New oil and gas fields won't cut bills
If the UK government approves new oil and gas fields it will be devastating for our climate while doing nothing to lower household bills, says Scottish Green climate spokesperson Patrick Harvie.
Patrick’s comments come as reports indicate the UK government is set to give the greenlight to drilling in the Jackdaw field and as Scotland’s First Minister is weakening his government’s position against new drilling.
Patrick said:
“Any new drilling would be a huge backward step. It would further wreck our climate while doing nothing to lower bills. The only winners would be the wealthy polluters making vast profits.
“Deepening our reliance on expensive and dirty resources like oil and gas would be climate vandalism and would only lock us into wildly fluctuating prices and bills.
“If new drilling is approved in Jackdaw, Rosebank or any other fields it will be a betrayal of future generations and shred what is left of Labour’s climate credentials.
“It is also deeply disappointing to see the Scottish Government continuing to weaken its position even further when they know what the science says and the damage that the climate emergency will do to all our lives.
“The bottom line is that we can't keep burning fossil fuels at such a terrible cost to people and planet. It is a fast track to climate breakdown."
Patrick added:
“There are households all over our country who are struggling and cannot afford the rising costs of energy bills that are being made worse by maintaining a link between the cost of gas and electricity.
"Yet it seems that for Labour and the SNP the response is being set by the fossil fuel lobbyists.
“Scotland has a huge wealth of clean, cheap, green, renewable energy sources on our doorstep. We do not need to drain the north sea of fossil fuels, or keep pumping climate-wrecking pollution into the atmosphere.”
