Andy Burnham promised he would be different.

He stood on a roof in Manchester and committed to a fossil-free future.

And yet, today, the government approved drilling at Jackdaw, demonstrating that his government cares more about oil and gas company profits than the health, finances, and security of the British people.

Jackdaw is not the answer to any of our problems.

Jackdaw will not lower bills, as the energy secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh herself has admitted again this morning, and it will only create 27 new jobs.

On top of that, it will not contribute any significant amount of gas to our domestic stocks.

es, we will still use some gas as we make the transition to clean energy, but there’s more than enough extraction going on globally to meet that need.

Adding 2% of supply from our dwindling North Sea basin will not make one jot of difference to our energy security.

What it will do, though, is set this country on a dangerous trajectory – one where we ignore the physical limits of what our planet can take, to try and gain favour with business bosses who have never cared about whether the planet thrives or burns.

We have just lived through the driest summer on record; much of southern England is still in severe drought, and now we are facing a winter of devastating flooding.

Every day that real action is delayed, we increase the risks of a catastrophic tipping point from which we will never recover.

The domino effects of that tipping point will likely hurt those already in poverty, insecure housing or without community support the most.

Knowing this, the government is choosing today to commit to locking us into gas in the North Sea for longer.

Ministers have also admitted they are keen to approve the use of existing rigs to drill new wells – a dodge that helps them get around their manifesto pledge of no new licences.

The Labour government justified their decision today on the basis of gaining tax revenue to spend on the transition to low-carbon energy.

But why do they feel they need to say yes to fossil fuels to invest in renewables?

The money they are using to kickstart their new Energy Wealth Fund could just go straight to renewables, and be supplemented by the revenue from closing the tax loopholes and subsidies that existing oil and gas drilling receives.

At the same time, to actually lower bills for the long term, we need to be scaling up cheaper home-grown renewables, rolling out a fully-funded national home insulation programme and ending rampant profiteering by energy companies

It is also critical that we are fully funding a package of support to future-proof jobs in the energy sector, so that workers in oil and gas can transition to good-quality green jobs.

This climate vandalism has to stop now.

The approval of the Rosebank Oil field still hangs in the balance.

This will be another defining test of this government, and we all need them not to fail it. The answer is No To Rosebank.

‘Hope’ is an easy thing for Burnham to call for – but without a genuine change to back it up, it is impossible to deliver.

Instead of climate-wrecking new oil and gas, this government should be laser-focused on making life’s essentials affordable, taxing extreme wealth and profits, and investing in our long-term resilience.

Anything else fails workers and bill payers right now – along with the next generation.

Carla Denyer is the MP for Bristol Central and former co-leader of the Green Party.

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