The polluter elite are stealing your future – here’s how they can be stopped

An open letter to the youth climate strikers

By Dario Kenner*

19 September 2019

You are calling on the British government to act on climate change but it’s no coincidence there is inaction. This government, like many before it, has decided to side with the fossil fuel companies, and the wealthy people who run them – a group I call the Polluter Elite.

That’s why instead of the government listening to you and the scientists it is supporting oil & gas extraction e.g. giving the green light to fracking. In her visit to the UK parliament in April Greta described these and related policies as “beyond absurd”.

So, what can be done when the government is so heavily lobbied and controlled by the fossil fuel companies? Answer: Reduce their profits. This will help undermine their growing economic and political power. There are a whole range of ways to do this:

• Start taxing oil and gas producers for the climate damage they are causing. This money could be used to compensate people already suffering from extreme weather events, especially the poorest in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
• Cancel existing and future licences for extracting oil and gas. Applications are currently open until November 2019 on 768 blocks up for grabs.

The one I really recommend you focus on are the billions of pounds worth of tax breaks for the fossil fuel companies (which some people refer to as fossil fuel subsidies). According to a report by Friends of the Earth Scotland, Platform and Oil Change International since 1990 the UK has lost out on £255 billion which it could have used to invest in renewable energy, public transport, electric vehicles, and why not your education too.

The government has also offered up at least another £24 billion over the next three decades towards the cost of shutting down oil and gas fields. This is just one part of a broader, climate-wrecking approach to encourage oil companies to get every last drop out of the North Sea. According to Global Witness there’s a risk a new tax break introduced last year could extend this figure by at least £3 billion in the next ten years alone.

At a time when the current government is obsessed with future trading relationships, we know its priority is not to safeguard the wellbeing of its citizens by actually responding to the climate & ecological emergency.

You are changing what is “politically possible” and are going to do so again this Friday 20 September. You are making it more likely that at some point your demand for a Green New Deal will become a reality. This terrifies the Polluter Elite because they could lose their source of wealth from selling fossil fuels. That’s why they are going to try and kill a Green New Deal before it has a chance to take shape. Even if it is implemented they will do everything possible to destroy it, permanently. That’s why I suggest you include cancellation of tax breaks for the fossil fuel companies in your demands (even the head of the UN has called for the end of fossil fuel subsidies). These are the kinds of measures that will directly undermine fossil fuel companies and open up the space for a Green New Deal to survive.

In April Greta told MPs: “we probably don’t even have a future any more because that future was sold so that a small number of people could make unimaginable amounts of money.” Not enough people realise it but your protests along with others are the only thing right now that will counter the huge economic and political power of the fossil fuel companies. You know how high the stakes are and that’s why you are fighting for your own futures. The problem is so are the Polluter Elite.

* Dario Kenner is the author of Carbon Inequality: The role of the richest in climate change and created the Polluter Elite Database.