Leave It in the Ground

Speaking at a hustings organised by Callington Fair Trade group on Saturday 6th March, in response to a question about the renewed tensions between Britain and Argentina over South Atlantic oil, Roger Creagh-Osborne, Green candidate for SE Cornwall, made an impassioned plea to "leave it in the ground".

Roger said "The presumed 60 billion barrels of oil represents less than two years of current world consumption. We know that we have already used in 100 years over half of the easy-to-get oil that there will ever, most of it in the last 30 years and we know that at current rates there will be none left for our grandchildren. We must wean ourselves off this addiction to oil - if we do not start to cut back voluntarily then nature will simply impose a solution on us.

"We do not need to continue to burn every last drop we can find. The investment of billions of pounds in attempting to gather this oil would be far better spent on developing alternatives ways of living, and the imperialistic sabre rattling over ownership is a nonsense. That oil belongs to generations yet unborn, we have already squandered most of their inheritance and it is time we acted responsibly and started to build a proper future that doesn't depend on destroying the world's natural capital.

The hustings was on the theme of international development and, in response to another question on the UKs failure over 30 years to achieve the UN target of 0.7% of GDP given in international aid, Roger described the failure of the last two governments as "despicable and immoral".

"I have no problem with finding it easy to give over 1% of my personal income to charity - why as one of the wealthiest countries can we not step up to the mark and find even half that amount of our national income to help the poorest people in the world"

The Green party policy is to move rapidly to a 1% of GDP minimum aid budget as the basic commitment we should give to sharing our wealth with others.