Government can’t claim that new licences will reduce carbon footprint - Yorkshire Post Letters

I think Bill Carmichael has been reading too many Daily Mail headlines (“Clear thinking needed not climate hysteria”, August 4). The rational arguments against “maxing out” North Sea fossil fuel production have passed him by.

Let’s not compare the government's claims with distorted headlines of what he says are “hysterical activists” when we have measured analysis from the Climate Change Committee, the International Energy Agency and others.

The government cannot claim that new licences will reduce the carbon footprint of imported oil when we export 80 per cent of North Sea production already.

It is time to switch our efforts and investments in the UK away from new fossil fuel projects and to embrace the technologies of energy transition.

By insulating homes, changing planning rules to allow onshore renewable expansion and other recommended actions of the CCC, we can reduce our reliance on imported fossil fuels and reduce our carbon footprint more quickly than allowing new North Sea oil and gas.

The government's own Net Zero report makes it clear that our economy will benefit from building the green technologies of the next industrial revolution.

I can understand why people raise the volume of the alarm when our government is so deaf to the danger of new fossil fuels and benefits of green technologies.

Yes, the world will not end at 1.5C warming, but globally, the human and financial costs will be high.

Bill neglects to point out that we are headed for well over 2C and each step means more lives lost and people displaced from their homes across the world until we reach a tipping point where things get very ugly indeed.