What’s the safety case for the planet?

It’s not often an entire train of thought is triggered by a report on an unusual event in the world of ornithology.

But when I read recently that “Rainbow Birds” from southern Europe and Northern Africa were trying to breed in the UK, I took it as yet another serious indication of how rapidly the effects of climate change are taking hold on our planet.

Temperatures in France and Spain have reached well over 40°C in mid June with some parts of Spain peaking at close to 50°C. India and Pakistan experienced unheard of temperatures of nearly 50°C in May. Nepal is moving its Everest Base Camp for the first time in 70 years, as global warming is causing crevasses to appear in the ground where climbers sleep. Bangladesh and India are now suffering from the worst floods in decades and Africa is experiencing extreme drought.

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has reached new record levels at 418.1 ppm, there is extreme heating in the Barents Sea region with temperatures rising by up to 2.7°C in a decade but with much higher rises in the autumn of up to 4°C per decade. This makes the North Barents Sea and its islands the fastest warming place on Earth.

Add to this that temperatures in Antarctica reached a staggering 40°C above normal in March and near the North Pole temperatures reached 30°C above normal reaching levels which are normally only reached far later in the year.

© Shutterstock / Sk Hasan Ali

We all know the cause of this is burning oil and gas so I can’t help but feel that concern about the standards of safety in the oil and gas industry has become the ultimate irony when it is apparent that the industry itself is actually making life for all of us who inhabit this world increasingly unsafe.

What’s our reaction to all this here?  We’re going to pour money into decarbonising oil and gas production using solutions such as electrification. It’s frankly a huge insult to our intelligence.  Its impact on climate change will be minimal and probably immeasurable whilst we’re still producing and burning oil and gas at the rate we are.

In the same vein the highly respected Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a recent review of the carbon capture sector entitled “Carbon Removal Hype is becoming a Dangerous Distraction”.

The priority must be to stop burning fossil fuels

In broad terms the MIT is saying – quite rightly in my view – that it’s an almost impossible task and that the emphasis and the money should be going to reducing emissions.  David Keith, a Harvard climate scientist who in 2009 founded the “Direct Air Capture” company Carbon Engineering that’s vying to build a system in Peterhead as part of the Acorn CCS project said “It’s adding confusion and thereby distracting from the set of immediate cost-effective actions needed to cut emissions”.

Of course it is.  The absolute priority for the planet must be to stop burning hydrocarbons but when an “unprecedented” declaration is signed by five former UK and Scottish Government ministers urging support for the oil and gas industry I really have to scratch my head and wonder what on earth is going on.

© Derek Ironside/ Newsline

The five also called for an end to damaging “polarised” views that backing for North Sea oil and gas and renewables are in opposition, urging support for the sector amid the transition.

I mean how barmy is this? Of course they’re in opposition. One direction has been proven to be destroying this wonderful world of ours and the other offers a chance to save it.

But don’t misunderstand me. I’m not calling for a complete overnight cessation of oil and gas activities I’m calling for a very rapid ramping up of the development and manufacturing of renewables so that we can more easily and quickly displace oil and gas and of course achieve the elusive so called “Just Transition” to maintain employment levels.

But of course we know this isn’t happening. We’re still doing almost none of the sector critical high skill high value manufacturing that will get us to Net Zero.  I didn’t hear those ex Ministers talking about that.

The UN secretary general António Guterres said recently that fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them “have humanity by the throat”.  He has a point even if some of those companies are making genuine efforts to change things.

But let the oil and gas industry write a safety case for the planet. It should be eye opening because what else could they say other than “we must get ourselves out of this business”.