Carbon Cakeism in the face of a Creeping Climate Catastrophe
This morning the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak approved 100 new oil and gas licenses for the North Sea saying that this was part of the Government’s Net Zero plan. A bit like building a cigarette factory as part of a public health drive, if you ask me.
The Government’s argument is that ‘domestic hydrocarbons’ have a lower carbon footprint than imported oil and gas and provides energy security. This ignores the fact that, rather than being stored for exclusively domestic use, oil and gas is traded on international markets so you never know whether the fuel you put in your car came from the North Sea or from across the Atlantic.
The Government simultaneously announced a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) facility. While CCS will almost certainly play a role in hitting Net Zero, creating pollution and then paying someone to collect and store it forever is incredibly inefficient – far better to avoid creating the problem in the first place. This expensive end-of-pipe strategy is particularly puzzling when we’re constantly told that the Net Zero transition might be ‘too expensive’. My main worry is the CCS concept allows decision makers to put off making difficult decisions, fooling themselves they’re actually doing something.
These announcements come after a weekend of screeching u-turns from the Government on transport policy, including announcing a review into the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) the Government has been funding for the last few years. Presumably all the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods built/retrofitted since the war are exempt or we’ll see roads bulldozed through leafy cul-de-sacs.
“I’m on the motorists’ side” proclaimed Sunak. This again ignores the Net Zero models which suggest we need to see a 16-20% reduction in car miles travelled for the UK to hit Net Zero. It’s also a pretty desperate plea for votes at a time when the Government’s polling looks dire. Even former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the man for who the term ‘cakeism’ was coined (ie having your cake and eating it), knew we needed to act on transport.
I get incredibly frustrated by all this. Voices on the right of politics claim that the right to pollute at zero cost is a human right, many of the left like to portray individuals as victims of Governments, industry and capitalism. Both try to tell us that change can or should be ‘pain’ free – I’ve even seen several Sustainability professionals protest against traffic management schemes that impact their (polluting) travel patterns.
All this against a backdrop of extreme weather across the US, Europe and China. It’s about time we all woke up and smelt the low carbon coffee and decided whether we want to have our cake or eat it, because we can’t do both.