The former Prime Minister, Tony Blair yesterday called for the government to change course on climate suggesting that “any strategy based on either ‘phasing out’ fossil fuels in the short term or limiting consumption is a strategy doomed to fail”. He suggests that the UK government should focus less on renewables and more on technological solutions such as carbon capture.
Our response:
“Tony Blair wants your children to die. They will die of heat exhaustion. They will die of starvation. They will drown in floods. This much is certain. Carry on as we are now, consuming fossil fuels for decades to come and the result will be a rapid acceleration in global warming resulting in the death of billions. Not content with sending our young people to die in an illegal war in Iraq, he now wants future generations to die of hunger and heat exhaustion or fighting for control of ever scarcer resources.
“There is no sugar coating it. If we don’t stop burning fossil fuels the system will collapse and we will end up fighting for food. This is what the financial markets have euphemistically called a disorderly transition. We need to get ahead of this and plan an orderly transition to save what we can.
“This will mean a war time effort, involving great sacrifice and including demand reduction as well as investment in renewable technologies. Such a plan needs to be democratically led by and for citizens, not by discredited former Prime Ministers shilling for big tech and the oil industry, oligarchs like Elon Musk or hedge fund billionaires like Paul Marshall.
“Carbon capture and storage is no solution. By the oil industry’s own admission, it will at most shave only a few billion tonnes off the surface of current fossil fuel emissions, which are 37 billion tonnes and rising. Prudent risk management suggests we should not rely on speculative technologies that do not yet exist. There is no escaping the need to rapidly phase out fossil fuels.
“If you want to be part of a democratically led plan to figure out how we get out of this mess sign up to take part in the House of the People at www.HouseOfThePeople.UK.“
