Letter from Edinburgh: The Politics of Oil

“I think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” – Ben Goldacre

Dear Don,

This week the UK Government has reversed gear and approved drilling and extracting oil from the Jackdaw field in the North Sea. The North Sea is gradually running out of oil (it’s described as a ‘mature’ field), but there’s still quite a bit left there. The Jackdaw field won’t produce very much but it’s ready to go – we’ll have oil from the field within a month, we’re told. Another, much bigger ‘Rosebank’ oilfield has been discovered further north, west of the Shetland Islands and so technically in the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t know what size it is, but it’s much larger.

The problem is that the UK has been trying to lead the way towards a Net Zero fossil fuel use, and to focus instead on renewables. Here in Scotland, we are effectively able to meet our electricity needs entirely from renewable energy (hydro-electricity, solar panels, windfarms and assorted other generation methods) and we actually export electricity. But of course power use has peaks and troughs, and we need both storage systems and alternative power generation methods to meet unexpected demand.

And of course there’s transport. It’s not just our cars. Much of our public transport and freight logistics depend on fossil fuels. Nobody’s yet found a safe way to fly without using burning carbon fuels, and shipping is actually a major contributor to climate damage.

However, there’s a significant vocal lobby which wants us to stop using oil altogether, and immediately. The more extreme groups will vandalise artwork and property, glue themselves to roads and so on. A few years ago, a tiny group called Fossil Free Books did enormous damage to the entire UK Book Festival circuit, forcing them to end sponsorship from a huge investment company that – as well as a far bigger part of its portfolio in renewables – had shares in the oil and gas industry. Needless to say, the only people affected were in the book business. The investment company was simply left with more money to invest – and now there was no incentive not to invest in oil and gas.

Needless to say, these groups are furious about the decision to allow drilling in the North Sea. Donald Trump, meanwhile, is thrilled. A climate-change sceptic, you’ll be aware he favours large-scale drilling for oil in the US. He reckons it’ll bring down the soaring costs of petrol in the US (it’s still far lower than here in Europe), and he thinks the reason we’re doing it is to lower prices at a time of inflation. As usual, he hasn’t a clue.

It might help a little, and it’ll certainly save jobs in the Aberdeen area, but the major causes of oil inflation are the war in Ukraine, which Trump could stop tomorrow if he chose, are the wars against Iran and the Houthis in the Middle East, which Trump started. Oil supply has been disrupted seriously, and drilling in our fields will provide a degree of energy security. It’s not about how much oil we use, it’s about who supplies our needs. Being blackmailed by our enemies is not a good position to be in.

Let’s be clear: I strongly support the move to renewables. But society isn’t yet in a position to do without oil. Fossil fuel protestors depend on oil as much as I do. My carbon footprint will certainly be lower than that of many: I can’t afford to fly on many foreign holidays, Katherine and I share car journeys wherever possible, and although we have two cars, they’re small, hardly gas-guzzling. Meanwhile, every single cyclist I know personally also has a car. There are a handful of commuters who find it quicker, sure, but most of the cyclists I know cycle for recreation, not to save petrol. The whole cycling thing is just a little more complex than the lobby would have you believe.

I’m at odds with most of our environmental lobby on something else: I support building more nuclear power stations. Sure, there has been the odd nuclear accident, but the number of fatalities is absolutely minute in comparison with the fantastically dangerous oil, gas and coal industries. I’m also aware that nuclear power is an expensive option. Stick a nuclear power station next to me if you like; I’m happy to accept the risks. Because one thing’s for sure: at a stroke, the climate would get a boost. I’d have thought that was the whole point.

And this isn’t either/or. We still need to push on with developing renewables and move away from fossil fuels. It won’t make any significant difference to domestic fuel prices. This is about whether we import our oil and gas from the North Sea or from further away – consider the ‘oil miles’, if you like.

There are times when I feel that campaigners on both sides are simply standing shouting in their own little cupboards. On one side, the environmentalists won’t accept (a) that we’ll still need oil for some time and (b) we’re currently getting our supplies from thousands of miles away. Donald Trump and his chums need to acknowledge that every missile, drone and bomber flight uses up masses of fossil needlessly, and if he wants to bring oil prices down quickly, he knows where to start.

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: Hell on Earth?

I think I need a break.

Dear Don,

I was amused by your wife’s recent theological argument that in the afterlife there is only Heaven, no Hell – we’re living in Hell at present. And looking around, she might be right: there are wars in Ukraine, Iran, and virtually all around Israel; there are lawless areas around the world which meet my vision of Hell, for sure.

But what makes it all so depressing is that so many key world leaders are doing their best to make things worse, not better. Russia has all but declared war on the UK, and there’s actually a school of thought that says World War Three has already begun. That war is not an all-out conflagration; that’s too hazardous even for Putin and the Russians. Instead, Putin’s plan has been to fight what’s being known as a ‘hybrid’ war: cyber-warfare, driving wedges between western states, attacking infrastructure, and assassinations. Much of its dirty work is carried out by paid third parties, individuals and states such as Iran, which gives Putin and the Russian government deniability.

What’s made this so effective has been Putin’s manipulation of Donald Trump. He in turn has been able to manipulate his own support base, a sizeable chunk of the US population, to view Russia less as an enemy and more as a helpful friend. Personally, I’m convinced that Russia attempted to put Trump into the White House in the 2016 Election. (The evidence is overwhelming, in fact, that five key swing states were targeted on behalf of Russia to vote for Trump. Once again, a third party was employed, ironically the British firm Cambridge Analytica.) Of course it’s very much in Putin’s interests to weaken the Western alliances, the European Union (Brexit) and NATO. Trump’s entire second term in office has been marked by threats to withdraw from the latter, in fact.

And now Trump’s fractious relationship with President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has once again erupted. Ukraine, in case you were misled somehow by the US media, was invaded by Russia in spring 2022, and the two countries have been in a bloody stalemated war ever since. Russia’s not under threat – it’s too big – although Putin has so far sent an estimated half a million Russians to their needless deaths. But Ukraine needs to be able to defend itself, which requires technology, and Trump’s latest blows in favour of Russia and against Ukraine have been to disrupt the Starlink defence technology on which the Ukrainian military depends. Meanwhile, he’s breaking his own sanctions laws by striking a deal with Putin to import much-needed Russian diesel. With the mid-terms coming, he wants to lower pump prices but Putin is delighted; oil revenues fund the Ukraine war. And it won’t make much difference to oil prices anyway. The real oil shortages are down to that other Trump folly, the unwinnable war in the Middle East against Iran.

There’s long been a belief in the UK that somewhere in Donald Trump’s past he’s done something that means Putin can effectively blackmail him. It’s credible: Trump has mixed with some shady characters in his business past. He cut corners, his businesses have filed for bankruptcy on multiple occasions, he’s had relationships with porn stars, and of course he’s a convicted felon. Most of the world would argue that what he did on January 6th 2021 amounted to treasonable insurrection. But had Mark Anthony been around, he’d have assured us that “Trump is an honourable man.”

So how does this affect us in the United Kingdom? We’re realists. We’ve given up on the United States as a reliable ally, and we understand that defence suddenly has to become our number one priority. If we’re fighting a (sort of) war, we have to win it. That costs money. I’ve no doubt taxes will rise, benefits will be cut, and services will decline in other areas. But it’s a small price to pay, and we’re the lucky ones. Thanks to this new Putin-Trump axis of evil, many more people are dying, homeless, hungry and living in fear.

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: Trump and the Demise of Traditional American Politics

US politics from a European perspective.

Dear Don,

I suppose that whatever I write these days about US politics is from a European perspective, but I think it might be time to crystallise that a little so that you can judge for yourself whether my viewpoint resonates on your side of the Atlantic.

I taught politics in high school for 36 years, and US politics and society was a major part of the examination syllabus – perhaps my favourite part of it, in fact. At the start of each course, I began with a potted history lesson that broke the development of your nation into a series of phases:

• The early settlers crammed into the Atlantic seaboard and deep south states, until eventually the poorest settlers were left with the rubbish land on the Appalachians;
• Meanwhile, as ocean-going ships made it easier to sale round Cape Horn, a handful of settlers made a good living on the Pacific Coast;
• The discovery of gold in California (and later Alaska) drove desperate poor folk in the east to uproot and make the dangerous journey by wagon to the west, across land that was largely unknown to white settlers apart from a few traders down the Mississippi;
• One third died; one third got stuck when the wheels literally came off; one third made it of whom 10% actually found gold. But the critical group are the third who got stuck, who had to fend for themselves, dependent on their guns and living by their Bible, so self-reliance is built into mid-west and Prairie culture and psyche.

So what we have in the USA is a “flyover states sandwich”, where the bread is the Atlantic Seaboard & Deep South on one side, and the Pacific states on the other; the “filling” is the vast area in between. These two groups have very different outlooks. Of course it’s more complicated than that: the proximity of railroads and major highways is one factor; so, too, is the poor Democrat inner city versus wealthy Republican leafy suburb friction. It’s a bit of a patchwork.

But when I started teaching US politics, there was one clear difference between US and British politics. Whereas here in Britain we’ve traditionally had a two-party system, or something akin to it, in America the two political parties have always simply been electoral machines, a means to organise the support necessary to get elected. So the differences between ‘Republicans’ and ‘Democrats’ were always rather nebulous: centrist candidates might potentially run on either ticket – and sometimes did. By contrast, there’s no chance whatsoever that I’d ever vote Conservative. (Incidentally, I think most US voters would vote Conservative over here; the things we hold most dear in our society – such as the Welfare State and the National Health Service, an unarmed police and mainly gun-free society – would be a bit radical for most American tastes.)

Most of all, though, the USA prided itself on a consensus that the country was a melting pot for migrants, a land of opportunity, and it rallied round the Stars and Stripes and government: for unity is strength, as trade unions insist. In return, the government of the day, at whatever level – town, city, state or federal – represented every citizen, whoever they voted for. That’s the essential contract of representative government.

Half a century after I started teaching, Donald Trump, and those who voted for him, have essentially given all that the middle finger. What Trump has done is to speak to the disaffected voters of the United States, those who are finding life tough and who feel ignored by traditional politicians – the Establishment. Perhaps they’re poor. Perhaps they feel they’re working hard for insufficient reward while others appear to be more fortunate. Perhaps they feel threatened when they go out. Stir in the support of significant numbers of business and financial folk and you have a toxic blend of humanity just strong enough to win elections. And this body of voters and politicians feels no responsibility to care for anyone except themselves – after all, they only need to pander to those who vote for them.

So the consensus is broken, and the United States is a divided nation. Gone are the Reagan/Eisenhower Republican Presidents, the Roosevelt/Truman Democratic Presidents who could reach across the party divide. I can’t see any way the wound can be healed, either, short of becoming engaged in a war which threatens the country’s very existence. That’s an even more awful thought. I did wonder if the covid pandemic might do the trick, but sadly you had exactly the wrong President at the wrong time.

To an extent, these chasms are opening up in societies everywhere, including here in the United Kingdom. That’s what’s behind the rise of far-right leaders and political parties such as Marine LePen in France, AfD in Germany, Georgia Meloni in Italy and of course Nigel Farage and Reform here in Britain. But at least our eyes are open here. Europe experienced Hitler and Mussolini first-hand. Although I said I’d never vote Conservative, I’d certainly do so to stop Farage and his henchmen.

I think that’s where the problem lies in the United States. There hasn’t been an existential threat to your country in over 200 years. Without downplaying the events in any way, Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are just pinpricks in history; no foreign power has dropped rockets or bombs on Tennessee in a while. Trump voters are insulated from the real world, the world where people are dying in wars, dying of disease, dying of hunger.

“Responsibility is for losers.” That could be lifted from a Donald Trump speech, couldn’t it?

Till the next time,

Gordon

Letter from Edinburgh: Is There No Limit to the Depravity?

As the rest of the world expresses its disgust, the current US federal administration.

Dear Don,

Last week, Christa Pike: I expressed my dismay at the inability of the United States penal system that, setting aside that it’s inherently un-Christian to execute people anyway, it is incapable of doing so in a humane and efficient manner. Now that she appears to have survived, the US legal system has no idea what to do with her next.

This week, we learn that Nidal Hasan is to be executed by firing squad – the first such military execution since 1961, apparently – on 3rd December. Hasan was the soldier who murdered thirteen people at the US military base Fort Hood back in 2009, twelve of whom were fellow soldiers. Hasan didn’t really defend his actions in court, saying that he mistakenly thought he was defending his Muslim colleagues in Iraq and Afghanistan. He seemed to accept his fate, apologising for his mistakes and dismissing his own lawyers. Nobody seems to care why he chose to do what he did, so we’ll never learn how to prevent the next such attack. All that matters in retribution: his death. It’s the (current) American way.

But never did I ever imagine that the US federal administration – and here this has the hand of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth all over it – would decide to livestream the execution as it happens. Not only does it turn the execution into a circus, it’ll make the scenes available to kids of all ages. What on earth are they thinking of? Hegseth, of course, is a man wholly unsuited to any public office, far less Defense Secretary, but he fits the Trump profile of a political appointment – right-wing and with a questionable history.

Amnesty International monitors executions worldwide. This map shows where it’s used.

It’s revealing. There’s only one country in the entire western world that carries out executions (47 in 2025, by the way). Of course, China and Iran carry out many more, but they don’t turn it into a circus the way Trump’s America does. 66% of US citizens support the death penalty, though, which also says something.

As I write this, Christa Pike has actually been discharged from hospital, although exactly what that means is unclear. She’s talking and walking, we’re told, but confused (there’s a surprise). If, as we’re told, she’s been manacled to the bed the entire time, she’ll be even more confused. I have a little difficulty trying to imagine her dragging the bed up and down the ward.

Now the US authorities have to work out what to do with her. There will be a demand to execute her in some other way – that’s just how death-penalty supporters think – but the method is now very much in doubt. One thing’s for sure: the death penalty is bad enough, but to precede it with thirty years on death row seems a bit over the top. Cruel and unusual, even.

Till the next time,

Gordon