Carbon Capture, Or Government Capture? Keir Starmer's Flimsy, Divisive Case For CCS
In a poorly conceived political stunt, the UK Prime Minister wrote an op-ed in The Sun attacking climate protesters and making the case for the fossil fuel industry's favourite decarbonisation tech.
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On Thursday, Keir Starmer took to the pages of British tabloid The Sun to make his case for throwing £22bn at carbon capture and storage. The climate research community reacted with dismay to the piece, but some defended it on the basis that the rhetoric—Starmer repeatedly attacks those he calls “net zero extremists”—should not detract from the underlying substance of the article.
Such defenses are wrong on several important counts. Here’s why.
In his piece, Starmer frames net zero as a fight between the “drum-banging, finger-wagging extremists” of Just Stop Oil, and working people who just want to put food on the table.
This divide-and-conquer strategy, pitting “regular people” against those who care deeply about the world and about one another, is the opposite of consensus-building, which is a necessary condition for leadership and national buy-in. Rather, it is an exercise in consensus destruction.
In doing this, Starmer’s op-ed attempts to undermine a foundational truth and sharing understanding: that we are of this Earth. We are all, whether we consciously know it or not, in a shared, existence-defining struggle to assert our stewardship of the planet. Pitching this knowledge as “extremist” is directly antithetical to that common goal. For this reason, in its anti-environmentalism, the op-ed is implicitly anti-human.
Some have claimed that the prime minister is only going after Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion when he describes them as “extremists”. Indeed, many British people are not sympathetic to JSO and XR. Many are. But this misses the point: you can take issue with the activists’ actions, but don't for a minute suggest that their underlying motivation is rooted in misapprehension. It is not.
