The world is boiling so why on earth are the Tories turning up the gas?

You almost couldn’t make it up. Just as the climate is signalling more strongly than ever that we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, the UK government has today announced that they will issue hundreds of new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

Temperature records around the world have been not just broken, but smashed. Various parts of the world are seeing their worst wildfires on record. The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key component of the Gulf Stream, could be dangerously close to collapse.

Global food security is alarmingly fragile – as India’s recent ban on certain rice exports demonstrates. The UN, the International Energy Agency and thousands of climate scientists are all unequivocal: there is no room for any new fossil fuel extraction if we are to have any hope of averting climate breakdown. As the head of the UN, Antonio Guterres, warned just three days ago: “The era of global boiling has arrived.”

Boiling is an apt description. We are now like the proverbial frog in the slowly warming pot of water – not responding to our dire situation until it is too late. Instead of heeding the warnings of climate scientists and indeed the warnings of the planet itself, the UK government is turning up the gas.

It looks as though the government is putting the short-term economic interests of oil and gas companies above the survivability of its own citizens. In my view, it is using weak arguments of “energy security” and “economic growth” to pander to its vested interests.

I believe the issuing of these licences will result in millions of additional tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and cement the path to an unlivable future. Yet the government spuriously claims that not granting the licences would cause energy bills to soar even higher, lead to energy insecurity and would harm the economy. To my knowledge, none of these claims are true.

The licences will not reduce energy bills because the cost of oil and gas is mostly determined by international energy prices, of which the UK’s oil production has very little influence. Even Kwasi Kwarteng in February 2022 tweeted that an increase in UK oil and gas production would “not affect the wholesale market price”, and that “UK producers won’t sell gas below the market price. They’re not charities.”

If the government was truly worried about energy prices, then it would be working hard to reduce demand for energy consumption – for example by improving the efficiency of our housing stock and modernising our public transport.

It would also be massively increasing wind and solar production, which are already an order of magnitude cheaper than fossil fuels, according to analysis from Carbon Brief. This could be funded by freeing up the billions of pounds that the government currently pays in fossil fuel subsidies and is of course a huge job creation opportunity: meaningful jobs, with long-term prospects.

On average, it takes 28 years from the granting of new oil and gas licences to their coming on stream, so it is hardly a way to increase energy production in the short-term. As the UK decarbonises its energy infrastructure, reliance on imported oil and gas will decrease, regardless of whether these licences are granted or not.

By the time these new oilfields come online, the UK should be mostly independent from fossil fuels, likely leading to these oil fields becoming stranded assets and leaving the government’s estimated 50,000 new workers facing redundancy. In contrast, the Climate Change Committee has estimated that the green energy transition could create up to 725,000 net new jobs by 2030. It seems to me, therefore, to be bogus to argue for new fossil fuel extraction on the grounds of job creation.

The oil and gas produced from these oilfields will belong to the licence holder, many of whom are multinational companies based overseas. According to the campaign group Uplift, around 80 per cent of the oil already being produced in the North Sea is currently exported. Even during the energy crisis in 2022, the UK massively increased gas exports.

But then, surely Grant Shapps, the ironically titled “secretary of state for energy security and net zero” – and the government – know all this? From what I have seen, instead of listening to the overwhelming evidence that the licences have no short or long-term benefit, and will cause irreparable harm to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, they have decided to weaponise the issue for political gain.

If we are to have any hope of tackling climate breakdown, we must get so much better at holding to account this kind of apparent manipulation of public opinion. We all need to scream whenever we suspect that we are being taken for a ride like this.

Mike Berners-Lee is an environmental consultant and a professor of Social Futures at Lancaster University