You and I both know that fossil fuels are the main cause of climate change, right? It’s a very basic fact, and yet to look at the global response to the crisis, you wouldn’t know it. The Paris Agreement doesn’t mention fossil fuels. Year after year, international negotiations fail to agree to phase them out. With a handful of exceptions, governments talk about their net zero ambitions while still planning to exploit their remaining reserves of oil, coal and gas.
Just last week at the G20, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak boasted that “democracies like the UK – not authoritarian regimes – are leading the fight on global challenges like development and climate change.” But the government he leads has given the green light to new coal mines for the first time in a generation, and issued 100 licences for new oil and gas over the summer.
This, he insisted, “was entirely consistent with transitioning to net zero” – an extraordinary bit of Orwellian doublethink that’s no different from ordering a steak and declaring it to be entirely consistent with vegetarianism.
The climate movement has talked a lot about science and targets. A specific resistance to fossil fuels is overdue. Divestment campaigns and radical groups like Just Stop Oil have broken the ground, and this weekend sees a larger mobilisation against fossil fuels.
Over 650 actions are planned around the globe as part of Fight Fossil Fuels, demanding an end to new fossil fuels. They should be phased out, and this needs to be done fairly so that communities that depend on their extraction are not abandoned. Or as the campaign summarises it, the end of fossil fuels must be “fast, fair and forever.”
The Earthbound Report 