Who is responsible for climate change?

Who should be taking the heat for climate change? Curtis Daly has the answer.

Video transcript

The met office has issued its first ever extreme heat warning in Britain, with people and infrastructure struggling to cope. This is another case of volatile weather due to climate change. The question is…. who is responsible for climate change?

Our world is dying around us. From parts of the Amazon rainforest now emitting more C02 than they’re taking in, to forest fires in Australia and Serbia. In Canada, extreme heat waves have caused hundreds of human deaths. Incredible floods have affected places in Europe such as Germany and here in the UK.

In the last decade, nearly 1.3 million people died, and millions more were displaced, due to extreme weather, with the poorest nations hit the hardest. We know that in order to stop things getting worse at the very least we need to more than halve our carbon emissions in the next 9 years. We need to rapidly decarbonise our ecommony.

As urgent as this sounds, it seems we are doing the exact opposite of what needs to happen. Oil and gas extraction is on the rise, with a projected $213bn being poured into the industry by 2025.

The UK government, for example, is apparently on course to greenlight a huge new oil field in the North Sea. The companies behind the Cambo field plan, Shell and Siccar Point Energy, want to drill for millions of barrels of oil right up until 2050, and our Oil and Gas Authority has granted 113 new licenses to 65 companies. 

his is extremely worrying. Do our elected officials take this seriously? Do they even believe that climate change is man-made?

Shortly after the Conservatives decisive victory in December 2019, one of Boris Johnson’s first acts was to appoint climate change skeptics to his cabinet.

Monmouth MP David Davies, not to be confused with the other, more famous MP, has a history of climate skepticism. In 2018, he accused the UN’s Climate Change Panel of being alarmists, and has spoken against renewables. In 2010, Davies attended a meeting of climate science deniers in parliament called “Climate Fools Day”. Due to his collective responsibility as a cabinet member, Davies will need to deliver the government’s agenda – including climate policy.

Even Boris Johnson himself wrote in 2015 for the Telegraph that the increasingly volatile weather has “nothing to do with the conventional doctrine of climate change”.

Do you have any trust in these people? Because I certainly don’t.

So with global corporations increasing its use of oil, and right-wing politicians all over the globe weak on tackling the climate catastrophe, why does the narrative of saving the planet fall on the shoulders of us….

“Do your bit”

“Buy better”

“Check your carbon footprint”

You know it’s bad that we even have Shell preaching to us with their new marketing campaign, you know; the one with Kaley Cuoco from the Big Bang Theory hosting a show about clean energy.

To put this into context, 100 companies are responsible for 71% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions since 1988. Let’s take a look at Aramco. Aramco is the state-owned Saudi Arabian oil and gas company. They are currently the largest corporate greenhouse emitter. However, you wouldn’t think that after watching their ad campaign.

This is what’s known as Green Washing. Take some nice shots, put some inspiring music in the background, and then straight up lie to you… 

Even if we, as consumers, did everything we were asked to do, it wouldn’t put a dent in the global climate catastrophe.

We’re being completely gaslighted for a reason, Now, what reason do you ask?

The same reason as almost everything today – to protect global corporations. It’s once again a class issue where we don’t dare take the fight to those with the most power.  Our politicians are bought and sold by these companies. Companies that have been involved in North Sea oil and gas kindly gave the Conservatives £419,900 from July 2020 and onwards. If we talk about people as individuals, it’s easy to shift the blame on to us. The current debate is surrounded by the question of our individual morals and of our choices as consumers, and that this alone can create a sustainable planet, rather than a political and economic system that extracts, exploits, and burns the planet for profit.

These companies are destroying our planet, our home, with no care for the damage they are causing today or for our future generations. Rather than guilt-tripping people for buying less-sustainable products, because that’s all they can afford, we need a collective effort that takes aim at those who are the real architects and drivers of climate change – the rich and the powerful.