More than 200 organisations, including the Women’s Institute, have joined celebrities and climate campaigners to oppose plans to develop the Rosebank oilfield off Shetland.
They have written an open letter to prime minister Rishi Sunak arguing that Rosebank would have a devastating impact on the climate.
The signatories include comedians Frankie Boyle and Aisling Bea, popstar Aurora and climate activist Vanessa Nakate, along with organisations, such as Cafod, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam, RSPB, the Wildlife Trusts and WWF.
They also criticise the investment allowance, introduced as part of the windfall tax, which gave oil and gas companies 91% tax relief on investments.
This means the UK public would carry almost all the costs of developing Rosebank, the signatories said. The would-be operator, the Norwegian owned company, Equinor, would receive more than £500m in tax breaks if the field were developed, they said.
In a YouGov poll this month, 70% of people disagreed with the investment allowance policy and 47% strongly disagreed. 10% thought taxpayers should help finance new drilling.
The Rosebank field is the UK’s largest undeveloped oil and gas field and is three times larger than the neighbouring Cambo oil field.
The letter said developing Rosebank would “not help UK energy security” or lower prices because its reserve were 90% oil, most of which was likely to be exported.
The signatories said emissions from burning Rosebank’s reserves would equal the combined annual CO2 emissions of the 28 lowest incomes countries in the world.
Frankie Boyle said:
“Approving Rosebank makes no sense. We’re in a climate emergency, renewable energy is so much cheaper, and anyway this is oil for export.
“The only winners would be the oil and gas companies that own these reserves off the Shetland coast.”
Vanessa Nakate said the UK government must refuse permission to develop Rosebank:
“The need to end our global addiction to fossil fuels is crystal clear, yet if the UK government approves Rosebank it will keep pumping out oil until 2051.
“The UK needs to take responsibility, care about people around the world who are already living with the climate crisis and protect young people and generations to come who will have to face the consequences of these decisions.”
Tessa Khan, executive director of the campaign group, Uplift, said the government must end the investment allowance introduced in the windfall tax:
“It is crystal clear from this polling that the public are overwhelmingly against giving billions in state subsidies to oil and gas companies, especially when they are making eye-watering profits.
“The last thing this industry needs is more public handouts and yet that’s what this government is giving them. This cannot be allowed to continue.”
Categories: Opposition, slider
DRILL OR DROP? 
A process you should engage in, Martin.
“ I believe Robin started the thread about pensions, 1720. Paul is the moderator of debate on this site. He does a difficult job but it is his to do. Not sure there is a need for another.” Quite, Martin.
“ You still want to debate something else, 1720? I can understand why but yet to understand why you think this is the forum to do so.”
Sic.
Hard to believe that both of these quotations come from the same plastic keyboard.
Do try reading your own posts, Martin.
Regarding my (much) earlier incorrect restricting of the current use of the word ‘fact’, Martin, this is something I conceded and apologised for at the time. It’s called integrity, Martin. You can harp on about this as much as you like, as you can about my suggestion – no more, merely a suggestion – that your authority on the efficacy of renewables might have changed his mind had data been available to him which was not at the time of his early sad death. This fact you continually misrepresent. Is this integrity?
I was however talking in the abstract about a word., Martin, the word ‘fact’. At the same time you were resolute in refusing to accept publicly the fact of the anthropogenic nature of climate change as primarily responsible for global heating, pronouncing that the main cause of global heating was population growth – a position to which you hold, though puzzling to many, but one to which you are entitled, providing you do not mind your readers using this position as a filter for all your other views. In the meantime you post as though you were one of a community that seeks to reduce and eliminate man’s huge contribution to global heating. Is this integrity?
You insinuate that I have a habit of “ waving the white flag and withdrawing from a discussion when it all goes horribly wrong.” I think any luckless reader who has been willing to keep up with my posts, usually a reaction to yours, will be able to form his/her own opinion on the integrity underlying this interpretation of the facts., and its relevance. I withdraw when I can see the discussion is going nowhere as one of the parties does not accept the basic premise of the major contribution of man to global heating.
Well, 1720, anyone reading that sorry garbled excuse from yourself, will indeed have made their own conclusion.
Deflection away from the FACT that Robin started the thread around pensions, that I followed. A subject that had previously been suggested by DoD was worthy of consideration. A subject I consider is still a red herring.
Then you continue to propose that I have made statements that I have not.
Then you suggest that an expert in his subject would have changed his mind, although he made quite clear whilst he was alive that it was the arithmetic and physics that made up his mind. Now, I realize you have frequently ignored the laws of arithmetic and physics, but that is you not him. The guy was not on about the efficacy of renewables, he was on about whether they could offer what others were suggesting-and still do. The huge investment in new nuclear was being denied at the time, it has now been sneaked out it is required. Why was it denied? Because the cheap renewable argument had to be made-cynical or what? That’s what the politicians do, and were doing, and he was cautioning against that. His writing made it quite clear, he knew the physics and the arithmetic and knew it would be required. True and fact, both are now evident. Your contrived attempt to alter what is now evidently true and fact is more of your same.
Yes, you apologized for your attempt to show your superior knowledge as a user of words, such as fact. However, the part of the definition you conveniently removed regarding “fact” was the “true” bit. The apology does not appear to have been remembered going forward. It is a typical mechanism of the activist, lazy and very obvious. Your slip just makes it worse in your case.
Indeed, there may be others that you habitually post on behalf of who share your views, although they do seem to be largely absent in doing so, but that is why I do decide for myself what to discuss and with whom-even with a Lib. Dem.
(I have a daughter in law who has the record of making them cry-well, three should be a record- when they knock on her door, supplied with data that she has a son with special needs, but unfortunately not supplied with data about their abject failure to previously deal with some issues she has raised with them around that! Moderation does not come into her vocabulary under such circumstances. My son doesn’t help, with “this one’s in yellow, yours dear.” He is also very keen to make sure his pension will enable him to keep supporting his son in the future, because he is well aware his vote will not do so. He did actually have one Lib.Dem. MP call in to his workplace last week. Hope they informed the Tory MP who is currently elected for that constituency!)
Gosh, a whole post without a ‘Yep’ or a ‘Nope’!
Reference your third para in the 10.01am posting yesterday, you might (some hope!) be embarrassed to read part of an exchange on August 27th last year, after which you seem to have waved “the white flag and withdrawn from the discussion when it all (went) horribly wrong”:
Me – “What can I say? Why does anyone bother? Once again, here is the exchange of July 30th.,shortened to spare any chance reader the tedium of reading the whole thing again: Me: “……Do you accept that fossil fuels have played by far the largest part in this process? I’m guessing, only guessing of course, that your answer is ‘No’.” Martin’s answer: “ Yes, my answer is no. The numbers of people now on the planet have played the largest part……….” QED and the cue to ending this conversation devoid of integrity on the part of one of us. Which part of the opening sentences in your 10.48 posting do you not understand, Martin?”
I repeat the last two sentences of the reproduced conversation above.
As for your points about my comments on a possible change of mind by the sadly lost Prof. MacKay – comments which I said at the time could obviously not be proven, I think most native speakers of British English, Martin, would be happy to understand by the word ‘efficacy’ in relation to renewables both that they work in this context and that they could have the desired effect in eventually replacing FFs. However consider yourself exempt from the need to portray my assumptions as ‘facts’. I confirm that they are not facts concerning MacKay’s thoughts.
And you continue to ramble on about ‘facts’. Yes, Martin, I got it wrong. See posting below from April 24th. last year-
“ Reluctantly, Martin, I have to concede that you are correct in attributing more than one meaning to the word ‘fact’. I was relying on the etymological sense but your example proves me wrong in asserting that mine was the only sense of the word. I apologise.
I wish I could be as ready in conceding sense to the rest of your post.”
Now can you let it rest and account for your own posts? It’s not embarrassing in the slightest, just puerile and tedious.
I refrain from comment on the rest of your post above, Martin, as it’s beyond my intellectual capabilities. Or to put it crudely, what on Earth are you talking about? We don’t have time for this as you connive at the planet’s demise.
You still don’t get it, do you 1720?
Thank you for posting PART of my response. Usual desperate tactic but part way there.
Okay, 1720 if one family grows rice for their consumption, how much methane is produced? If billions of families do the same, how much methane is produced? If they don’t produce the rice, what happens? If those billions need power to produce that rice, how do they achieve that? Could do the same for cows, but that would be redirected towards the veggies virtue. Could do similar for most other food and water supply where, surprise, surprise, billions need a lot more than one family and how do they achieve that without items such as fertilizer? A lot of BS in this world, but not that much. If billions want stuff imported by maritime transport what are the consequences? The data is there, 1720. Don’t be confused by yachts. Takes £millions of investment to get one activist over the Atlantic via that means. Still with the assistance of a plastic bucket!
Yet this site concentrates attention upon a miniscule amount of methane leaking from UK on shore sites, one of which is a stones throw away from where methane has been leaking into the sea in much larger quantities for a very long time, and often surrounded by cattle! Obviously excites some, whilst the science teachers still squat on the sea shore setting light to the shale to educate the kids. I go with the education bit.
As you are incapable of arithmetic I don’t expect you to grasp the nettle, but it is rather important. So are facts. So are comments from experts, since shown to be correct, that have to be dismissed with nonsense fabrication about after death conversions, even whilst after death the comments have been proven correct, to the tune of £200B.
Revert to your yurt, 1720, but even then billions of yurts require a lot of stuff-including plastic keyboards, whilst awaiting an early death through lack of food and modern medicine.
Reblogged this on Wessex Solidarity.