{"id":5006,"date":"2015-01-29T06:56:13","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T11:56:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5006"},"modified":"2015-01-29T06:56:13","modified_gmt":"2015-01-29T11:56:13","slug":"the-drop-in-oil-price-means-we-need-more-action-on-climate-change-not-less","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=5006","title":{"rendered":"‘The Drop in Oil Price Means We Need More Action on Climate Change Not Less’"},"content":{"rendered":"
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‘The Drop in Oil Price Means We Need More Action on Climate Change Not Less’<\/a><\/h3>\n

This month, a powerful\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0Nature<\/em>\u00a0highlighted yet again that most of the world\u2019s oil, coal and gas needs to stay in the ground, if we want to prevent dangerous climate change. This is the \u201cunburnable carbon\u201d analysis that President Obama and Bank of England Governor Mark Carney have both made mainstream in recent\u00a0months.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Related, over the last 6 months the world oil price has crashed, catching almost all economists and analysts by surprise. As well as profound economic effects, this crash affects \u201cunburnable carbon\u201d in two broad and opposite ways.<\/p>\n

It is leading to\u00a0cancellations of potential fossil fuel<\/a>\u00a0projects, as they become less or non-profitable. Great for stopping colossally dirty projects like Arctic oil and Canadian tar sands. And in the opposite direction, it makes oil cheaper, meaning people use it more. Bad for climate, though good for people\u2019s\u00a0pockets.<\/p>\n

How should Governments react to this? A Government who genuinely thought climate change was a global priority would not sit passively by and let these conflicting effects of the oil price crash on climate sweep over us. It would act.\u00a0 Government surveys show the\u00a0British public want more action on climate change<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tax\u00a0Cuts<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite this, the sole response to the oil price crash from the\u00a0UK<\/span>\u00a0Government is do the opposite –\u00a0last week it announced detailed plans for\u00a0tax cuts<\/a>\u00a0for oil companies to drill another 11-21 billion barrels of oil from the ground. That\u2019s way more than even the three billion barrels in the Government\u2019s\u00a0Wood Review<\/a>\u00a0on offshore oil and gas. Climate change impacts got one sentence of dismissal. And yesterday, it drove through a clause in the\u00a0Infrastructure Bill<\/a>\u00a0– with almost no debate – requiring the\u00a0UK<\/span>\u00a0to \u201cmaximise economic recovery\u201d of North Sea\u00a0oil.<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

‘The Drop in Oil Price Means We Need More Action on Climate Change Not Less’ This month, a powerful\u00a0article\u00a0in\u00a0Nature\u00a0highlighted yet again that most of the world\u2019s oil, coal and gas needs to stay in the ground, if we want to prevent dangerous climate change. This is the \u201cunburnable carbon\u201d analysis that President Obama and Bank […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[113,141,271,328,331,369,1775,723,781],"class_list":["post-5006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-climate-change","tag-environment-2","tag-fossil-fuels","tag-fracking","tag-global-warming","tag-oil-price-collapse","tag-shale-oil","tag-tar-sands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5007,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5006\/revisions\/5007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}