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Britain's oil and gas policy is out of step with its green COP26 aims, young climate activists say
Noga Levy-Rapoport, Lola Fayokun and Scarlett Westbrook are youth climate activists.
2021 marks a wave of fresh opportunities for the UK’s political leadership. A difficult 2020 marked by an abysmal pandemic response embarrassed Boris Johnson’s government on the international stage.
But on both climate change and coronavirus fronts, this year can be the year of the vaccine: a time to transform, heal, and progress from global disaster.
With the international climate conference COP26 coming to Glasgow later this year, now is the perfect moment for the government to step up and act.
But instead, our leaders appear to be hurtling straight towards further catastrophe.
Just last month, the government announced it had finished reviewing its UK Domestic Oil and Gas Policy, and confirmed the worst fears of young activists like us.
Johnson’s team of climate leaders will continue to approve further licensing for new gas and oil projects.
While we spent the last year ramping up our calls for global climate action despite the limitations of the pandemic, the government has spent its time entrenching its policy of extracting “every drop of oil and gas that it is economic to extract”- a policy of prioritising profit over people and planet.
The UK already has an outsized number of gas and oil projects, with 113 oil and gas licenses awarded in September 2020 alone. Meanwhile, countries like Ireland, France and Denmark have either announced they will stop awarding new licenses or have legislation to do so passing through parliament.
So how could approving even further licenses be consistent with any definition of climate leadership?
The science is not on the government’s side. The UN has confirmed that we need to reduce production by 6% per year to stay within safe climate limits. Instead, current global plans to increase production will lead to 120% more fossil fuels extracted by just 2030 than would align with the Paris Agreement.
Even teenagers like us can see that the numbers fail to add up - and it’s left us terrified for what further extraction means for our futures.
With COP26 taking place at the end of this year, the government’s attempts to shirk their climate responsibilities are set to take place on the global stage.
The UK will be expected to showcase global leadership on climate change, bringing together the planet’s most powerful political figures to ensure decisive, sweeping action, but our leaders are already crumbling in the face of responsibility.
The UK’s real road to COP is clear. The review’s conclusions must be immediately aligned to the Paris climate agreement, ceasing the issuing of new licences for the exploration and extraction of oil and gas.
The North Sea Transition Deal, which covers the jobs transition away from oil and gas sectors, must begin alongside total decarbonisation.
When we recognise that economic recovery and environmental progress form part of the same picture, we can start to develop resilience for crises from climate to COVID-19 while centering our economy around care for our planet and its people, particularly those worst impacted by these crises.
As the world’s sixth largest economy, we have the economic capacity and a moral duty to deliver climate justice.
So we are warning the government - young people will not stand idly by while our leaders cash in our planet.
While the pandemic may have kept young people off the streets, our commitment to holding leaders to account has never faltered. We have taken a stand with climate activism before, and will not hesitate to act again.
If they continue to refuse to take the opportunities they are being handed to demonstrate their dedication to climate action, then the public will soon see through their facade.
While our leaders remain wedded to a fantasy, we know that warm words won’t cool our planet.
