This pressure is translating into action. As climate impacts accelerate – the world is boiling, burning, flooding and melting – there is unprecedented pressure on all companies to start taking their own role in the crisis far more seriously. Even if we immediately phased out oil and gas, emissions from agriculture alone may make it impossible to limit warming to the 1.5C goal in the Paris agreement.Īcross a slew of sectors from food and fast fashion to construction and heavy industry, companies have helped drive climate chaos. The products of just 100 private and state-owned fossil fuel companies were linked to 71% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988, according to a groundbreaking 2017 report.Ī subsequent Guardian investigation in 2019 found 20 fossil fuel companies, including Chevron and ExxonMobil, were responsible for more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions since 1965 – the point at which experts say fossil fuel companies were aware of the link between their products and climate change.īut it’s not just fossil fuel companies fueling the climate crisis. We’ve got to look now and make decisions for how we have a global competitiveness in our green industry, and make sure that we see jobs transition over a period of time in a planned way, working with unions, so that everyone who has got those skills now in other energy sectors will be able to transition to be part of that future.When trying to ascribe responsibility for the climate crisis, it’s hard to overstate the outsized role fossil fuel companies have played. “And other countries, frankly, are ahead of us in this race. “We’re not going to be able to build those new turbines, wind turbines or solar energy or look at hydrogen as a future, or look at carbon capture and storage without having some of that sovereign capability here. Starmer, the Labour leader, was to visit British Steel on Thursday to outline plans for investing in it as a “foundation industry”, she added. Malhotra said the move was necessary because “a just transition means having a plan now for how you’re going to see some of those jobs and those skills transfer to where the future is”. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. For more information see our Privacy Policy. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. It has been criticised by the Conservatives, but welcomed by the UK’s most senior climate adviser, John Gummer, who was also a Conservative environment secretary in the 1990s. Labour has said it expects its plan to shift the focus to renewables to create up to half a million jobs in the industry, including at least 50,000 in Scotland. The number of workers directly employed on oil and gas fields in the North Sea are estimated at 20,000, with a further 200,000 jobs onshore. Sharon Graham, the leader of Unite, said last week that Keir Starmer’s announcement had “left out everything that was important – the detail”, and that he should have been clear workers would not be hammered by the transition. Gary Smith, the general secretary of GMB, said on Sunday that Labour had “got it wrong” and risked creating “a cliff-edge with oil and gas extraction from the North Sea”. A rift has been growing within Labour since news of the pledge to end new oil and gas extraction emerged.
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