6. A ban on prospecting for fossil fuels

Colombia

Amid an energy crisis, this isn’t an easy moment to call time on North Sea oil and gas exploration. But whatever challenges that might pose for a Starmer government are as nothing compared with those confronting Gustavo Petro, who in August takes office as Colombia’s first leftist head of state, after a narrow election win alongside running mate Francia Márquez, an Afro-Colombian environmentalist.

Hydrocarbons have been one of the very few dependable earners for this war-weary country, in many places still gripped by the gangsterism highlighted by Emily Hart in July’s Prospect. Petrol and coal briquettes constitute half or more of its exports. No matter. Amid deepening climate chaos, Petro has plumped for the unthinkable over the unconscionable.

Last year, it was not Greenpeace but the International Energy Agency that identified the urgent necessity: “From today, no investment in new fossil fuel supply.” (Italics mine.) The new president isn’t quite bowing to that: the ban he proposes is not on developing existing fossil fuel facilities, but prospecting for new ones. Even so, walking his “managed and smooth” path would eventually mean leaving vast amounts of polluting treasure in the ground, and attempting to compensate by shifting investment and focus to renewables.

A run of European countries, including Denmark and Socialist-led Spain, have recently embraced bans on fossil fuel production, but the Colombian ambition is something else. As well as praying a poor country can pull this off against the odds, Starmer’s Britain should be humbled into action.