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A Groundbreaking UK Climate Win Shows Why Elections Matter
On Wednesday Ed Milliband, the new Labour energy secretary, announced that the government would not back the companies that want to develop two huge new North Sea oilfields.
Aug 30, 2024
I’m pretty sure this newsletter will be obsessing over the American election between now and November—it is the most crucial contest in the crucial years, after all. But this has already been a year of democracy around the globe with half the world’s people going to the polls, and the results have so far been not as bad as they might have been—Prime Minister Narendra Modi rebuked in India, the far right checked in European elections and in France, and a smashing victory for Labour in the U.K., which is already yielding serious climate benefits.
On Wednesday Ed Milliband, the new Labour energy secretary, announced that the government would not back the companies that want to develop two huge new North Sea oilfields. This takes a bit of explanation, so bear with me. Oil giants Shell and Equinor want to develop the vast Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields. The Tory government backed these projects, even though it led former Energy Secretary Chris Skidmore to resign from the party. In June, a court ruled that the environmental review for the projects was insufficient, because, crucially, the companies had failed to account for the emissions not just from the oil wells themselves, but from the eventual combustion of that oil in cars around the world. These so-called Scope 3 emissions are obviously the key problem with new gas and oil projects, but the industry has worked hard to keep them off the table—and after the court ruling the then-Tory government announced they would back those companies in court. Now the new sheriff, veteran environmentalist Milliband, has said no.
The fight isn’t over—the companies are appealing the court rulings. But here’s my prediction: This will be one of the first large oilfields that humans decide to leave in the ground because of climate concerns.
I say this because Labour has just won its massive majority, and can now govern for as much as five years before they have to face the voters again. Let’s say they don’t call a new election along the way and govern until 2029; with the massive growth in renewable energy now firmly underway, I don’t think that there will be the appetite among financiers for new oil fields then. They’ll certainly try—as Desmog Blog pointed out Thursday, a leading candidate for the new head of the beleaguered Tory party, Tom Tugendhat, has been merrily collecting money from various oil interests and is plumping for new North Sea drilling. But I think that by the time he or someone likes him returns to 10 Downing Street, the moment will have passed.
Here’s how the Tory MP for East Surrey and shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho put it on Twitter Thursday morning:
The final blow for the North Sea. No other major economy is taking this approach to its domestic energy supply.
She’s right that it’s groundbreaking, but she’s wrong that it’s entirely novel. Yes, too many rich countries continue to pump out hydrocarbons for export—tiny Tuvalu called out its Pacific neighbor Australia today for its endless willingness to serve as coal and gas merchant to the world. But there are signs of seismic shift. Remember that last fall in Dubai the world’s governments agreed in Dubai that the time had come to “transition away” from fossil fuels. A few weeks later the Biden administration paused approval of new LNG export terminals, which if it became permanent would in effect keep some serious portion of the gas in the Permian Basin of the southwest permanently underground. That is an even bigger climate bomb than North Sea oil, and though the pushback from fossil fuel interests has been fierce the White House has so far kept its nerve—and the basic issue (along with the ferocious justice impacts on Gulf communities) is the same Scope 3 emissions. It’s just too much carbon and methane to let loose in the atmosphere.
I fear that America’s noble stand may not last. In the wake of the Harris victory I’m working hard to help achieve, I think a lame duck session of Congress might well adopt the proposal from Big Oil Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barasso (R-Wyo.) to trade permitting reform that will help expand renewables with new permits for those LNG facilities. I hope they don’t; important as those permitting reforms are, this one is a bad deal, as a new Sierra Club report released Thursday makes clear:
The LNG projects that would likely be immediately subject to the 90 day review deadline if this bill passes would have climate-damaging emissions equivalent to 154 coal-fired power plants. For comparison, as of August 2024, there are 145 coal plants left in the entire U.S. that don’t have a retirement date by 2030. When looking at all the projects that DOE is likely to review in the coming years, the climate toll goes up to that of 422 coal plants.
There are, again, two equally important and interlinked parts of the climate fight: keeping fossil fuels in the ground, and building out renewable energy to replace that locked-away coal, gas and oil. And the fight is unavoidably global.
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'Big Win': UK Won't Defend Fossil Fuel Projects in North Sea
Oceana U.K.'s leader called the decision "a massive win for campaigners and another step towards... a cleaner, greener future for our seas, planet, and climate."
Aug 29, 2024
Climate campaigners celebrated Thursday after the United Kingdom's new Labour government announced it will not legally defend decisions to allow controversial offshore drilling in a pair of areas in the North Sea.
The two sites are Shell's Jackdaw gas field and the Rosebank oil field, owned by Equinor and Ithaca Energy. Both projects have been loudly criticized by international green groups as well as U.K. opponents.
"This is amazing news and a BIG WIN for the climate. The government must now properly support affected workers and prioritize investment in green jobs,"
declared Greenpeace U.K., which along with the group Uplift had demanded judicial reviews.
The approvals for both North Sea sites occurred under Conservative rule—in 2022 for Jackdaw and last year for Rosebank, the country's biggest untapped oil field. Voters handed control of the government back to the Labour Party in May.
Then, as The Guardiandetailed, "in June, the cases against the oil and gas fields received a boost when the Supreme Court ruled in a separate case that 'scope 3' emissions—that is, the burning of fossil fuels rather than just the building of the infrastructure to do so—should be taken into account when approving projects."
"Now we need to see a just transition plan for workers and communities across the U.K. and an end extraction in the North Sea for good!"
The U.K. Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, led by Secretary Ed Miliband, cited the "landmark" Supreme Court ruling in a Thursday statement that highlighted the government's decision not to defend the approvals "will save the taxpayer money" and "this litigation does not mean the licences for Jackdaw and Rosebank have been withdrawn."
"Oil and gas production in the North Sea will be a key component of the U.K. energy landscape for decades to come as it transitions to our clean energy future in a way that protects jobs," the department claimed, while also pledging to "consult later this year on the implementation of its manifesto position not to issue new oil and gas licenses to explore new fields."
Welcoming the U.K. government's acceptance of the recent high court ruling, Uplift founder and executive director Tessa Khan
said on social media that "the immediate consequence... is that the Scottish Court of Session is very likely to quash the decision approving Rosebank, although we're likely to have to wait a while before that's confirmed."
"If Equinor and Ithaca Energy decide they still want to press ahead with developing the field," Khan explained, "then the next step will be for them to submit a new environmental statement to the [government] and regulator... that includes the scope 3 emissions from the field."
"If you need reminding, those emissions are massive: the same as 56 coal-fired power plants running for a year or the annual emissions of the world's 28 poorest countries," she added. "If Equinor and Ithaca try to push Rosebank through again, the U.K. [government] must reject it."
Greenpeace similarly stressed that "Rosebank and Jackdaw would generate a vast amount of emissions while doing nothing to lower energy bills," and "the only real winners from giving them the greenlight would be greedy oil giants Shell and Equinor."
"To lower bills, improve people's health, upgrade our economy," the group argued, the government must: increase renewable energy; better insulate homes; and boost support for green jobs.
Celebrations over the government's decision and calls for further action weren't limited to the groups behind the legal challenges.
Oceana U.K. executive director praised the "incredible work" by Greenpeace and Uplift, and called the government dropping its defense "a massive win for campaigners and another step towards... a cleaner, greener future for our seas, planet, and climate."
Oil Change International also applauded the government's "incredibly important and correct decision."
"There is no defending more fossil fuel extraction," the organization said. "Now we need to see a just transition plan for workers and communities across the U.K. and an end extraction in the North Sea for good!"
Global Witness similarly celebrated the government's move, declaring on social media that "this is brilliant news!"
"New oilfields are an act of climate vandalism," the group added. "Governments must prioritize people, not polluters' profit."
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The UK’s Racist Violence Is Driven by a Dangerous Right-Wing Ideology
A coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.
Aug 08, 2024
Every Saturday night throughout summer, young people gather in Bristol’s historic Castle Park to sit on blankets under the cherry blossom trees, eating ice cream and drinking from cans as reggae, dub, and drum n bass rattle through tinny speakers. The music competes with the squawks of the city’s seagulls, the roar of traffic leaving the Galleries mall, and the strumming of a guitar. Teenagers try out circus skills, while bikes whizz along the river toward the bars and clubs of Old Market.
This weekend, the scene was very different.
Gangs of far-right race rioters stormed the park, passing its commemorative plaque to the city’s anti-fascists who fought in Spain in the 1930s. They were joined by those pulled into the far right via a toxic mix of anti-vax, anti-LGBTQ, QAnon conspiracy theories. Punches were thrown at a Black passerby. Counterprotesters insisted that fascists and racists were not welcome here, before moving south to the river to form a human barrier around a hotel housing migrant people, which the mob attempted to attack.
In many ways, the far right is grooming the general public to believe the violence and disorder of the past week—and any future violence—is an inevitable consequence of political failings around immigration. Worse, it is a result of the failure of democracy.
The scenes in Bristol were repeated across the country. In Rotherham and Tamworth, people who had fled violence and persecution in their own countries hid in hotel rooms as the buildings were set on fire. Asian men were dragged from their cabs to shouts of “kill him,” while Syrian shopkeepers, determined to build a new life away from dictatorship and civil war, watched in despair as their businesses were trashed. By Sunday night, more than 90 people had been arrested, but the violence did not stop, spreading to city after city, to Liverpool and Belfast and Plymouth and London and beyond.
The inciting incident was ostensibly the tragic killings of three girls, and the stabbing of other women and girls, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport. British-born teenager Axel Rudakubana has been charged with murder and attempted murder.
The horrific deaths of the three children had nothing to do with the terrorising of asylum-seeking people and children in hotels, the destruction of Black and Brown people’s businesses, or the attacks on mosques. The street violence that has gripped much of England and Northern Ireland since 30 July instead tells a story of who the modern far right are, how they organise, what they believe, and the coalition of hard-right politicians, commentators, and influencers who have empowered this hateful movement to inflict widespread violence against families fleeing fear.
Who Is the Modern Far Right?
The early days of the violence were met with suggestions from the new Labour government that the English Defence League (EDL) could be designated as a “proscribed group”—one that is forbidden under U.K. law due to terrorist connections.
But the suggestion fails to understand two crucial issues. The first, is that the EDL does not really exist. Its co-founder and most famous member, far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson (real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) left in 2013, claiming he had concerns over the "dangers of far-right extremism," after which the group’s membership dwindled until it ultimately became defunct a few years later.
The second is that the modern far right is no longer made up of organisations with clear hierarchical structures. Instead, it is an international and online-networked movement. It organises around a shared ideology spread by a core of theorists, leaders, and influencers who use their power to put out statements designed to trigger others to commit violence. In this, the influencers commit what is known as “stochastic” or “random violence,” while of course making sure they are not the ones throwing the punches and smashing the glass themselves, and can claim plausible deniability when it comes to incitement.
The networked nature of the modern far right means that rather than coalescing around a physical leader, they instead organise around a shared ideology and aim: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which can be defeated via a race war.
The movement breaks out into the real world with violent, racist outbursts and attacks. That violence is filmed and live streamed across its network, with each action used to tell a story that will inspire new followers and, crucially, influence nonmembers by creating an atmosphere of insecurity and fear.
Following the killings in Southport, an online conspiracy claimed the killer was a Muslim man who had arrived into the U.K. illegally on a small boat last year. The lie brought together the two tropes driving the modern far right: Islamophobic claims that Muslim men pose a threat to women and girls and manufactured outrage over “fighting age men” arriving in the U.K. on small boats to live off the taxpayer.
While the false claims about the Southport killings were specific to that incident, the disinformation being shared was built on years of far-right influencers engaged in rhetorical violence against primarily Muslim migrant people. Numerous posts from Robinson’s Telegram channel, for example, discuss how migrant men who “inevitably go on to rape and murder” are “invading” the U.K. and “taken in and housed in hotels at taxpayer expense.” Governments and NGOs are even accused by him of “using little girls to encourage fighting age men to come to the U.K. who see nothing wrong in diddling kids.”
These messages have gathered pace over the past four years as the former Conservative government ramped up messaging to “stop the boats” and accused migrant people of abusing the system while being “child rapists" and "threats to national security.” In the same time period, growing anti-immigrant rhetoric and a failing policy to house asylum-seeking people in hotels has repeatedly triggered real-life violence and intimidation, mainly outside the hotels housing families.
“Citizen journalists” who made their names as “migrant hunters” such as Amanda Smith (who uses the social media avatar Yorkshire Rose) and Alan Leggett (Active Patriot), as well as groups including Britain First and Patriotic Alternative, have increasingly targeted hotels, live streaming their “visits” in footage that shows activists intimidating residents. Smith wrote how “women and girls are frightened to walk around the area of the [Rotherham] hotel at night,” pushing the message that migrant men are a threat to white women. Even children are positioned as a threat: One Britain First post said that a child in a hotel waving at their cameras was mocking them.
When it was revealed that the individual charged with the Southport murders was a British-born teenager, the far-right narrative shifted to maintain its Islamophobic focus. Robinson and others shared disinformation about Muslim men stabbing people in Stoke-on-Trent, giving a new inciting reason for the riots, despite Staffordshire Police confirming there have been no such stabbings. Footage of the so-called “Muslim Defence League” portrayed British towns as under attack.
The claim that white Britain is under attack by Muslim men is then used to incite the far-right’s ultimate goal: a genocidal civil war, otherwise known as Day X.
The Ideology
The networked nature of the modern far right means that rather than coalescing around a physical leader, they instead organise around a shared ideology and aim: the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which can be defeated via a race war.
The theory baselessly claims that white people in the Global North are being “replaced” by migrant people from the Global South, aided by feminists repressing the birth rate via abortion and contraception. All of this is supposedly being orchestrated by “cultural Marxists,” a catch-all term that includes liberal elites, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, LGBTQ+ people, and Jewish people.
This so-called replacement is commonly referred to as a “white genocide.” To defeat this so-called genocide, the far right wants to incite a civil war—sometimes referred to as Day X or boogaloo—that would result in pure ethno-states. It’s for this reason that the owner of X (formerly Twitter), Elon Musk, warned that “civil war is inevitable” in the U.K., in the wake of the riots. While it is far from inevitable, it is the desired outcome of the global far right, who are looking for an inciting incident to trigger Day X.
To prevent white genocide, men are told that it is their duty to defend their family—and to defend whiteness—through violence.
When white men in England are dragging Asian men out of cars with shouts of “kill them,” and when white gangs are setting fire to hotels housing families from various countries across the Global South, they are rehearsing the actions they would take during the thing they fantasise about: genocide. When white men attack mosques, they are rehearsing a cultural genocide.
The central replacement/white genocide theory is supplemented by secondary conspiracies designed to provoke anxieties that children are in danger, and that parental authority is being usurped by outside, hostile “others.”
Those attending the riots had signs written with “save the children” and “save our children.” The same slogans also appear at anti-vax protests and anti-drag queen protests. While seemingly a benign slogan—who doesn’t want to save children?—the message now evokes the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory claiming liberal elites are trafficking and torturing children in Satanic rituals in order to harvest “adrenochrome.”
The demand to “save the children” feeds directly into the overarching Great Replacement conspiracy theory. A hostile “other,” the message reads, is coming to take your children away. Children are the frontline against replacement. To prevent white genocide, men are told that it is their duty to defend their family—and to defend whiteness—through violence.
Strategy
The desired outcome of this violence is to create insecurity, fear, and anxiety in the general population, which in turn leads to a collapse in faith in democracy and society.
That this is happening now, less than a month into a Labour government, is important to note. Labour has already cancelled the Rwanda scheme and implemented a statutory instrument to start processing asylum claims that were in a backlog as a result of rule changes in the Illegal Migration Act. Though the party, which has a long history of courting anti-immigrant support, is also acting “tough” on immigration, with raids on businesses and deportation flights to Vietnam and Timor-Leste, Labour is the traditional enemy of the far right. It is associated with progressive values, multiculturalism, and “woke.” For the far right to achieve its aims, it has to destroy the electorate’s trust in the Labour Party, in government—and in democracy.
In many ways, the far right is grooming the general public to believe the violence and disorder of the past week—and any future violence—is an inevitable consequence of political failings around immigration. Worse, it is a result of the failure of democracy.
Sowing fear, anxiety, and distrust in societal norms allows for the far right to achieve its ultimate aim: to replace democracy with a strong-man, authoritarian leader who can rule on a war footing.
That’s why, following U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s intervention on Sunday night, where he condemned “far-right thuggery,” social media filled up with messages that he was a “traitor to his country,” a “Soros puppet” (an antisemitic trope) running a “radical government.”
Former actor and failed politician Laurence Fox called Starmer a “traitor,” writing that he is on the “side” of “immigrant barbarians” who rape “British girls.” He finished the tweet with the threat of violence: “Fine. Then it’s war.” His tweet echoes Musk’s “civil war is inevitable.”
Following the Southport riot, Reform U.K. Member of Parliament Nigel Farage put out a video where he claimed the violence was a reaction to “fear, discomfort, to unease… I am worried, not just about the events in Southport, but about societal decline that is happening in our country… this prime minister does not have a clue… we need to start getting tough… Because what you’ve seen on the streets of Hartlepool, of London, of Southport, is nothing to what could happen over the next few weeks.”
In his video, Farage hints to the far-right trope of Western decline—an offshoot of the Great Replacement theory. He argues that the government is failing to protect its people. More importantly, he suggests that if the government fails to get "a clue," it will get worse. The violence, fear, and disorder will increase. And then what happens? What happens when violence leads to people no longer trusting the state?
This is part of the modern far right’s strategy: If the state cannot protect us from inevitable violence, it says, the far-right strongman can. Sowing fear, anxiety, and distrust in societal norms allows for the far right to achieve its ultimate aim: to replace democracy with a strong-man, authoritarian leader who can rule on a war footing.
This is the lesson of the 1930s. It’s one we cannot afford to forget in the 2020s.
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