\n
I<\/span>What started with an ad in a local newspaper ended with winning one of the most prestigious environmental awards in the world. Sarah Finch was flipping through local planning notices in 2010 when one page caught her eye. The proposal was to drill for oil at Horse Hill, Surrey, outside Crawley, six miles (10km) from his home, across the border in West Sussex.<\/p>\nSurrey is not the kind of place you would expect an oil industry to be. The county is dotted with small villages, farms, forests, and commuter rail stations. Its semi-rural landscape stretches towards the horizon with a patchwork of typical British greenery. It’s hard to imagine it littered with nodding donkey pumpjacks and gas flares.<\/p>\n
Finch was shocked. A long-time environmental activist, she was an early adopter of climate change politics, working as Greenpeace’s climate spokesperson and protesting against the Kingsnorth power station in Kent. However, this was the first time I had come so close to home. \u201cThis is a local thing,\u201d she thought. “You should join in.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nSarah Finch, fellow activists and her legal team outside the High Court in London in November 2021.<\/span> Photo: Mark Kerrison\/Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy Live News.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHorse Hill was part of a network of drill sites proposed to mine the Weald Basin, a shale formation deep underground in the southern England homeland. Oil drillers believed that modern hydraulic fracturing techniques could turn Surrey into a new Texas, potentially producing 100 billion barrels of oil.<\/p>\n
Ms Finch was drawn to the campaign against the proposed oil rush and brought together her Surrey neighbors and anti-fracking activists to form the Weald Action Group (WAG). They fought against plans to sink a well in the town of Balcombe and organized a mass demonstration in the town that attracted thousands of people. Together, they have successfully denied or withdrawn many drilling applications. But not all.<\/p>\n
In 2014, oil explorers drilled the first exploratory well at Horse Hill, followed by a second exploratory well in 2017. In 2018, Horse Hill Development applied to Surrey County Council for permission to drill four more holes and begin commercial production. Over 25 years, it will pump more than 24 million barrels of oil.<\/p>\n
Finch and her fellow campaigners sought to intensify community opposition. But despite their objections, and just months after declaring a climate emergency, Surrey approved the plan.<\/p>\nAn exploratory drilling rig on the Horse Hill property in 2014.<\/span> Photo: Gareth Fuller\/PA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nHowever, WAG did not back down. As they looked more closely at their planning applications, they became aware of \u201cScope 3 emissions,\u201d or emissions produced by the combustion of oil itself. Mr Salley had told developers they should include them in their impact statements. The developers disagreed. The City Council relented.<\/p>\n
This means that while the project’s environmental impact report lists emissions from on-site operations such as drilling and road construction, it does not list the 10.6 million tons of CO2 produced by burning oil.<\/p>\n
With Mr Finch as lead plaintiff, WAG applied to the High Court for a judicial review of Mr Salley’s decision, arguing that it had not been properly taken as it did not take Scope 3 emissions into account. The court disagreed. They appealed. they were rejected.<\/p>\n
Finch wasn’t thinking about what would happen next. However, their loss had unexpected and severe consequences. Shortly after, Michael Gove, then regional secretary, was asked to make a decision on the Whitehaven coal mine in Cumbria, the UK’s first new deep coal mine in 30 years and criticized as a “carbon bomb” by environmentalists. he approved it.<\/p>\n
Looking through the decision document, Finch’s stomach turned as he saw his name appear 85 times. Mr Gove repeatedly cited her claims as showing emissions from coal extracted from Cumbria were unrelated to the planning application. She felt naive. She did not anticipate that attempts to block local oil wells would result in a complete relaxation of planning rules for fossil fuel development.<\/p>\n
His last hope was a final application to the Supreme Court. The divided judgment in the Court of Appeal gave Mr Finch the opportunity to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. Contrary to expectations, the agency accepted her case. This was the first climate-related case the agency had ever heard.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the stakes kept getting higher. Legal challenges to other fossil fuel projects, including the Cumbria coal mine and the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields in the North Sea, were frozen awaiting the outcome of the Finch case. Cumbria mine developers and the government intervened as stakeholders on the side of Surrey City Council. Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace joined Finch’s side.<\/p>\n
The verdict was handed down on a sunny morning in June 2024, nearly five years after Finch began his legal challenge. Regardless of where coal, oil or gas is burned, the climate impact of burning must be considered when deciding whether to approve a project, the court ruled.<\/p>\nFinch celebrates outside the Supreme Court in London following the landmark judgment in June 2024.<\/span> Photo: Karl Cote\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nAlthough the change in the interpretation of the City Planning Act was small, the effect was enormous. Cumbria Colliery’s license has been canceled by the High Court. The government spent a year rewriting guidelines for the offshore oil and gas industry, extracting support from Jackdaw Bank and Rosebank, both of which were deemed illegal at the time..<\/em><\/p>\nThe Finch decision was one of the most landmark environmental cases of this century. But it is already under threat. The government has said it is considering replacing the entire environmental impact assessment system, which could result in it being abolished completely. In any case, the government still has discretionary powers and there are concerns that Rosebank and Jackdaw could be revived as fuel shortages caused by wars in the Middle East have increased calls for drilling.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Ms Finch joined six other women from around the world to receive one of the world’s most prestigious annual environmental awards. The Goldman Environmental Prize was established in 1989 and has recognized 239 grassroots activists in 98 countries.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Mr. Finch continues to campaign. \u201cThis is a kind of war of attrition with the fossil fuel industry,\u201d she says. But she believes her days are numbered. \u201cYou know, renewable energy is more efficient, cheaper, cleaner, and less likely to be destroyed by a crazy dictator.<\/p>\n
“I think clean energy is desirable in many ways, and it’s our future. But it’s not happening fast enough.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#Surrey #wells #Supreme #Court #activists #changed #Britains #climate #law<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
IWhat started with an ad in a local newspaper ended with winning one of the most prestigious environmental awards in the world. Sarah Finch was flipping through local planning notices in 2010 when one page caught her eye. The proposal was to drill for oil at Horse Hill, Surrey, outside Crawley, six miles (10km) from … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":688,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[1468,1470,1469,69,1467,1471,1466,1464,1465],"class_list":["post-687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-activists","tag-britains","tag-changed","tag-climate","tag-court","tag-law","tag-supreme","tag-surrey","tag-wells"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hyokal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}