Take action
The campaign will be launched in September, but you can get stuck in straight away by asking your MP to sign Early Day Motion 407: Development Aid for Oil. For more information, go to the Plan B website.
If you´ve got questions, ideas or opinions about the new campaign, email Bronwen in the P&P office.
Stop funding our addiction to oil
Billions of pounds goes into new oil projects every year. The vast majority is exported to the rich North, feeding our addiction to climate changing fossil fuels and undermining efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
Funding oil and gas projects brings new supplies of fossil fuels onto the market, over a project life span measured in decades. Funding provided for extraction now will contribute to the future availability and affordability of fossil fuels. It creates an economic incentive to consume them, and effectively ties us into a future dependency on fossil fuels, locking us into a path which leads to dangerous climate change.
Climate change is predicted to slow or reverse progress towards human development goals, having the greatest impact on the most vulnerable people in the developing world. Fossil fuel extraction projects also have a more direct negative impact on development and human rights. As the Department for International Development admits, many countries with a high dependence on natural resources have failed to achieve sustained economic growth and development. This `resource curse´ manifests itself in various ways, from negative impacts on the local environment and associated health problems, to corruption in government, authoritarianism, human rights abuses, militarization and conflict.
P&P students discuss campaign options at P&P´s G8 Summer Festival 2005.
That´s why the People & Planet network chose the issue of investment in fossil fuel projects as the focus for our new climate change campaign. The decision was made at P&P´s G8 Summer Festival, when students chose this campaign from three options.
P&P will be launching the campaign in autumn 2006. We´ll be calling for an end to investment in fossil fuel extraction projects, and for a massive increase in funding for sustainable energy. This is needed to ensure the future viability and affordability of renewable energy in relation to fossil fuels. Not only will investing in sustainable energy back up international efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions and tackle climate change, but it will also contribute to the creation of low-carbon development paths which work for the poor.
Find out more
- Plan B for a sustainable energy future
- Pumping Poverty: report looking at the role of British overseas development aid in facilitating oil development
- Platform: unravelling the carbon web
- Friends of the Earth International: hands off oil, mining and gas!
- Practical Action (previously Intermediate Technology Development Group — ITDG)