The Guardian view on Rishi Sunak’s energy plan: playing with fire

theguardian.com:

T o say that Rishi Sunak’s government has chosen the “path of climate vandalism”, as Labour’s Ed Miliband did this week, is no exaggeration. The policies contained in the energy plan announced on Thursday are dangerous. They will significantly worsen the climate crisis that threatens to engulf us all, if the globally agreed target of limiting temperature rises to 1.5C is missed. Mr Sunak’s record on green policies in the Treasury was dismal. As prime minister, he is steering the UK even further away from the course towards speedy decarbonisation that we should be on. In the long term, climate will surely top the list of public policy failures during this long period of Tory government.

Hundreds of leading scientists wrote to Mr Sunak’s government this week, calling for an end to new oil and gas developments. The government is set to defy them with plans for a huge North Sea oilfield, which it attempts to justify on the grounds that it is investing £20bn (over 20 years) in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, in order to limit the damage caused. The scientists are right. The politicians and their fossil fuel industry backers are wrong. It is devastating that the UK is now trashing its own reputation for pioneering climate laws, which made national emissions reductions compulsory. Ministers have chosen risky, dirty energy over clean.

There are some measures in the package that can, and must, be built on in future. Public investment in CCS would be welcome if it were not being offered as an excuse to keep on pumping oil. Technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere could help to avoid global heating’s worst effects. Carbon border taxes are a sensible mechanism to deter high-carbon imports, and the consultation