 The ecological crisis is a big, technical, complicated issue and all too often how this is presented isolates and simplifies and more especially relies on commonly held tropes to convey meaning. What if those tropes are not objectively correct and so as the media feeds back those tropes to the public it increasingly distorts how we react to the ecological crisis. In late 2022 I was asked to review the film The Oil Machine. Let's say I'm viewing it, I was not enamoured of its content. What then dismayed me even more was how, across social media and activist forums, people reacted uncritically to the content of the film, not realising that its underlying narrative was missing form in that discussion and thus misdirecting how we might address the complex nature of ecological change. Philosophy and sociology has a concept called the metanarrative, the idea that society relies on historical, self-justifying narratives in order to provide a framework for how we discuss everyday matters. If jargon is the way experts classify increasingly specialised ideas to both save time and render their discussion exclusive, metanarratives are the way popular debates encompass great political ideas, social beliefs or assumed trends as if they are real, tangible things that affect our lives. Problem is, those metanarratives are often not real. They often assume events or trends with little empirical evidence to validate their existence. For example, the BBC recently carried out a review of its economics journalism. It concluded that the BBC's coverage often risked its need for impartiality. More pointedly, the report concluded, too often it's not clear from a report that fiscal policy decisions are also political choices. They're not inevitable. It's just that governments like to present them that way. In one sense, the all machine does contrast certain social or economic metanarratives as they apply to oil or energy. Where I had problems with the firm was that, in order to make those observations, it used metanarratives from the environmental movement which are equally ill-defined and factually flawed. And so, as in the BBC's impartiality deficit, failed to give an objective view of both the problem and the full range of possible solutions. In Britain, popular environmental narratives are constantly framed within an affluent first world perspective, where any consideration of environmental issues unquestioningly accepts an entitlement to that lifestyle. But what if those narratives are, certainly for the future of the environment, fatally flawed, and are the root of why ecological damage cannot be halted? When I look at the oil machine, I don't see the same thing as the average person. That's because I spent much of the last 30 years researching energy and energy policy, especially as it relates to Britain. The problem I have with the film is that, for want of a better term, it's lazy. These are complicated issues, which, for the average UK consumer, have predictably distressing outcomes when explored in detail. Unfortunately, rather than explain that and create confidence from imparting knowledge, the film falls back upon the tired tropes eco-documentaries used repeatedly for 20 years. I highlight the BBC's view of its economics journalism because I think there's a similar problem of factual impartiality within the media's environmental coverage. This documentary is part funded and presented by BBC Scotland. How the BBC, and the mass media generally, have influenced the public's views on climate change in the past to create the impressions recycled through the film has to be viewed critically, and when we compare what is said in the film against academic research, inconsistencies arise. How the film presents this issue could be seen in the context of the SNP's recent move away from North Sea Oil, promoting Scotland's renewable resources as a more secure, longer lasting alternative. While the BBC in England might have problems presenting this, in the context of the political debate in Scotland, this is not revolutionary. At a more basic journalistic level though, there's a problem with both the accuracy of the statements made in isolation, and when set against the background of all ecological issues. For example, there's a new oil and gas project which is set to be licensed in the cambo field which is in the North Sea. It's one of the biggest North Sea oil fields that's ever been found. So we're here to point out the hypocrisy of approving this new field just after the IEA have said that we cannot approve and we cannot invest in new oil and gas. That is not true. The cambo field has an estimated 600 million barrels of oil in place. In contrast, the fortress field had 4,200 million barrels of oil, seven times more. And within the historic trend of North Sea production, how peak oil influences the size of past and future field discoveries, and what that inevitably means for the present and future production in the North Sea was not explored. I do not expect non-expert members of the public who feature throughout the film to know such details. What I do expect is that when members of the public and especially expert talking heads present contested or partial information that it is explored against the known technical and scientific criteria which influence those issues. If that basic thing does not happen then, as outlined in the view of the BBC's economic journalism, wholly misleading meta-narratives will arise and distort how, as a nation, we decide to deal with these issues in the future. Environmentalism often frames arguments within an idealised morality where blame or culpability is a reason why it's good to take certain actions because who would not want to do the right thing? Yeah, they're going to blame us and we're not even the ones in control here. As the wise lad in the film succinctly puts it, once you admit that you are not in control then that creates a whole new set of problems through environmentalism's moral imperative for action. Not only is it not your fault, but also how can you possibly hope to take action to avert this crisis? It does come into question how much we are like living in democracy. How much our politicians are actually representing us or how much they're representing big business. It's not the demonstrable lack of political power that is the issue here. It's the question of whether we have ever lived in a democracy, and for those who believe we do or once lived in a democracy in Britain, there are five key words which must be considered, the monarch and the house of lords. Environmental campaigns in Britain do not deal with the hard issue of political and economic power. Those aspects of the ecological debate were jettisoned by the movement in 1980s as it sought inclusion within the mainstream political arena. Therein lies the root of the problem. As the philosophers Mark Fisher and Slavoj Dizek say, people are more willing to accept the end of the world than the end of capitalism. Perhaps literally that is an idea far more applicable to environmentalism than any other social movement. Fisher's exploration of capitalist realism accurately frames the way this film contrasts the political and economic reality of North Sea oil and gas extraction with both the ecological impact of that and the response of the environment movement. The rationality presented by both sides in the film contest technical issues, but at no point ever challenges the basis for why these resources are being exploited to maintain the consumer society. And at no point is the perceived entitlement of minority of the world's population to energy and the economic power that confers ever explored. Without an accurate diagnosis of the root of the problem, how can it be solved? And why is it environmentalists cannot see this limitation? This year E.F. Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful turns 50 years old. He makes an astute observation in advance in his case. We might remind ourselves that to calculate the cost of survival is perverse. No doubt a price has to be paid for anything worthwhile. To redirect technology so that it serves man instead of destroying him requires primarily an effort of the imagination and an abandonment of fear. The laws of thermodynamics are absolute. We can physically test them and validate their existence and for that reason we know that we do not have the power to change them. Our knowledge of geology and the occurrence of minerals is certain in that it is not absolute but within a known probability we can show that our knowledge of the earth and its systems is accurate. In contrast concepts such as money or debt only exist in the mind of humans. That said what is made in the mind can as easily be remade, an idea which was explored by David Graber. If there is anything essentially human it is the capacity to imagine things and bring them into being and the alienation occurs when we lose control over the process. Graber's book on social movements considers why failure to be able to change the world around us creates alienation resulting in the kinds of stress and eco-anxiety that the film presents. In fact that same contradiction between knowledge and action is stated at the beginning of the film. It can feel like you're up against something that's so massive that's got the support of governments and people who are so much more powerful than you that it's quite difficult sometimes to know what to do to change that. I think that's basically what eco-anxiety is being constantly worried about whether or not you're going to have a future. The rules of the system which are enforced upon us are defined to favour those with political power because they make the rules. They are not physical laws they are not geophysical limitations they are simply ideas which could be as easily reimagined and as the BBC's review of impartiality stated most often these rules are political choices not based upon objective facts. Why then cannot society simply reimagine these rules? Is it perhaps because they are not routinely tested or validated by popular debate? The environmental movement consistently argues about technologies or policy or targets. Why can it not argue for the dissolution of corporations banning technologies or the elimination of property rights? The fact is since the 1980s leading figures in the environmental movement have appropriated the language in neoliberalism to make arguments for change and not only has this failed to stem the decline in the environment that decline has also become far worse over that time. The film doesn't quantify the timescale for when this ecological damage took place in fact given how it is described in the film the timescale presented is misleading because it assumes the problems began in the late 19th century. Oil was discovered in 1859 at that time there were about 800 whaling vessels in the world and that was how we powered lights in cities whale oil. About 10 years later half of that whaling fleet was worthless because nobody needed the whales anymore it's going to take a lot longer but the rigs of today can be equated to the whaling vessels of 150 years ago. There are three problems with that firstly whales were already in decline in the mid 19th century just as oil is in decline today. In fact well before fossil oil was widely used the use of coal to create town gas was already filling the demand for lighting in new urban settlements. Secondly to say oil was discovered in 1859 presumes oil production began with the Pennsylvania oil rush. In fact from 1850 the world's first commercial oil refinery was operated in Scotland at Bathgate in West Lovion using mined oil shales to manufacture oil paraffin and naphtha. Thirdly fossil fuel exploitation is not a linear process it is an exponential one. In a 270 years from 1750 to 2020 roughly 1,700 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent have been emitted from the use of fossil fuels. It took 220 years to emit the first quarter it took 22 years to emit the second quarter it took 16 years to emit the third quarter and it took 12 years to emit the last quarter. Let's state this really clearly half of all the carbon emissions produced by fossil fuels since 1750 have taken place since 1992 when the world agreed the UN framework Convention on Climate Change in order to reduce carbon emissions. When we talk of blame within eco debates we don't have to look to the world of victorian england or even the early 20th century. Half of this problem has been created in the last 30 or so years by the world as it operates today the system we all know and benefit from right now. With this shard of knowledge about emissions people sometimes jump to the issue of population and yes at some level population plays a part here however when we look at who it is within the human population benefits the most from energy consumption just over half the world's carbon emissions are attributable to around 10 percent of the global population. It is not the mass of the human population it is creating this problem it is a small minority about 800 million of the globally affluent. At some point we have to stop falling back upon lazy arguments about corporate power or a lack of democracy and actually examine what it is the environment movement stands for. Why is it that the environment movement out of all the movements which arose out of the political and social upheavals in the 1950s and 1960s is the only one which has not only failed to make progress but has presided over an absolute regression of the problem it was formed to address and this being the case why does the movement not reassess its fundamental approach and tactics rather than trying to maintain the same tired statist calls for action. But not framing the issue of climate change with an analysis of political and economic power both who wields that power and who benefits the most from it the film not only fails to highlight the scale of damage but also the weight for who created it. Again that is a fact of which points directly at the affluent western lifestyle and thus solutions to this problem cannot be contemplated without directly confronting the excesses of that lifestyle. We see this basic failure to test ideas in the way the film presents renewable energy as an uncontested good an impolarisation fossil fuels is bad. The urgency of the climate crisis is not entirely unlike the threat we would face if we were to be hit by a meteorite and therefore we cannot rely on self-serving capital gains making shareholders in oil companies for that transition. A commentator makes the point that fossil fuel lobbyists are present at climate negotiations often as part of government delegations and that renewable energy interests are far less represented as if progress could be made if that were reversed. Thus far the expansion of renewable energy has not led to a proportionate decrease in emissions there are a number of factors affecting that. Firstly as energy consumption grows renewable energy often just keeps pace with energy growth rather than supplanting fossil fuel use. Secondly the current focus on renewable energy sources necessitates the mass electrification of society the process of which increases the demand for resources creating carbon emissions leading to an energy emissions trap. Thirdly the large expansion of mining necessitated by the adoption of mass renewable technologies has the same impacts of biodiversity loss including the proposed new impact of deep sea mining the creation of neocolonial relationships and the exploitation of civil conflicts all of which the environmental movement has previously blamed the fossil fuel industry for causing. The Green New Deal the plan to transition to 100% renewable energy is not discussed which is a major emission. In the film a person comments on the International Energy Agency's call for ending new fossil fuel developments the IEA have also issued a report highlighting the possible resource restrictions on the renewable transition but this wasn't mentioned. In fact a move to 100% renewable energy is extremely uncertain due to the limits on mineral resource production not only the speed at which those resources can be produced to meet emissions targets but also their ultimate availability. We have to ask what is the root cause here fossil fuel use or generally the supply of energy and resources to maintain our economic model. Both fossil fuels and renewable energy require a large-scale globalized mining effort to sustain them with all the ecological impacts this entails on current evidence while there are differences in the degree or type of impacts there is no structural difference between a mass consumption system using fossil fuels and one using renewable energy. Arguing about the source of energy is a misdirection from the root of this issue energy consumption. The core polarizing assumption in the film that renewables are good and fossil fuels are bad is a distortion of the available evidence there is no objective reason to assume that renewable energy is an incontestable good that it would solve the problem of carbon emissions or that it would cure the ills of neocolonial resource exploitation for which the City of London Finance establishment featured in the film in relation to its support for oil is also a global centre for metal mining interests. Initially the environmental movement focused on changing lifestyles in order to guarantee a future for all species on the planet today that deep ecological focus as was foreseen 40 years ago when the movement began to fracture has been sold off from an eco-modernist perspective which does not challenge business as usual and which amuse all introspection on lifestyle. Instead the focus for change are techno fixes which try and make that mode of living less harmful but which ultimately have no significant impact against the forces driving consumption. The film's perspective is not one which makes change it's a perspective which creates stasis. Practically what environmentalists advocate is not replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. Practically what the advocate is replacing the mining of hydrocarbons to provide energy with the mining of metal resources to provide energy. At no point is that demand for energy or the global equity of energy use ever seriously challenged. Of course this flags the question of what are the alternatives. The Paris Agreement relies on technologies which do not exist or which have a questionable efficacy in order to perpetuate the current global economic model. How is this possible or permissible? Through our landmark North Sea transition deal we are backing the decarbonisation of the oil and gas sector to support high-value jobs and safeguard the schools necessary to develop new low-carbon industries across the country so they're spoke to person. I mean that doesn't really make sense because yeah I mean they're talking about decarbonising the oil and gas sector it's like you can't decarbonise oil and gas. The future development options for the North Sea mentioned in the film do answer this question but it was not explained why this is the case and why it is wrong. The reality is that these technologies not only perpetuate fossil fuel production in the North Sea they also seek to increase it. For example the proposal for hydrogen production on T side assumes that the carbon dioxide is captured and buried in the North Sea. What was not said is that this buried carbon dioxide would likely be used for enhanced oil recovery flushing out more oil and gas from underground rocks. So when as commonly demonstrated in the film the industry talk of net zero operation. In 20 years time I would live in the UK that we're still producing at the same level at the same level of hydrogen carbons that we're producing now but with a net with a net zero footprint. The net of net zero means subtracting the amount of carbon buried from the direct emissions of their operations to produce the net zero part of the statement but this does not include the carbon value of the oil and gas sold or the extra oil and gas flushed out with all that buried carbon. This insistence on business as usual written into the Paris Agreement and then justified for absurd notions such as net zero fossil fuels is a principal obstacle to real change. Unless we tackle these assumptions by proposing a new paradigm for change the outlook will be no different to the past two decades of inaction. There is a growing body of academic research which outlines what we need to do and which sets some broad guidelines for how we must change. Firstly, ending economic growth since within an environmental justice or ecological perspective it cannot be justified. Secondly, a rapid simplification of the most materially advanced lifestyles both relocalizing to closed resource loops and eliminate transport and cutting consumption to reduce demand. And thirdly as an inevitable consequence of these options degrowth, a reduction of perhaps 75 to 90 percent in the most materially affluent lifestyles in order to guarantee a viable chance of life for all species on earth. Why do environmentalists not enact these ideas as a solution to civilisation's imminent extinction? If the business as usual lobby can write fictitious technologies into international agreements thereby guaranteeing failure why can't the environmental movement in an act of self-preservation propose collapse in the excessive consumption of a minority of the world's population in order to ensure that everyone can have a viable future? The answer is quite simply those who lead the environmental movement are members of this minority of consumers trapped like hostages in a system which engenders their winning compliance. Unless we challenge the leaders of the movement demanding they present a truly radical paradigm for change this history of failure will continue this idea was alluded to in the film. People in the oil industry and just people in general have a go at environmentalists for you know using phones and buying shoes if people think you're a hypocrite they're not going to listen to what you have to say and I mean that is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants. We live in an energy infrastructure that means we have to use oil and gas currently because other alternatives are not being promoted. We are beyond the point of solving this with new technologies this was debatable even if the alert over ecological collapse had been heeded when it was first raised in the 1970s. It was not only the political and economic establishment who rejected those radical calls for change many well-meaning people concerned about the future of the earth also rejected them as too extreme because of what it meant for their own economic status. As I often say we're not in a situation of having problems with possible solutions we're in a predicament with only a few mostly unwelcome outcomes to choose from unless we consciously act from that reality offering up as Schumacher suggests our entire modern lifestyle as a necessary price of change the outcome is inevitable. It is not possible to consider why change has failed to happen or why the ecological situation has become so much worse without considering the structural failures of the environmental movement itself both why the options they currently promote have historically failed to make an impact but also how it came to be that the movement was forced into this literal dead end by passively supporting destruction as usual. I could write far more about the problems with this film the issues glossed over the empty field good statements which have no true substance the history ignored because of its unfavorable implications for how we live our lives today and for all of that the failure of the environmental movement to make change but i think i've said enough to make the points required. The problem is not simply carbon emissions the problem is all forms of human economic activity which across many different environmental media are driving ecological destruction in ways that are as equally serious and or catastrophic for our future as climate change clearly even BBC Scotland isn't about to make that film and the reason is very simply while a highly compromised environment movement panders the excessive consumption of a globally affluent minority the media will not listen to any case which argues for more radical change. It's a painful thing for people to admit that they've been taken for a ride but if you want to address ecological collapse this is what the environmental movement must do. The green agenda adopted 30 years ago backed up by industries and politicians keen to perpetuate business as usual sounded convincing. Today not only does the statistical evidence demonstrate these ideas have failed to make any real impact but also we have sufficient evidence to show that these green ideas cannot work we need a new more radical paradigm which exposes the modern technological lifestyle as an economic suicide cult