UK quits treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over climate policies
UK quits treaty that lets fossil fuel firms sue governments over climate policies
Britain joins France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands in withdrawing from charter it says ‘penalises’ shift to net zero
I’m so used to everything we do being another stride into a dystopian hellscape that it took me a moment to realise that this wasn’t (in any immediately obvious way) the government helping the fuel industry. This treaty is absolute nonsense, and should never have been ratified in the first place, so this is actually good news, unless they’ve somehow thought of something worse to replace it with
Same, I spent a good ten minutes trying to figure out what malevolent ulterior motive they could have for doing this.
Maybe someone has realised that the end of the world would be bad for corporate profits?
Yeah but that's long-term profits and they don't really care about long-term profits. Their mindset is as long as they can make record profits this year, it doesn't really matter if everyone dies next year, that's next year's problem. Everyone is expendable including their future selves.
It requires a distinct lack of imagination to be a capitalist.
Good news. The way this treaty was being (ab)used was ludicrous
Good, it was a stupid idea in the first place, tbh.
Don’t tell me. Said treaty was promulgated by US energy firms, right?
This was like two paragraphs into the article:
"the treaty allows fossil fuel investors to sue states for lost profit expectations in an opaque corporate arbitration system set up to protect fossil fuel investors in the former Soviet economies in the 1990s."
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It was originally designed to encourage international energy investment but a number of countries have faced costly legal challenges over reducing their reliance on fossil fuels and boosting renewables.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said efforts to modernise the treaty to better support cleaner technologies had led to stalemate among European countries.
“Remaining a member would not support our transition to cleaner, cheaper energy, and could even penalise us for our world-leading efforts to deliver net zero.
Shaun Spiers, the executive director of environmental thinktank Green Alliance, said: “Civil society organisations and parliamentarians from all political parties have been clear that the energy charter treaty is an out-of-date agreement and undermines our efforts to tackle climate change.
“We cannot allow fossil fuel companies to stop democratically elected governments from taking strong climate action.
“Labour has long argued that the energy charter treaty is clearly outdated and not fit for purpose - it is good that the government have finally taken the step to leave it.”
The original article contains 395 words, the summary contains 168 words. Saved 57%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Good news. The way this treaty was being (ab)used was ludicrous