Tag Archives: fossil fuels

David Brunnen

DON’T PANIC: Responding to our Climate Emergency – The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

By David Brunnen | Fri 19th November 2021 - 8:29 am

Just when we reach for it, we realise The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy can only be found on the Fiction shelves. F – not SF – with barely a hint of science warped to suggest credibility. But, oh, how we chuckled at the patently preposterous existential crisis for a planet Earth where no-one had bothered to read the planning notices.

But today our self-inflicted existential crisis is no comedic platform. Novelists prefer the dystopian where borders blurred by reality are fading into climatic irrelevance. COP26 (or COPout26 as some insist) reduced COP President, Alok ‘down, but not out’ Sharma, to tears and moved manipulative mindsets to imagine novel ways of avoiding reality. But, as Jason Hickel writes, “If we accept the facts of climate change, we also have to accept the radical changes necessary to address it.”

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 8 Comments
Mary Reid

LibLink: Ed Davey says private capital must switch from dirty to clean

By Mary Reid | Fri 27th August 2021 - 3:25 pm

Now here’s an interesting thought. Why not ban any new listings of fossil fuel companies on the London Stock Exchange?

Ed Davey flags up this idea in an interview with The Guardian today to mark his first year as Party Leader.

Under the plan outlined to the Guardian by the Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, another immediate policy would be to stop new bonds being issued in London to finance oil, coal or gas exploration.

Fossil fuel firms already listed in the UK would then have two years to produce a coherent plan about how they would reach net zero emissions by 2045, or risk being struck off the LSE.

In the longer term, pension funds would have to disinvest from fossil fuels by 2035, with all companies with fossil fuel assets removed from the exchange by 2045.

Ed said:

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Posted in LibLink | Also tagged and | 11 Comments
The Voice

LibLink … Ed Davey: Britain must signal the beginning of the end for coal investment

By The Voice | Wed 18th March 2015 - 12:00 pm

Ed Davey Social Liberal Forum conference Jul 19 2014 Photo by Paul WalterEd Davey writes in the Guardian:

For over 200 years, modern civilisation has been built on fossil fuels; now climate science says we must phase out fossil fuel pollution in just a few decades. That’s a colossal challenge – especially if we are to keep anything resembling current lifestyles while also ending the poverty that blights the lives of more than 1 billion fellow human beings.

We are already seeing a significant shift in thinking. The Rockefeller Foundation is divesting from coal and tar sands. Oxford University is considering similar action. And the Bank of England is analysing the impact on financial systems of fossil fuel investments becoming “stranded assets” – in other words worthless – if the world gets its act together on climate change.

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Cara Jenkinson

Opinion: Insulation not fossil fuel subsidies

By Cara Jenkinson | Thu 29th January 2015 - 10:38 am

Earlier this week parliament overwhelmingly rejected an amendment to the Infrastructure Bill calling for a moratorium on fracking.

The challenge that the UK faces is that we are particularly dependent on natural gas. The vast majority of us have gas boilers and heating makes up much of the gas used in the UK. Weaning ourselves off gas boilers isn’t easy. There are renewable alternatives such as heat pumps but these only work in very well insulated homes. And there’s the rub. Around 70% of homes in the UK are still not well insulated, and a good portion of those have solid walls which are difficult and expensive to insulate.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 46 Comments
NewsHound

Davey: We need to look at rules on transparency of fossil fuel investments

By NewsHound | Thu 11th December 2014 - 10:59 am

The Financial Times reports:

Britain’s energy secretary has called for tougher rules to be applied to companies holding “risky” fossil fuel assets that could plunge in value because of global action to tackle climate change.
Ed Davey’s move makes him one of the first senior politicians to weigh into a growing debate on the future of oil, gas and coal companies as governments work on sealing a global climate deal in Paris next year.

“We’re seeing a move from a carbon economy to a climate economy,” Mr Davey told reporters on the sidelines of UN talks in Lima shaping the Paris agreement.

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Simon Oliver

Opinion: How the market will decide our energy future

By Simon Oliver | Fri 12th August 2011 - 9:49 am

Recently articles from both the TUC and CBI have bemoaned the burden of increasing energy costs on energy intensive businesses. Both organisations make the rather obvious error in thinking that a carbon price will inevitably drive the cost of energy upwards. In fact, the opposite is true. The stronger the price signal, the faster the market works to balance supply with demand.

The supply of fossil fuels is finite. Conventional oil has already peaked its supply (as admitted by the chief economist of the IEA) and tar sands and fracking are far too damaging to the environment to continue as …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 25 Comments
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    Liberalism has evolved over the centuries with many different names and alliances .That is good in terms of development of progressive politics . We are clearly...
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    @ Peter, Having briefly looked at the Legatum Institute report that you refer to, whilst I take your general point, their scoring system is a bit quirky. Mid...
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    @ Joe, Yes there is poverty in London but that still doesn't change the fact that London and the SE of England are where the wealth is. There would be less p...
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    I watched the programme and almost choked on my G&T when hearing 'an investor' stating that the public sector couldn't run anything efficiently... Despite ...
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