Profiting from poverty

Campaigners dropped a banner with the slogan ‘cease polluting politics’ from Westminster Bridge and set off smoke flares to announce the beginning of a brand new marketing campaign to finish the fossil gas foyer’s affect on UK politics.

The stunt occurred as MPs returned to parliament after Easter recess, amid hypothesis concerning the date of the final election. Within the run-up to the election, the model new Cease Polluting Politics marketing campaign will problem present and potential MPs to reject donations from high-polluting industries.

Campaigners argue donations and lobbying by the fossil gas trade are main politicians to desert important local weather insurance policies.

Deniers 

The Conservative Occasion, which lately handed out over 100 new oil and gasoline licences and proposed obligatory annual North Sea licensing rounds, took 3.5 million kilos from polluters, fossil gas corporations and local weather deniers in 2022. 

Earlier this yr, it was revealed that Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow chancellor, accepted £10,000 from a local weather sceptic donor. The celebration later ditched its £28 billion inexperienced funding pledge. Lord Donoughue, the donor and Labour peer, instructed The Telegraph: “The donation was completely unrelated.”

In recent times, the UK has witnessed record-breaking heatwaves each summer time, whereas rising oil and gasoline costs have elevated gas poverty within the winter: 6.5 million households struggled to warmth their properties this January. In the meantime, Large Oil studies billions in income.

In keeping with the Local weather Change Committee, the federal government’s personal advisory physique, the UK wants sooner motion to succeed in its emissions targets and assist forestall local weather breakdown. 

Wildfires

Sam Simons, a spokesperson for the Cease Polluting Politics marketing campaign, stated: “Handing out donations, lobbying policymakers and bankrolling biased suppose tanks, massive polluters are doing every thing they’ll to delay local weather motion.

“This basic election will likely be decisive for our lives and our local weather. Now we have all seen the disastrous floods in Libya and wildfires in Greece, and we now have felt the results of local weather breakdown ourselves. 

“Each summer time, we expertise extra excessive heatwaves, and each winter, tens of millions of households should select between heating and consuming – in the meantime, power corporations have fun document income.

“As a substitute of stepping in to take motion, our leaders let the fossil gas trade fill their pockets and erode their guarantees. Each penny they take from polluters betrays our belief. We demand that our legislators put a cease to this poisonous affect and make their loyalties clear: do they work for us? Or do they work for Large Oil?”

This Writer 

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.