Pragmatism or a mistake?

[Workingman]

The government has announced 100 new gas and oil drilling licences for the North Sea.

Does this fly in the face of "net zero" aims and are the licences necessary? It might help if we had a plan.

We can't just keep throwing up on/offshore windmills and hope the wind blows, nor can we keep planting solar panels on good land - put them on rooves, especially new builds. We need something else.

My preference would be to build the 16 or so small modular nuclear reactors in addition to to the Hinkley types already being built. Collectively they would give us the baseload without us relying on gas. A number of small hydro units would not go amiss either.

Unfortunately we will still need oil and gas for some time yet, and not only for power. It's the feedstock for all that plastic around our homes, and not just bottles and food packaging. If we have carpets we walk on it. If we have furniture we sit on it. And if we wear clothes we are dressed in it.

So, for me it is pragmatic. However, it is a shame that we cannot get a percentage of it at cost for our own needs, it's our oil after all.

I find it a bit ironic that the Just Stop Oil protesters wear Day-glo safety vests made out of... oil, even though I generally agree with them.

[Suff]

There is a 28 year window in which we need to continue to consume oil and gas products as our mainstay fuels.

The most recent energy crisis has taught us, all over again, that we need energy security.

These new fields will be shorter lived because they are smaller.

Pragmatism wins for me. Just stop Oil are a bunch of radical political idiots. Personally I would have super glued them to the bridge, just to make them secure, then resumed the traffic.

The climate lobby is clueless about pragmatism. They think you can fix it by taxing us into submission without providing us with an alternative.

[cromwell]

Agree.
We can't move on from oil just yet, as the Saudis remind us everytime they cut production.