The UK’s ‘green day’ has turned into a fossil fuel bonanza – dirty money powers the Sunak government

theguardian.com:

M oney for the criminals, prison for the heroes: this, in brief, is the government’s climate policy. If something is damaging to the public interest, it’s likely to be rewarded and subsidised. If it’s beneficial, it will find itself in a hostile environment.

This government represents the denouement of the Pollution Paradox: as dirty money has the greatest incentive to invest in politics, it comes to run the whole system. Across these 13 years of misrule, we have seen the perversities of Conservative government multiply and intensify.

Thursday was supposed to be “green day”, when the government, forced to act by a court ruling, would unveil a new, more detailed plan for achieving net zero emissions. Instead, the occasion has been rebranded “energy security day”.

Rather than announce the comprehensive change required to defend Earth systems, Rishi Sunak’s government will defend the fossil fuel industry from its competitors. It is likely to set no meaningful new green targets: instead, it will pump money into false solutions, such as carbon capture and storage, which has not materialised at scale for 20 years and never will. This fabled technology’s purpose is to justify fossil fuel extraction, on the grounds that “one day” the carbon emissions could be buried. Sunak will also promote “sustainable aviation fuel”, though there is, and can be, no such thing.

Worse still, he is likely to announce the licensing of a huge new oilfield: Rosebank. Its development, by the Norwegian state company Equinor, will be almost entirely subsidised by the UK’s tax relief for new oil and gas development. While Sunak will doubtless justify this generosity by claiming that it helps secure our future energy supplies, 80% of the oil the field