Ed Miliband has been a familiar face in British politics for a long time now. He was a member of the New Labour governments, which sensible people regard as having been very sensible. His stint as Labour leader and subsequent return as shadow energy secretary are now looked back on as sensible bookends to the decidedly non-sensible Corbyn era. The sensible people all support Net Zero because it’s seen as the sensible thing to support, and they assume that is why Mr Miliband supports it as well. But it is sometimes also sensible to make reasonable concessions.
It is in that spirit that many neutral observers are now approaching Ed Miliband’s line on North Sea oil and gas, which insists that no new fields can be explored for production. This has hugely accelerated the decline in British oil and gas production, as existing wells are depleted. In turn, this leaves Britain increasingly reliant on imports, both from the Middle East and from neighbours with whom we share the North Sea field.
Given the supply chain risk, and the volatility of the Persian Gulf, even some of those sympathetic to the Net Zero agenda now say it might be sensible to exploit our own resources for the time being. Especially as even the most optimistic Net Zero scenarios see a role for oil and gas for decades yet. Commentators are now appealing to Miliband to do the sensible thing, and at least soften the North Sea exploration ban.
This is a fundamental misreckoning, both of Miliband himself and of the dynamics of climate politics. Miliband is not going to reverse course, or at least not voluntarily. At a swipe he would render himself politically irrelevant, and would lose the huge amounts of personal credibility he has built up among the hard core of the climate movement — both domestically and internationally. In the unlikely event that Keir Starmer discovered either the inclination or the political strength to order Miliband to change course, I suspect he would be more likely to resign.
The campaign against oil and gas exploration has been around in various forms since the 1990s, and has its roots in earlier campaigns focusing on supply-side restrictions on natural energy resources, such as Australia’s anti-uranium movement, and the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” agenda. As with many green campaigns, we can track the trajectory of this idea as it moved from radical, fringe campaign groups like Oilwatch, slowly becoming part of a broader student protest agenda with the divestment campaign, before eventually being adopted as part of mainstream climate policy by governments. Over the years, such campaigns take on a life of their own, becoming unmoored from their original justifications.
When environmentalists first started campaigning against further oil exploration in the 1990s, it was widely believed that the world was approaching the point of “peak oil”, after which proven reserves and eventually production would begin to fall off, leaving consumers paying ever higher prices. Given the very low oil prices of the time, there seemed to be some logic to throttling back exploration, whether this was in order to enjoy revenues in the future, or in order to develop alternatives. And obviously, producers did reduce their investment in exploration while prices were low. But then, over the course of the 2000s, prices rose again and new reserves were proven faster than the resource was being used. By the end of the decade, mainstream commentators had acknowledged that the world was likely to witness declining demand for oil in advance of declining supply — and within a few years even strident greens had dropped the slogan that the world was imminently going to run out of oil.
With the “peak oil” theory gone, the campaigners briefly switched to the “stranded assets” rationale to push institutional investors to abandon hydrocarbons, claiming that international carbon budgets and changing consumer habits were likely to leave oil and gas infrastructure worthless in the future. Despite stretching all credibility, some supposedly serious institutions went along with this for a few years, but it’s been little spoken of since the pandemic. Instead, the argument for “no new oil and gas” simply became that there was enough fossil fuels in the ground to boil the planet if we transferred its sequestered carbon content from the Earth’s crust to the troposphere.
Miliband sees his role as an agent who bends the long arc of history toward progress
If agreement couldn’t be reached at an international level to keep oil and gas in the ground, then the best a country like Britain could hope to do was lead by example and ban exploration unilaterally. Notwithstanding questions about whether it was likely to work, the logic makes little sense while we continue to import hydrocarbons from abroad, including from those oil and gas exporting countries (i.e. all of them) which are continuing to explore new reserves. But Miliband’s North Sea policy is no longer vulnerable to that kind of questioning — the justification is now far simpler; what’s done is done, and the clock cannot be turned back.
Miliband sees his role as an agent who bends the long arc of history toward progress, and that justification totally overwhelms trivial questions like “Does this policy make logical sense?”. Like many green zealots — especially those who have been converted as adults — Miliband has a profound sense of his own historicity. As he sees it, these are the critical years in the history of humanity and the entire planet; to have been born in these times when fate hangs in the balance is to have been entrusted by destiny with a unique and heavy duty. That he holds relevant political office during such momentous times only makes this obligation more awesome. For him to back down over the fact a litre of petrol has gone up by a few pence would be a laughable dereliction. A few million households facing financial hardship is a banality that will not even make the footnotes when the history is written.
Furthermore, the point that it makes little sense for Britain to cease oil and gas exploration while we continue to import the stuff is to consider agency and responsibility on a national level. Which Miliband doesn’t. For him, climate redemption is achieved as an individual. It just happens to be that he is a national politician with responsibility for Britain’s energy policy. He would be similarly unmoved by what the rest of the world were doing if he were making decisions as a European commissioner, or as a county councillor, or if he were merely responsible for his own household. If he could completely shut off oil and gas imports, he would, but that isn’t an option yet. However, the decision of whether the British government will issue licences for new oil and gas exploration is his to make right now, so the answer is “no”.
Others may argue that making reasonable concessions to public opinion at critical moments might benefit the green agenda in the long run, by limiting the chances of a backlash. But climate politics lives or dies by its sense of inevitability. There are only so many true believers like Miliband or Al Gore who get near positions of power. The movement is only effective so long as it retains its power over the cynical or weak-willed — the likes of Angela Merkel, David Cameron or Boris Johnson. And that power comes from the green movement’s monopoly on a vision of the future, at least in terms of energy.
The green ratchet is bearing a huge load of bad ideas in British energy policy
With nuclear power largely removed from the discussion, opposition to the green agenda can only talk about fuels associated with the past — gas, oil, sometimes coal. If jaded politicians want to look modern and relevant, they are forced to talk about renewables. They can tell the weary public that they just have to get used to it, and that it’s the future whether they like it or not. It might not make them popular, but it makes them look potent. This is why “backsliding” is considered the most deadly sin by climate campaigners. In order to maintain that impression of inevitability, policy must only ever be seen to move in one direction. “True believers” are under an even greater obligation to hold the line, or face the wrath of the movement.
The green ratchet is bearing a huge load of bad ideas in British energy policy that don’t hold logical water even if you share their assumptions about the severity of climate change. Most obviously these relate to the electricity system and the atrophying of firm generation capacity in a system that relies on gas back-up when intermittent sources do not produce. There is a growing public awareness that critical detail has been excluded by renewables proponents, and this is responsible for the growing cost of electricity, rather than wholesale gas prices.
Miliband’s bet is that the current geopolitical crisis can reset the terms of the national conversation back on to commodity prices. Short term public discontent about prices at petrol pumps are a small price to pay, in his calculation, to reinforce the message that oil and gas is costly, and to make awkward questions about back-up and CfDs and carbon levies go away. In this context, what might seem like a sensible gesture on North Sea exploration may in fact prove the slip that snaps the pawl, and the ratchet fails. With his whole agenda in the balance, it’s far too great a risk for the energy secretary to consider.
