Is Burnham trying to appease Trump? Or Reform? What other reason is there for these North Sea oil plans? | George Monbiot

Here is a Labour government spending a vast amount of political capital to earn tiny material gains while risking huge political losses. It occurred repeatedly under Keir Starmer, and now – with the impending decision to approve further gas and oil drilling in the North Sea – it is happening under Andy Burnham. You rack your brains to explain it, but no rational explanation comes.

Burnham is studiously cryptic about his reasons. His clearest statement to date goes as follows: “There is a resource there. When people are struggling, we can’t ignore that.” Does he mean that oil and gas workers are struggling?

If so, this decision will be of little use to them. The Jackdaw gasfield, likely to be approved this week, will generate a grand total of 27 direct full-time jobs. The Rosebank oilfield, whose approval is likely to follow soon, will support 450 UK-based jobs during its lifetime.

Yet the UK’s net zero economy directly employs 300,000 people, and a further 400,000 jobs are planned. The rest of the green economy employs more than 600,000. A just transition for fossil fuel workers, securing jobs in the green economy, is better for everyone.

Or does he mean energy consumers are struggling? The gas in the Jackdaw field will make a tiny contribution to our supply and no significant difference to either our energy bills or our energy security. Switching to renewables makes us far better off in both respects.

Any oil produced by the Rosebank field is unlikely to be refined in Britain, as we no longer possess much capacity for handling oil of that kind. And as for the national accounts, a recent estimate suggests that the climate damage caused by the fields’ extra emissions would outweigh any economic benefits several times over. In fact, the two greatest threats to the global economy might now be climate breakdown, which, as a wide range of economists and eminent organisations forecast, threatens comprehensive economic collapse, and the AI bubble, which the governor of the Bank of England warns could burst with dire consequences.