SAME OLD STORY: Starmer echoes the Tories/Biden/ likely Trump/ definitely big oil message at conference on climate change.
Captured by the ideology of fossil fuels forever and “growth is god”, our PM claims, as Trump likely will, that the unproven technology of carbon capture is the way forward. It isn't.
Cover photo: a carbon capture scheme operating in Iceland
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By Alan Story
Labour made one basic promise during the 4 July general election: Elect us and you will get “CHANGE”. However, as we look back four months later, a much more honest pitch would have been “yes, we’ll do a few tweaks to the system, but fundamentally, all is basically okay in Blighty.”
Across a wide range of policy areas, the notion of “no real change on the horizon” better describes where Labour is heading. Let’s not forget that few voters expected very much; Labour only got 34% of the overall vote.
The UK’s position on the Israeli genocide? The Tories (and Biden) were right, Labour in power has concluded. The two-child benefit cap? Another Tory brainwave of 2017. More rights for workers? Perhaps a few tweaks in coming years. Keeping in place our anarchic and blatantly unfair voting system that allows parties getting 34% to win huge landslides and 100% of the power ? No need to change a good thing now we’re in power.
But surely, some might say, Labour would distinguish itself from the Tories when it comes to what has been called the existential crisis of our era, climate change, and when 2024 “is on track to be the warmest year on record after an extended streak of exceptionally high monthly global mean temperatures,” according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) No wonder it has just issued a “red alert.” When more than a year’s rainfall fell in eight hours on some Spanish cities, as happened recently, can we simply say: “it’s business as usual”?
The devastation in the Spanish city of Valencia as a result of climate change-induced rain storms. Can you picture Nottingham? We can.
Echoing Donald Trump, yes we can, says Starmer. As we saw this week at the COP29 sessions in a leading oil and gas exporting country Azerbaijan (national symbol a flame) the PM is pushing carbon capture - or carbon capture and storage (CCS) - as a key technological solution to climate change. In fact, Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already allotted an initial sum of a whopping £21.7 billion of our money to pay for CCS in coming years.
Yet, study after study over decades has revealed that CCS is very expensive, based on unproven technology, often ineffective at reducing carbon emissions, which are the basis of greenhouse gas and hence climate change, and could lead to even higher petrol and home heating fuel costs.
CCS WILL INCREASE ENERGY CONSUMPTION & COSTS
The government should be 100% focused on reducing the level of carbon emissions by proven technologies, but “the CCUS projects (inherited from the previous government’s cosy relationship with the fossil fuel industry) will do precisely the opposite. They will lock the UK into significantly higher gas consumption for the next 30-50 years and will increase energy costs, at taxpayers’ expense,” said David Cebon, a professor of mechanical engineering at Cambridge University, in a recent newspaper interview.
He is one of more than 25 signatories of an 11 September open letter to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband calling for a pause in one related project before final investment decisions are made.
CCS technology, Cebon continued, “had a very poor track record for reducing emissions” and came “with significant health, safety and cost risks”.
Added columnist George Monbiot: “This (CCS) will be Keir Starmer’s HS2: a hugely expensive scheme that will either be abandoned, scaled back or require massive extra funding to continue, after many billions have been spent. The government’s plan…. is a fossil fuel-driven boondoggle that will accelerate climate breakdown.”
One sketch of how a CCS system might operate.
WHAT IS CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE?
Before we explore why CCS is such a favoured technology by the fossil fuel monopolies and why both the Tories and Labour have hopped aboard the “CCS Express” – Donald Trump is predicted to be a believer as well - we do need to know, at least in brief, what CCS is and the clear warning signs of what Starmer is leading us into.
A particularly informative Wikipedia entry uses a definition of CSS provided by the International Panel on Climate Change:
"A process in which a relatively pure stream of carbon dioxide (CO2) from industrial and energy-related sources is separated (captured), conditioned, compressed and transported to a storage location for long-term isolation from the atmosphere."
A chemical solvent is used to separate the CO2 from other components in the exhaust stream of an oil refinery, steel plant or other industrial facility. In the case of the UK, one designated and long-term storage location for the residue is under the rocks of the North Sea.
The many problems with CCS are well documented. Here are but a few:
+ Failure is commonplace. A high percentage of announced CCS projects never get off the ground and, in the electricity sector, 98% were unsuccessful.
+ Three attempts in the UK “were all cancelled as a result of cost escalation.” A 2023 report from Oxford University found that “heavy dependence on CCS to reach net zero targets around 2050 would be ‘highly economically damaging’, costing at least $30 trillion more than a route based primarily on renewable energy, energy efficiency and electrification.”
It gets worse.
+ in 2024, the 44 CSS facilities worldwide collectively capture a mere “0.1% of global (carbon) emissions” or about one-thousandth of total greenhouse gas emissions across the world. Aw shucks! Only 99.9% to go!
+ CCS projects do not reduce either our dependence of fossil fuels or levels of carbon emission. Precisely the opposite. A US study published less than a month ago showed that its liquefied natural gas exports using CCS releases even higher greenhouse gas emissions than - would you believe it? - coal.
Many other issues are revealed in pages of scientific literature listed in this Wikipedia entry.
A 2021 protest against CCS in Torquay, Devon by Extinction Rebellion supporters.
AN ANALOGY WITH OBESITY
Let’s make an analogy with obesity. As is well known, the two best ways for most people to lose weight are to eat less and/or to eat more healthily AND to get more exercise. It will take some effort, some behavioural change, and perhaps sacrifice, but it can be done.
Similarly, most people realise that the best way to challenge climate melt down is to reduce global carbon emissions. In turn, that requires reducing the production and consumption of fossil fuels.
Oh no it doesn’t, say supporters of CCS. We can use all the fossil fuels we want because carbon capture technology will simply bury the carbon in the ground. It will disappear as if by magic.
In other words, to return to the question of obesity, you can keep eating all the chocolate bars you want and remain a couch potato, but not to worry. The pounds will somehow drop off your frame as if by magic.
It is not hard see why the Shell’s and BP’s of this world like CCS so much. No reduction in fossil fuel consumption is needed; indeed consumption can be boosted. And governments, such as ours, will pay the petroleum giants from our taxpayer wallets to fund these often-failing CCS facilities. The bottom line: fossil fuels forever.
“THEIR OBSCENE PROFITS AT OUR EXPENSE”
As one letter to the editor writer recently put it: “This spells out exactly why the oil and gas extraction firms are so strongly in favour of CCS: it allows them to continue making their obscene profits at our expense – and of that of the future of the planet.”
The last thing the so-called “leading politicians” in the UK or the US - Biden, Trump, Babenoch or Starmer – want to do is challenge big oil and its ideology. These also want to limit “behavioural change” in the use of energy to a minimum. With Starmer, his particular fixation is on “growth, growth, growth” and he repeated that mantra at mid-week at COP29 in Azerbaijan.
He never asks: “how can we live in harmony with nature?” Nor does Starmer question “growth for whom?” or “aren’t there any limits to growth?” or “growth where? in the global South or in the already rich global North?”
It is good to know that more and more people - but still far too few - are deciding we need to build a socialist alternative to the ecological and economic nightmare already experienced by some in the world and awaiting more of us in coming years. More of us know fundamentally, all is NOT basically okay in in in Blighty.
Meanwhile…
The thick ice shield of Greenland is melting and cracking.
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CHECK THIS OUT
1. It is good to see that “ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE” is back writing.
2. In THE WEEKLY WORKER, Carla Roberts lays out the contradictions facing one current attempt to form a new party of the left.
3. War on Want is one of more than 50 organisations --- see the full list HERE ---who are organising a MARCH FOR GLOBAL CLIMATE JUSTICE this Saturday (16 November) afternoon in London.
The march will be forming up outside the British Museum, WC1B 3BA at 12:00PM (GMT), and marching down to Parliament.
4. Have you yet watched the post-US election video from THE LEFT LANE? Ten friends of THE LEFT LANE from this side of the pond asked three prominent fellow socialists from the USA a range of questions about Donald Trump’s election victory and what it means globally.
Watch it HERE on THE LEFT LANE PRESENTS, our new YouTube channel. Or copy and paste this link into your browser:
5. Speaking of Trump: Here are three articles of many we have noticed in recent days since the US election of 5 November:
In this piece in New Left Review, Tim Parker writes on “Dealignment,”
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From “That Liz Hunter”, here’s an interesting take in a video by a young person on why more young people are voting right wing in the current era.
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This is from Caitlin Johnstone on why “The Face At The Front Desk Changes, The Corporation Remains The Same.”
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Edited by Alan Story, THE LEFT LANE is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber: http://theleftlane2024.substack.com/subscribe
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