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Rt Hon Tony Blair MP Thank you for inviting Greenpeace and other environment and development groups to brief you on our view of priorities for UNGASS earlier this week. I think we all found the meeting very interesting and hope it was useful to you. You may have noticed that we are currently occupying the islet of Rockall, and I am writing to let you know why. As I said at the meeting, and as I think you will know from Peter Melchett’s letter to you of 7 May "Earth Summit II, The Atlantic Frontier and Sustainable Development", science shows that humanity cannot burn all the fossil fuel reserves that exist and to explore for more is wrong and foolish. Britain cannot credibly call for less emissions from fossil fuels while setting out to increase their production. Although we realise it is a policy you have inherited, Britain faces two ways on fossil fuels and your Government’s present "sustainable development" policy is hypocritical. Energy and environment policy are in conflict. As Peter noted, Greenpeace believes that the Atlantic Frontier oil province is a "clear and disastrous case of unsustainable development, and one which sends entirely the wrong signal" to all other nations. The "carbon logic" of our campaign is not disputed by climate scientists. As a political solution to the problem of excess reserves will need to be negotiated, it behoves Britain to lead that process by first stopping expansion of its own reserves. We have urged Robin Cook, Michael Meacher, John Prescott and yourself to use the opportunity of UNGASS – and I might add the G7 – to make clear that some global action will be needed to phase out fossil fuels. The logic of no longer expanding fossil fuels is shared by all the leading environmental organisations. Moreover, we, like the RSPB and the Marine Conservation Society, believe the UK is acting illegally by allowing the Atlantic Frontier development without a proper application of the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. I have attached a letter from the European Environment Commissioner for your information. We also believe that the UK is in breach of the Habitats Directive and have attempted, unsuccessfully, to take this up with Mrs Beckett at the Department of Trade and Industry. Accordingly, two days ago we sent the Government a letter before action in which we warned that we will seek interim relief and leave for a Judicial Review, if your Government does not suspend the licences granted under the 17th Round on the Atlantic Frontier, by June 19 at 5pm. In addition, as Peter Melchett has explained in a letter to Mr Cook, it seems that the UK’s arguments for claiming Rockall and the Rockall Trough and Plateau and other parts of the sea and seabed are at best, not soundly founded. On the one hand Rockall is clearly not a habitable island in the normal sense and so should not generate its own continental shelf, on the other, geological studies do not support the UK’s arguments of "natural prolongation". For decades it has been no secret that the UK’s particular claim to Rockall is motivated by oil. (A view reinforced by the recent admission of ex SAS adventurer Mr Maclean that his Rockall visit was designed to this end.) As this ambition is clearly now unsustainable, we again urge you to give up UK plans to develop the region for oil and instead seek sustainable joint non-development with other interested nations. This would set a valuable and important precedent for disputes over offshore oil elsewhere, and possibly other resources. We do not want to own Rockall, or the seas around it. But we believe that the UK’s crude seizure and annexation of this defunct volcano to get at oil now ill becomes a nation which aspires to "sustainable development". We believe it is important that a stand is made against the thinking that drives the world further into the near-certainty of a fossil-fuelled disaster, and we have therefore seized Rockall on behalf of the planet. We are borrowing it and will be happy to give it back if, as Lord Tanlaw once requested, the Government sets it aside from development. Your words and actions on the environment, and those of your fellow leaders, will shortly become the focus of public attention as you attend UNGASS and the G7. We believe it is important that while governments speak about the environment in Denver or New York, the reality of their actions are also in the public eye. In this case, the reality of Government turning a swathe of the Atlantic into a new oilfield. Rockall is, I understand, further out to sea than any other rock in the world. Its development for oil is also just about as far you can get from sustainable development. I do hope therefore, that you will acknowledge that there is a serious issue here, which requires a fundamental rethink of policy on fossil fuels, with priority given instead, to renewable forms of energy. Yours sincerely
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