World disasters expose the true cost of fossil fuel dependency
4 min read
As climate disasters take place across the world, the true cost of fossil fuel reliance comes into stark focus. With billions spent on subsidies and climate commitments unmet, Barry Gardiner MP, chair of the Climate, Nature and Security APPG, asks: will leaders finally act before the next disaster strikes?
Two years ago, the Spanish government cut the cost of fuel by 20 cents per litre. It was a singularly popular political move at a time when the impact of the Ukraine war was hitting the cost of living and Spanish truck drivers had been on strike over the rising cost of fuel. The price of this subsidy was reckoned to be €1.4bn… until last month.
On Wednesday 30 October, as Rachel Reeves was delivering her budget, 343 millimetres of rain fell in Valencia in just under five hours. More than 200 people died, and thousands of lives are in tatters. The insurance costs are already estimated to be more than €2bn. The uninsured costs will be far greater.
But as people sweep out the layers of mud and debris from their ruined shops and businesses, as they lovingly lay out the cherished family photographs to dry, there is one photo that is carried in every Spanish newspaper. It is an image taken in the town just next to Valencia − the municipality of Alfafar − where the cars have been piled so tightly on top of each other by the flood waters that the street is entirely blocked.
In Spain, the price of petrol has never seemed so high.
Does it really take this for politicians to understand the true cost of fossil fuels? Here in the UK, we have heard political leaders claim that the way to avoid relying on oil and gas from dictators like Putin is to ensure that we pump every last drop of the stuff out of the North Sea basin. Yet we know that without the lowest basic rate tax regime in the world (38 per cent rather than the global average of 74 per cent) and without the subsidies that ensure oil and gas companies pay just eight pence in the pound of development costs, these reserves would be uneconomic to exploit. A survey of 77 countries by the OECD and the International Energy Agency has now identified $478bn of such perverse subsidies to the fossil fuel sector that are damaging our environment. That is $478bn that could be spent on a just transition to a cleaner future.
“The government’s independent advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, has told us that ‘only a third of the emissions reductions required to achieve our 2030 target (of a 68 per cent reduction in emissions against 1990 levels) are currently covered by credible plans’"
Nine years ago, I was in Paris and cheered optimistically as the world signed up to the Paris Agreement, promising to keep the rise in global warming “well below 2C and as close to 1.5C as possible” to give ourselves what scientists said was a 50/50 chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. Today those same scientists are predicting a 3.1C rise in global temperature by the turn of the century.
So, as world leaders come home from negotiating at COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, they do so in the knowledge that the global stocktake concluded that urgent and transformative action is required to plug what they called the “significant gaps” in countries’ current promises (known as Nationally Determined Contributions or NDCs). In the UK, our NDCs are certainly world leading. Our implementation of them, sadly, is not. The government’s independent advisory body, the Climate Change Committee, has told us that “only a third of the emissions reductions required to achieve our 2030 target (of a 68 per cent reduction in emissions against 1990 levels) are currently covered by credible plans.”
But hey! The good news from 30 October is that there isn’t going to be any increase in fuel duty on a litre of petrol. Never mind it could have raised £3bn. Never mind it would have accelerated the demand for renewables and electric vehicles. Never mind it could have covered the cost of the winter fuel allowance. We only have to look at Valencia to know why this is so important.
PoliticsHome Newsletters
Get the inside track on what MPs and Peers are talking about. Sign up to The House's morning email for the latest insight and reaction from Parliamentarians, policy-makers and organisations.
