burned, so it is no safeguard at all.

Finally, although Ministers try to ignore our global climate reality, the truth is that there is already far more coal, oil and gas in existing developments than can be safely burned if we are to have a liveable future. According to the UN report “The Production Gap”, Governments already

“plan to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels in 2030”

that would be consistent with staying below 1.5°. The International Energy Agency has made it clear that there can be no more oil and gas developments if we are to limit global temperatures to that critical threshold. Global scientists pretty much agree, yet we have a Government who somehow think they know better than hundreds of UK scientists and the vast majority of thousands of global scientists.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for all the leadership she shows on these issues. Is it not also the case that a lot of our constituents are showing the way as well? They have probably communicated to most of us here today the passion they feel, and they understand the need for a just transition. There are ways to meet both our climate goals and our energy requirements without new oil and gas exploration, exactly as she is outlining.

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The majority of public opinion is on our side, and everyone from the Women’s Institute to the scientists is saying the same thing.

I want to talk about climate leadership. Approving Rosebank would destroy any last shred of the UK’s climate leadership. The UK’s record was built on the Climate Change Act 2008 and on being the first major economy to enshrine net zero in law, but as the Climate Change Committee’s report makes clear today, it has been decimated by the Government’s approval of the UK’s first coalmine in 30 years, and by the fact that they have issued more than 100 new exploration licences and are now failing to rule out this enormous oilfield. In the words of the CCC, the UK

“has lost its clear global leadership on climate action”.

Fossil Fuels and Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fossil fuels and increases in the cost of living.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and to open this important debate on fossil fuels and increases in the cost of living. As we start 2023, households up and down the country are facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances, as we all know from our constituency mailbags, thanks to the cost of living scandal that Government policy has too often exacerbated rather than alleviated. Hikes in energy bills mean that over 9 million people—18% of the population—spent Christmas in the cold and damp, unable to heat their homes, and facing a new year with little respite, with experts warning that high gas prices are here to stay.

At the same time, the climate emergency is deepening and accelerating. Last year marked a year of extremes. It was the UK’s hottest on record, with the average temperature topping 10°C for the first time and the summer’s scorching heat made 160 times more likely by the climate crisis. It is clear that something is fundamentally wrong here, yet shockingly, I note that the climate and energy crises were entirely absent from the Prime Minister’s priorities that he outlined last week.

Fossil fuels are at the very heart of both the cost of living and the climate crises, choking our precious planet while subjecting families to sky-rocketing bills. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels holds the key to not just ensuring a safer planet for future generations but creating warm and comfortable homes, bringing down bills and guaranteeing a supply of abundant green energy to deliver the transition to a zero-carbon economy. The bottom line is that, for a safe and prosperous future, we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

I want to look more deeply at the cost of living crisis that is facing so many of our constituents. As the Minister will know, households are already struggling to cope, with almost 60% of people saying that their financial situation has deteriorated over the past year. The Resolution Foundation has warned that 2023 will be “groundhog year”, with further cuts to living standards. Indeed, even with the support announced by the Government last year, a staggering 7 million households will still be in fuel poverty this winter, rising to 8.6 million from April, with the most vulnerable hardest hit.

It is profoundly shocking that one third of people with disabilities live in cold, damp homes and that a quarter of those with health conditions that are exacerbated by the cold cannot afford to heat their homes to a safe standard. This comes with serious health risks and puts further pressure on our severely under-resourced health service, which, as we all know, is already in serious crisis. In my Brighton, Pavilion constituency alone, there are several thousand people living with a cardiovascular or respiratory condition whose health is at risk if they cannot afford to put their heating on. It is genuinely astounding that the Government are planning on cutting the amount of support available to the most vulnerable households next year, just when bills are set to increase again, reducing support by 10% from £1,500 to £1,350. Will the Minister commit to addressing that gap? Will he seriously consider providing further support for those vulnerable households, given that bills are set to increase by 20% from April?

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and congratulate her on securing the debate. I have heard many similar testimonies from constituents, particularly over the festive period, including from young people who wrote to me as part of the Warm This Winter and Parents for Future campaigns. I heard heartbreaking stories of children seeing their breath in the morning and not being able to recover from colds and coughs because they cannot keep their houses warm. I fully agree with the calls she makes. Those people also recognise in that correspondence the climate crisis and the need, for example, to not start new oil and gas exploration, which the Scottish Government have this morning announced a presumption against. We have to find alternative, cheaper, cleaner, greener ways of keeping warm.

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and join him in paying tribute to Warm This Winter, which has done fantastic work in gathering those case studies and presenting them to us. I congratulate the Scottish Government on their announcement this morning about a presumption against more fossil fuel exploration, because we know that getting more new fossil fuels out of the ground is driving both the climate crisis and—ironically, at a time when gas is nine times more expensive than renewables—the cost of living crisis.

COP26: Limiting Global Temperature Rises

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Patrick Grady

Thursday 21st October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not agree more with the hon. Lady. It is quite shocking for people to realise that so much of our climate finance is actually in the form of loans, not grants. Given that we are talking about some of the most vulnerable countries in the world, which are already trying to cope with the impacts of climate change, for which they were entirely not responsible, I think the idea that we are then going to ask them for interest on those debts is absolutely obscene.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I was very proud to support this debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Member has secured it. Is that not why the concept of climate justice is so important? We should recognise the historical obligation we have in this part of the world for having contributed to climate change to those who have done the least to cause it and who are being hit first and hardest. That is a concept the Scottish Parliament has recognised and is trying to live up to, and it is a standard that we still have not heard the UK Government accept. Would it not be helpful if, at the end of this debate, the Minister said that the UK Government accepted the need to achieve climate justice?

[Caroline Lucas]

I could not thank the hon. Member more for his intervention. I think he has been reading my notes, because I was going to make exactly that point. The Prime Minister himself has said:

“It is the biggest economies in the world that are causing the problem, while the smallest suffer the worst consequences.”

Yet he has not grasped the implications of his own statement. As the hon. Member has just said, climate justice means the biggest economies doing far more and being far more ambitious than net zero in 30 years’ time. Climate justice means cutting emissions at home, without overreliance on international offsets or costly and uncertain negative emissions technologies. Climate justice also means recognising the obscenity of continuing with business as usual knowing that young people, especially those in climate-vulnerable countries, are paying for it literally with their futures.