Opposing Labour’s climate vandalism is difficult – and vital

September 8, 2025

By Les Levidow. Reposted with thanks from the Ecologist

A basic contradiction runs through UK climate policy. The government accepts that oil and gas extraction will increase, and that domestic uses will increase. It even promotes more airports and roads, thus intensifying climate vandalism. And yet ministers claim that their policy favours clean energy for decarbonisation, and progress towards Net Zero Emissions.

That claim should – and does – provoke suspicion, for many reasons beyond climate issues alone. 

To become Labour Party leader in 2020, Keir Starmer promised to extend Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing agenda through his “ten pledges”. He gradually abandoned most of them, even before the July 2024 general election. 

Demonstration in support of Andrew Boswell’s legal challenge to CCUS funding, at the Royal Courts of Justice, May 2025

Since then, the Labour government has provided pale versions of its only worthwhile commitments, maintained low-rate taxes for the wealthiest, and imposed welfare cuts on the most vulnerable people, supposedly necessary to avoid a large budget deficit.  It has weakened environmental regulations, which apparently are seen as restricting economic growth.

Critics once called the Labour Party “Tory-lite”, but now many call its government “worse than the Tories”.  The term “betrayal” now seems a gross understatement. 

Despite the government’s wider disrepute and climate vandalism, its dirty-energy policy has hardly been contested by climate campaigns, including NGOs and activist groups. Instead, they focus on specific issues. 

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Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’

December 20, 2024

The Labour government is helping to dress up Saudi Arabia’s criminal fossil fuel expansion drive in “green” colours.

As the prime minister flew to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, this month, his office told stories about hydrogen and carbon capture – technologies used by the Kingdom to pose as a friend of the “energy transition”.

Protest in Australia. Photo by Matt Hrkac. See “The top photo” at the end

Keir Starmer and his colleagues hope that, in return for this “green” PR, Saudi Arabia will invest some of its vast oil wealth in the UK’s own technofixes.

Simultaneously, the government made a guarantee worth billions of pounds to the oil companies BP and Equinor, to stifle a legal challenge to Net Zero Teesside, their risky carbon capture project, and the expansion of gas production that goes with it.

The government’s dystopian friendship with Riyadh is underpinned by policies that will add substantially to Saudi fossil fuel exports, and to the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere when they are burned.

Saudi policy provides for a 60% increase in gas production by 2030, a 25% expansion of its fossil-fuelled power generation capacity and a doubling of its oil-to-chemicals processing capacity. There are no plans to cut the Kingdom’s oil production, the third highest in the world behind the US and Russia[1] – and no signs that it intends to abandon its decades-long obstruction of intergovernmental climate agreements.

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Generating electricity: decarbonisation and profitability are not a match

June 13, 2024

A discussion article by PETER SOMERVILLE

Electricity generation is now largely privatised, and driven by market forces, across the world. It is not clear, though, whether such a system is up to delivering a transition from fossil fuels to renewable electricity fast enough to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Demonstration at Westminster in October 2022. A petition was delivered to the government, signed by 650,000 people, demanding a price structure to ensure everyone can afford electricity for basic necessities

Brett Christophers’ book, The Price is Wrong, reviewed here, provides a useful analysis of how the global system of electricity generation works. He explains how, without support in some form from government, renewable electricity cannot compete with fossil fuels in the longer term even if its price is lower.

Christophers argues that this is primarily because the rate of return on investment in fossil fuels is on average higher than in renewables, for a variety of reasons: insecurity of supply (absence of wind or sun), lack of grid connections and interconnections, and storage difficulties.

As global electricity demand continues to grow faster than renewable electricity supply (page 29), the gap between the two grows wider, and is filled predominantly by fossil fuels.

The key question, however, is: what is to be done? Here the picture is not so clear.

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Women standing up for mining communities, forty years on

March 4, 2024

The women’s groups formed to defend embattled mining communities in the 1984-85 strike marked their 40th anniversary in Durham on Saturday.

The celebration was organised by Women Against Pit Closures, which brought together the local groups that sprung up across the coalfields as the strike wore on.

Veterans of Women Against Pit Closures led Saturday’s march of 400 people through Durham

The national strike started 40 years ago this week, the culmination of a tide of anger among mineworkers and their communities at the plan to shut pits, and break the National Union of Mineworkers, devised by Margaret Thatcher’s Tory government.

It ended a year later, having slowed down but not stopped the pit closure programme.

The strike was a turning-point in many ways. Paramilitary police violence had been used in response to riots in predominantly black inner-city communities in 1981, but the sheer scale of the mobilisation against mining communities was unprecedented.

The Tories’ vengeful assault on the mineworkers’ union, which had played a central part in unseating Edward Heath’s government a decade earlier, was the first of a series of hammer-blows against organised labour. Then came the neoliberal offensive that dismantled chunks of the welfare state and drove down living standards.

But the strike also transformed the labour movement. The women of mining communities were central to that.

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Community action kills off hydrogen greenwash plan

July 12, 2023

Community mobilisation in Whitby, Merseyside, has forced the UK government to drop plans to test hydrogen heating in 2000 homes there.

Lord Martin Callanan, energy security minister, announced in a tweet on Monday that the trial had “no strong local support” and would be scrapped.

Campaigners against the hydrogen-for-homes scheme in Whitby, Merseyside. Photo from HyNot facebook feed

The decision follows months of campaigning by Whitby residents, who feared that the HyNet scheme to convert the gas grid to hydrogen would bring a greater risk of explosions, nitrous oxide emissions and uncertainty.

They were strongly supported by the HyNot campaign group – and by energy systems researchers who oppose hydrogen for home heating. They point out that a combination of insulation and electric heat pumps is four or five times more energy-efficient than hydrogen, and effectively reduces fossil fuel use.

Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project and Tom Baxter of Strathclyde University, who are among the many specialists who have lambasted the government’s approach, spoke at a virtual public meeting in Whitby called by residents in November last year.

The government’s plan has obstructed the use of tried, tested and truly carbon-free technologies, such as heat pumps, for the sake of a survival strategy for oil and gas companies.

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Cut motor traffic. Live better lives. Tackle climate change

September 16, 2022

By Simon Pirani

The borough of Greenwich, south east London, plans to cut car traffic by 45% by 2030 – but even that will produce less than half the greenhouse gas emissions reductions that climate scientists say are needed.

The proposal to cut back traffic is a good start to a conversation about transforming urban transport, I argued this week in a response to the council’s draft Transport Strategy. But only a start. (Download the full response here.)

Copenhagen. But coming to south east London soon. Photo by heb@Wikimedia Commons

Better still would be to set carbon budgets – limits on the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted during specific time periods – and use them as a framework for transport and other policies.

Such budgets can concentrate minds on policies to improve people’s lives, while contributing to tackling climate change at the same time. Better, cheaper public transport and support for non-car ways of travelling, e.g. bikes and walking, all help.

Transport is the second-biggest cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Greenwich; heat, electricity and cooking fuel for homes and other buildings is the first. 

In 2019, Greenwich was one of many local authorities that declared a “climate emergency” in response to school pupils’ strikes demanding action on climate, and Extinction Rebellion’s direct action campaign. Even the UK parliament claimed to recognise this emergency.

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Two enemies, one fight: climate disaster and frightful energy bills

May 16, 2022

Two clouds darken the sky. A close-up one: gas and electricity bills have shot up since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and millions of families are struggling to pay. And a bigger, darker, higher one: the climate disaster, and politicians’ refusal to tackle it.

Ultimately, both these threats have a single cause: fossil fuels and the systems of wealth and power that depend on them. We need social movements to link the fight to protect families from unaffordable bills with the fight to move beyond fossil fuels, and in that way turn back global warming.

Here I suggest ways to develop such a movement in the UK, starting by demanding action on home heating.

Photo by Fuel Poverty Action

Two linked crises

Since the government lifted the price cap on energy bills on 1 April, the average energy bill for 18 million households on standard tariffs rose to £1971 per year, from £1277. Another 4.5 million households on pre-payment schemes are paying an average of £2017 per year. And in October, bills could well rise above £3000.

There are now 6.3 million UK households (including 2.5 million with children) in fuel poverty, meaning that they are unable to heat their home to an adequate temperature. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition says that could rise to 8.5 million by the end of this year.

The main fuels for UK homes are gas, and electricity produced from gas and nuclear power. Retail prices have been driven up by a rise in gas, oil and coal prices on world markets – which started rising last year, as economies recovered from the pandemic, but shot upwards faster from March, after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The war, and sanctions on Russia by western powers, could keep fossil fuel prices high for years. They have also driven global food prices upwards. This is the biggest bout of inflation worldwide since the 1970s.

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The ‘energy security’ strategy that promises more oil and gas

May 16, 2022

In this guest post, PETER SOMERVILLE examines the UK government’s “energy security strategy”

The UK government’s energy security strategy avoids bold measures to decarbonise the economy. Its claimed aims are to “build a British energy system that is much more self-sufficient” (page 6), and specifically to “reduce our dependence on imported oil and gas” (page 5) – but it will not even do that effectively, either.

Broadly, the strategy, published last month, fails in four ways:

Firstly, the strategy provides insufficient support for the development of renewable energy, given the urgency of the climate and energy crisis.

XR Scientists demonstrate at the Shell headquarters in London, 6 April

In comparison, its support for so-called “low carbon” development looks both disproportionate and less certain of achieving the immediate progress that is now required. Taken together with its support for new gas projects, this is difficult to explain except in terms of the power of the nuclear and fossil fuel lobbies, which effectively remains unchallenged. The strategy doesn’t even begin to get to grips with nature-based solutions.

Secondly, the strategy has very little to say about reducing energy demand, e.g. from retrofitting, by reducing car use, by stopping airport expansion, and so on. It doesn’t mention increasing carbon tax on industry as one means to encourage a shift towards using renewable energy instead of fossil fuels.

Even that would not be enough, however. More radical ways forward need to be considered, such as new forms of public and community ownership; rapid, binding targets for phasing down and phasing out fossil fuels, cap and share schemes,[1] and much more.

Energy rationing may sound drastic but it would be a clear way forward and may well become necessary in time. In the meantime, a windfall tax on the big energy companies and a wealth tax would be useful for meeting people’s immediate needs.

Thirdly, the strategy has nothing to say about how the impending climate crisis will affect energy security, e.g. droughts and floods affecting energy generation and supply.

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The UK government’s Net Zero Strategy just does not add up

November 29, 2021

The UK government claims, extravagantly, that it is aiming for “net zero”. But the devil is in the detail. Here, PETER SOMERVILLE goes through the government’s Net Zero Strategy with a fine-toothed comb – and shows how its promises are exaggerated and its numbers don’t add up. It falls to pieces in your hands

When government ministers published their Ten Point Plan a year ago, they recognised that it did not go far enough to fulfil their international commitment to reducing carbon emissions. One year on, their Net Zero Strategy (NZS) goes a little further, but still falls far short of what is required. The problems inherent in the original plan persist, namely:

  • A failure to recognise that the world is now experiencing a climate emergency, and therefore that more drastic action is required in the short term (before 2025) to reduce carbon emissions. The reductions up to 2025 are minimal (page 18, Fig 1, or p. 77, Fig 13. Note: all page numbers in this article refer to the Net Zero Strategy, unless stated otherwise.)
  • A continuing (and increasing) reliance on problematic technologies that do not currently exist at scale, particularly carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS), and direct air carbon capture.
  • A failure to explain clearly how expected future carbon savings have been calculated, particularly in industry, buildings and transport.
  • A neglect of issues relating to agriculture, food, land use and energy storage.
  • An emphasis on constructing new nuclear power plants, with a new (from 2022) Future Nuclear Enabling Fund of £120 million, but – as the UK FIRES commentary on the government’s plan shows – with no net increase in nuclear power capacity likely until after 2030. In the meantime, construction work adds significantly to carbon emissions.
  • An emphasis on GDP growth, despite the strong correlation between such growth and increasing carbon emissions.
  • A lack of clarity about how specific policies could achieve intended emission reductions, e.g. on hydrogen.
  • A failure to curb the expansion of aviation to 2030 and beyond (an expansion that is encouraged rather than hindered by the latest spending review’s decision to cut air passenger duty).
  • A failure to take account of other government programmes that increase rather than reduce emissions, e.g. increased spending on roads (£27 billion) and defence (£24 billion) up to 2024.
London demonstration, 6 November

The government has already committed to invest £25.5 billion for a Green Industrial Revolution (£12 billion under the Ten Point Plan, £9.7 billion for 18 deals at the Global Investment Summit in October 2021, and £5.8 billion on other sustainable projects since the Ten Point Plan). Together with £40 billion for the new UK Infrastructure Bank (p. 206), and leveraging £90 billion of private investment, this funding is expected to support 440,000 jobs in 2030 (pp. 16, 17 and 49).

The NZS describes three future scenarios, but arguably only Scenario 1 (high electrification) is really worth considering.

□ Even Scenario 1 has serious limitations. For example, as with the other scenarios, it takes no direct account of uncertainty about future technology costs and availability (p. 316). So much for the precautionary principle, one might argue.

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Let’s recognise care as a social good

November 23, 2021

The campaign for a National Care Service in Scotland: a contribution to a discussion. By HILARY HORROCKS (Edinburgh trades union council delegate)

Health is a devolved matter in the not-so-United Kingdom, and that has allowed successive Scottish governments to bring in progressive measures that are missing in England, such as abolition of prescription charges for everyone and free personal care for the elderly.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) government certainly sought to distance itself from Westminster during the first stages of the Covid pandemic, when it seemed to follow scientific advice more carefully, and kept the public better informed with daily briefings by the First Minister.

Care workers joined a lobby of Edinburgh Council in September against the closure of four care homes in the city. Photo by Craig Maclean

Between the first and second waves of Covid last year the virus was just about eliminated in Scotland – but like Westminster, the government at Holyrood failed to use the summer to bring in mitigating measures to reduce infection. So in the autumn, the return of schools and universities, coupled with the loosening of restrictions, led to a rise in cases similar to England’s.

Mask wearing has remained a legal requirement in Scotland, including for all secondary school pupils, and is generally well observed – but cases remain worryingly high, particularly in poorer areas.

Here, as in England and Wales, the terrible toll of deaths in care homes at the beginning of the pandemic brutally exposed the disastrous policy of freeing up NHS beds by transferring elderly hospital patients to care homes with no proper testing.

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