Liz Truss puts hard-right ideology above lives – and is backing oil and gas to prove it
How best to describe wilfully vandalising the planet and threatening human life to satisfy ideological bloodlust? Liz Truss – already a plausible contender for the “worst prime minister ever” gong before she even assumes office – apparently intends to issue up to 130 drilling licences for oil and gas firms. If the purpose of this is to confront the looming social catastrophe of energy bills, to describe it as an exercise in futility would be generous: it takes the best part of three decades to pump fossil fuels out of the ground and put them onstream.
As Russia switches off Europe’s flow of gas via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline – it implausibly cites maintenance work as the reason – the need for drastic, swift action could not be more obvious, yet our soon-to-be prime minister has nothing meaningful to offer.
There are other paths. New renewable energy capacity secured by the government will cost only £48 per megawatt hour – compared with the current cost of running gas-fired power stations, which has surged to around £450 per MWh. (And, depending on the impact of action from the EU, it could rise further.) Renewables, therefore, are around nine times cheaper and far quicker to plug into our energy system. What possible reason is there not to make wind and solar the central pillars of an effective strategy to build energy independence and help stop millions being plunged into destitution? What explains this suicidal strategy?
It is undoubtedly that the ideological predilections of the Tory right are prioritised above the Earth’s survival, energy independence and people’s livelihoods. Renewables are indelibly culturally associated with dangerous lefty nonsense, while gas and oil somehow represent macho British tradition. That
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