Below is a letter that Kevin Anderson and University of Manchester colleagues have sent to the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State, and Ministers at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. The letter addresses the proposed further development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields.
The authors are University of Manchester academics who undertook the carbon budget analysis that underpinned Greater Manchester’s 2038 carbon neutrality commitment. In the letter, they set out their reasons for urging the Government to reject unequivocally any further development of these fields.
Dear Prime Minister,
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, you championed one of the UK’s most ambitious local climate programmes. Through your Green Summits and your support for science-informed policy, Greater Manchester adopted a carbon budget approach guided by the analysis of the Tyndall Centre and consistent with the UK’s commitments under the UN’s Paris Agreement. Throughout that period, you were also candid in recognising that many of the most important policy levers remained in the hands of national government.
It is therefore with considerable concern that we have read reports suggesting your Government intends to approve the further development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields.
If those reports are accurate, they represent a profound departure from the principles you promoted as Mayor of Greater Manchester.
The scientific evidence has only strengthened since those earlier commitments were made. Global temperatures have already risen to the lower limit of the Paris Agreement’s temperature range (1.5°C). Extreme weather events are becoming increasingly evident across the UK, most vividly the widespread moorland fires driving air quality to unsafe levels in Greater Manchester. Meanwhile, the remaining global carbon budgets – our headroom for action – continue to shrink rapidly. The science makes clear that if governments are to respect even the weaker 2°C interpretation of the Paris Agreement, global carbon dioxide emissions now need to fall by almost 8% every year, starting immediately. Against that backdrop, approving the further development of oil and gas fields cannot be reconciled with the UK’s repeated commitment to honour its international climate obligations.
Some argue that permitting Rosebank and Jackdaw would not technically breach Labour’s previous commitment to stop issuing new oil and gas licences. Such legal or procedural distinctions may have political relevance, but they are immaterial to the physics of climate change. The climate system responds to the cumulative quantity of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. If these developments proceed, they will ultimately result in the release of hundreds of millions of tonnes of additional carbon dioxide, further reducing the already vanishing space for climate action.
Equally important is the signal such a decision would send. For many years the UK has presented itself as a nation that honours its international commitments and expects others to do likewise. Approving major new fossil fuel developments would instead signal that our commitments under the Paris Agreement, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and, more recently, the principles reaffirmed by the International Court of Justice, are becoming conditional when confronted by short-term political pressures. It would suggest that, on climate change, the UK is prepared to step back from obligations it has repeatedly urged other nations to uphold.
As Mayor of Greater Manchester, you oversaw the declaration of a climate emergency and argued that local government lacked many of the powers necessary to deliver the pace of change demanded by the climate challenge. As Prime Minister, those powers now rest with you.
We therefore urge you to show the same commitment to evidence, the same political courage and the same sense of responsibility that characterised your leadership in Greater Manchester. The qualities often associated with “Manchesterism” – honesty, integrity, fairness and the willingness to confront difficult challenges – are needed now more than ever.
Future generations will not judge governments by the ingenuity with which they justified expanding fossil fuel production. They will judge whether, when faced with unequivocal scientific evidence and clear international commitments, they had the courage and compassion to act in a manner consistent with the obligations they had freely entered into.
We hope your Government will show that courage by refusing to approve the further development of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Kevin Anderson
Dr Christopher Jones
Dr Jaise Kuriakose
Professor Alice Larkin
All signatories are members of the Tyndall Centre, based in the School of Engineering at the University of Manchester, and all played a key role in the climate research underpinning the GMCA’s 2038 carbon neutrality commitment.
The views in this letter are attributed to the named authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the wider Tyndall Centre or The University of Manchester.