In the decades since the world became dependent on oil and gas, we’ve been through cycle after cycle of boom and bust, of crisis and recovery. In the 1970s, the 90s and now in 2022, with Russia’s war against Ukraine, we find ourselves once again in the grip of soaring fossil fuel prices that have exposed so many countries to deep social and economic strife.
Instead of the usual cycle of crisis and then return to a fragile status quo, this can and must be the last time that we are left so vulnerable. Let me tell you why.
In the last year, we've reached unprecedented clarity about the fact that there is no room for new fossil fuel infrastructure if we are to have a decent shot of limiting the warming of our climate to 1.5 degrees. These warnings have sounded against a terrifying backdrop of climate chaos: Europe’s rivers running dry, apocalyptic flooding in Pakistan, savage wildfires, heat and drought across the world. The devastation wrought by our warming climate driven by the burning of oil, gas and coal can no longer be ignored.
At the same time, a new reality, also driven by our dependency on fossil fuels, has been playing out in some of the richest countries in the world. In the UK, millions of people are coming face to face with the desperate reality behind the term "fuel poverty." We've had stories about pensioners riding public buses all day to stay warm, of local councils opening warm banks for people who can't afford to heat their homes. Before the UK government announced that it was going to freeze the unit price of energy in what is considered to be the single most expensive policy announcement since the Second World War, 40 percent of people living in the UK were expected to be in fuel poverty by the end of this year. Even with that price freeze, 6.7 million households will struggle to pay their energy bills. How did we get here? Why is the situation so acute?
The answer is gas. The UK is exceptionally reliant on gas. The vast majority of our homes are gas-heated, and a big chunk of our electricity is generated by gas-fired power stations. With that comes extreme vulnerability to international gas prices that are now projected to stay unusually high until at least 2025. In the UK and indeed across Europe, this is a moment of huge peril. And of huge opportunity.
As a climate change lawyer and campaigner working in the UK and across the global North, conversations around fossil fuels in the recent past, including about our domestic significant oil and gas industry here in the UK, those conversations have until recently been about the impacts of climate change that are wreaking havoc in other parts of the world, or about impacts that are portrayed as fleeting in the UK. It's been very easy for politicians and a media focused on short-term news cycles to dismiss. But that has now changed forever. The only way to address our energy affordability crisis is to address its root cause, and that is our dependency on fossil fuels. That's now common cause, not just across the climate movement, but across sectors working on inequality and poverty as well. Renewable energy sources, which are our only path away from climate catastrophe, sources like solar and wind, those are now nine times cheaper than gas as a source of electricity in the UK. Moreover, we know that we can significantly reduce our energy demand here by upgrading our homes, which are among the coldest and leakiest in Europe.
While politicians and the fossil fuel industry's proxies might in this moment, and indeed are in this moment, trying to double down on fossil fuel production as a solution to our sky-high energy bills, they are about to find out in short order that in a moment of acute crisis like this, when millions of people are experiencing the impact in such a material and tangible way, there is no room for peddling false hope. There is nowhere to hide. And while oil and gas companies continue to record record profits off the same forces that are driving families all over the UK into despair, it will become even more clear, incontrovertibly clear, that boom times for the oil and gas industry are bad times for the rest of us.
Across the UK, there are new movements emerging to make sure that we are never put in this position again. From campaigns like Warm This Winter to Enough is Enough, to movements to stop the opening up of new oil and gas fields, like Stop Rosebank, to litigation and targeted advocacy, there is a wave of action coming to make sure that this is the last cycle. This is the last time. This can and must be the last alarm bell to sound about the true cost of our reliance on fossil fuels before we step into a more safe, more just future for us all.
Thank you.
(Applause)
