Labour have left it to Scottish courts and protesters to stop Rosebank

The case, brought by two environmental charities, Uplift and Greenpeace, argues that the UK Government acted unlawfully last year in granting a licence without considering the effects on our climate of burning the oil and gas extracted from the field.

The Rosebank field lies 80 miles off the north-west of Shetland and is by some measure the biggest ever to be discovered in the North Sea. This week’s legal move is the latest in a series – both in the UK and abroad – which have seen the courts take an increasingly robust attitude on the environmental impact of new drilling. For the sake of the planet, we must hope it is successful.

At school in the 1970s, we were told that the biggest threat to human survival was that oil and gas would run out. Economic infrastructure would collapse as finite supplies dried up. Famine and global conflict would be the consequence.

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But as the century turned it became clear this was bollocks. In fact, there was a new reality: it wasn’t that we would run out of fossil fuels, but that the atmosphere couldn’t afford for us to burn them. To survive, we would have to leave them in the ground.

That’s a hard message and one that still has not been absorbed by many, in particular those who have got rich from the exploitation of hydrocarbons. It is, as Al Gore observed, the ultimate inconvenient truth.

But truth it is. For millennia humanity thrived on this planet. The Earth existed in an organic equilibrium. Carbon was oxidised through fire and decay, and then extracted from the atmosphere and reconstituted into living matter through the phenomenon of photosynthesis.

But in the last hundred or so years we have destroyed that balance as carbon gases have been pumped into the air at unprecedented levels, principally by burning oil and gas.

As result, the ability of our atmosphere to protect the planet from radiation has been compromised and Earth has become warmer. This in turn has seen sea levels rise as the icecaps melt and dramatic disturbance to weather systems. Climate change is already killing many thousands of people every year, the latest victims being in Florida and Valencia. If the process continues, that becomes millions and the very existence of our species will be in doubt.

This is the context in which the future of our oil and gas industry must be planned. The only plan that is compatible with survival is to stop. The only future that works is a managed decline and replacement of fossil fuels with clean renewable energy from the elements.

None of this is even that contentious anymore. The science behind understanding climate change and the role of carbon emissions in it is universally accepted. (Well, perhaps not in the new White House...)

And yet the world seems capable of knowing that it is on a path to destruction while equally incapable of getting off it.

On paper, UK policy is clear. The legislation is in place. We need to phase out oil and gas. That’s official. Yet, this time last year, then-PM Rishi Sunak announced more than 100 new licences for oil and gas exploration and extraction in the North Sea. Rosebank sits at the top of that list.

The Government turns logic and common sense on its head. It claims you can phase out something by having more of it. Any number of falsehoods are marshalled to bolster this deception. They claim Rosebank will make UK energy supplies more secure – which is simply not true, 90% of its output will go for sale abroad and never be used in the UK.

They claim it will bring down bills and help with the cost of living. Not true – Rosebank oil will be sold on the international market, where prices are rigged by a cartel of producers. And it is far more expensive than renewables.

The SNP opposed Sunak’s bonanza and believes there should be no new extraction in the North Sea unless compatible with net-zero targets – something it would be impossible for Rosebank to achieve.

Last year, Labour, too, said they would oppose any new licences but then adopted the bizarre policy of not reversing any already agreed. That provided a powerful incentive for the Tories to push through massive expansion in the year before the election.

The new UK Government has got itself in a weird position now. It has said it believes the licensing of Rosebank was unlawful by not taking climate effects into account and it will not therefore contest the court action. But bizarrely, it will not reverse Sunak’s decision. It seems it will be up to campaigners and the Scottish courts to do the job for it.

All of this begs a bigger question: why is it the Scottish Government can issue licences for onshore energy production in Scotland, but not offshore?

Independence would mean that control over the exploitation of Scottish waters would lie in Scotland – but even while that it being debated there is an overwhelmingly case for these licensing decisions to be devolved.

If they had been, I’m pretty sure tomorrow’s court case would not be necessary.