Two years ago, on this day, November 16, 2021, a UK politician mouthed the right climate pieties at COP26, then told the oil companies “keep drilling, baby.”
Gosden, E. (2022) Kwarteng courted oil bosses after Cop26; Energy secretary encouraged North Sea drilling. The Times, January 3, p.23 – (Kwarteng schmoozed on Nov 16)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly416ppm. As of 2023 it is 419ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that the Glasgow climate COP had happened. Apparently 1.5 was still alive. The British state was happy enough with its performance and now back to business as usual. The Energy and Climate Secretary of State Bay was back to palling around with oil companies and letting them do further drilling in the North Sea.
What I think we can learn from this
that the ink does not need to be dry on some precious “hold hands sing Kumbaya” announcement of climate good intentions before politicians will go back to doing what they do in the interests of capital accumulation and their own post-political career and comfort.
What happened next
Kwasi Kwarteng delivered a mildly consequential mini budget in October of 2022, five minutes before Liz Truss threw him under the bus in a futile effort to save her own skin.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.