‘Climate justice’ seems a well-intentioned but somewhat nebulous concept: a slightly more detailed description might entail both fighting climate change and helping the world’s poor. Granted, the former fits more neatly into a manifesto, but aren’t these one and the same? Not entirely: cutting down greenhouse gases and lifting the world out of poverty are rarely complementary causes.

An oft-touted technique for fighting climate change is to drive fossil fuels into an uneconomic death spiral by ‘bursting the carbon bubble’. This is a primary aim of the Divestment campaign. However, the efficacy of the bursting mechanism is presently by-the-by – the outcome is always portrayed to be more important. Expensive fossil fuels equal no more greenhouse gases equals a happy world, right?

“Exxon and friends aren’t inherently evil: they produce perpetually cheaper, cleaner energy vital to the world’s continued flourishing”

Access to energy is crucial to our existence but is often taken for granted. Colloquially, ‘energy access’ is understood as switching on a light at a whim. However, equally fundamental to the OECD experience is having a radiator during a snowstorm or a fridge in a heatwave, running chemical processes to produce medicine and synthetic fertiliser, inter-continental shipping, and access to education over the internet. Abundant energy enables these miracles and without it our lives would be incomparably worse. This abundant energy is overwhelmingly thanks to fossil fuels. Fossil fuels aren’t purely our energy: they are a nigh-indispensable feedstock for making said drugs or fertiliser, food, clothes, computers and nearly everything else. We cannot forego hydrocarbons entirely: our best shot is to produce them by other, more expensive, energy-intensive means.

Nonetheless, divestment activists tell us that we must revoke oil production’s social license and make our abundant energy unaffordable – the Ethiopian lacking a 200th of a European’s energy access will appreciate the righteous intent. But even many Europeans suffer from energy poverty – how then can killing fossil fuels be purely virtuous? This is perhaps jumping the gun; after all, coal, oil, and gas aren’t the only game in town. Wind and solar power are now cheaper than coal, haven’t you heard?

Well, kind of, but only when abusing the least sophisticated and thus most headline-worthy cost metrics. Naturally, if this were the case the world would be building unsubsidised renewable energy, regardless of whether Big Oil wants us to or not. The cost of renewables is under-stated but the value of intermittent electricity is often ignored: having electricity exactly when it’s required is crucial for most forms of industry but it’s literally a matter of life and death when running a hospital. On the other hand, a surfeit of electricity may cause the grid to collapse – blackouts and broken pylons are somewhat inconvenient. Batteries? Great for scalping peaks and troughs in electricity prices, inconceivable for backing up a grid. But renewables create more jobs than fossil fuels! True, just as banning tractors would create many more jobs in farming – requiring additional human toil for the same output isn’t a selling point. Ideal if you believe humanity should live at one with nature, less so if you support feeding 7 billion people.

Intermittent renewables will likely never come close to powering a developed country. They can manage a few hours during a sunny summer Sunday but invariably modern economies require substantial reliable energy in the form of coal, gas, hydro, or nuclear plants. Demanding otherwise is to enforce energy poverty and suffering; to quote Rachel Pritzker of the Breakthrough Institute, “poverty is not my favourite climate solution”. Significant climate change is a near-certainty but at least with inexpensive fossil fuels those worst affected can be well-prepared.

So, if fossil fuels aren’t going anywhere, why shouldn’t their production and use be as cheap and green as possible? Cheap, fracked gas has killed US coal and thus reduced emissions more effectively than nebulous environmental legislation ever has. Is it surprising that fossil fuel research could pay dividends for the climate?

Another prospective breakthrough against climate change is Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS); by strapping a CCS system to the tail of every gas turbine we can pat ourselves on the back and call climate change a day. Optimistic – granted – but much less so than a future without fossil fuels. Unsurprisingly, parties actively investigating CCS include the likes of Shell and BP with research on-going in Cambridge’s own BP Institute. Although the Divestment movement describes CCS as merely a ‘surface solution’, other credible sources tend to disagree – the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and the late Department of Energy and Climate Change regard it as vital.

That fighting climate change is a cause close to my heart is indicative of my good fortune but billions have more imminent concerns. Exxon and friends aren’t inherently evil: they produce perpetually cheaper, cleaner energy vital to the world’s continued flourishing. We must obviate fossil fuels as much as possible but trying to destroy oil and gas supermajors is at best misguided, at worst immoral.