Rishi Sunak Becomes the Wrong Kind of Climate Radical - Bloomberg
Rishi Sunak Becomes the Wrong Kind of Climate Radical - Bloomberg
Rishi Sunak Becomes the Wrong Kind of Climate Radical
UK prime minister says more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea will be good for the planet.
Rishi Sunak speaks to the media during his visit to Shell St Fergus Gas Plant in Peterhead, on Monday in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Photographer: WPA Pool/Getty Images Europe
It takes some astonishing mental gymnastics to believe that increasing production of fossil fuels is good for the climate. But that’s the message British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is selling with his approval of 100 new North Sea oil and gas licenses.
Speaking to broadcasters while visiting Scotland on Monday, Sunak claimed that drilling for more oil and gas is “entirely consistent with our plan to get to net zero” and that producing such energy domestically saves “two, three, four times the amount of carbon emissions.” He failed to mention that the vast majority of emissions from oil and gas comes when you actually burn the stuff and that we get about 77% of our imported gas via pipeline from Norway which is, by the North Sea Transition Authority’s own analysis, less than half the carbon intensity of domestically produced gas.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate: geoengineering
As the threat of climate change has gone from theoretical to apparent, proposals for a more aggressive attempt at mitigation through geoengineering have gained currency in some scientific corners, drawn skepticism or outright opposition in others. Prospects for geoengineering would likely improve in inverse proportion to prospects for nations to hit their emissions targets to slow, then reverse the warming of the planet.