It started with a notice in the local newspaper and ended with winning one of the world\u2019s most prestigious environmental prizes. In 2010, Sarah Finch was flicking through the local planning notices when one caught her eye: a proposal to drill for oil at Horse Hill in Surrey, just outside Crawley, over the border in West Sussex, 6 miles (10km) from her home.<\/p>\n
Surrey is not the kind of place one expects to find the oil industry. It\u2019s a county of little villages, farms, woods and commuter railway stations. Its semi-rural landscape stretches off towards the horizon in a typically English green patchwork. It is difficult to envision it littered with nodding donkey pumpjacks and gas flares.<\/p>\n
Finch was shocked. A longtime environmentalist, she had been an early adopter of climate politics, working as a climate press officer for Greenpeace and protesting against the Kingsnorth power station in Kent<\/a>. But this was the first time it had come so close to home. \u201cThis is local,\u201d she thought. \u201cI\u2019d better get involved.\u201d<\/p>\n Sarah Finch, fellow activists and her legal team outside London\u2019s high court in November, 2021. Photograph: Mark Kerrison\/Alamy Stock Photo\/Alamy Live News.<\/p>\n Horse Hill was part of a network of drilling sites proposed to tap the Weald basin, a shale rock formation deep beneath southern England\u2019s home counties. Oil prospectors believed they could use the latest fracking methods to turn Surrey into the new Texas, yielding a potential 100bn barrels of oil<\/a>.<\/p>\n Finch was drawn to the campaigns against the proposed oil rush, bringing together her Surrey neighbours and anti-fracking campaigners to form the Weald Action Group (WAG). They fought plans to sink wells in the town of Balcombe, organising mass demonstrations in the town<\/a> that drew thousands. Together, they succeeded in getting a number of drilling applications refused or withdrawn. But not all.<\/p>\n In 2014, oil prospectors drilled a first exploratory well in Horse Hill, followed by a second in 2017. Then in 2018, the company Horse Hill Developments Ltd applied to Surrey council for permission to drill four more and begin commercial production. Over 25 years, they would pump more than 24m barrels of oil.<\/p>\n Finch and her fellow campaigners worked to build community opposition. But, despite their objections \u2013 and just months after declaring<\/a> a climate emergency \u2013 Surrey approved the plan.<\/p>\n An exploratory drilling rig on the Horse Hill site in 2014. Photograph: Gareth Fuller\/PA<\/p>\n But WAG did not back down. As they dug into the planning application they became aware of \u201cscope 3 emissions\u201d \u2013 those that burning the oil itself would produce. Surrey had told the developers they should be included in an impact statement. The developers disagreed. The council gave in.<\/p>\n That meant the project\u2019s environmental impact statement mentioned emissions from local operations \u2013 such as drilling and roadworks \u2013 but omitted the 10.6m tonnes of CO2 that would result from burning the oil.<\/p>\n With Finch as the lead claimant, WAG applied to the high court for a judicial review of Surrey\u2019s decision, arguing that because it had failed to account for the scope 3 emissions the decision had not been properly made. The court disagreed. They appealed. They were denied.<\/p>\n Finch had not considered what might happen next. But their loss had serious, unexpected consequences. Shortly after, Michael Gove, then the communities secretary, was asked to decide on the UK\u2019s first new deep coalmine in 30 years, the Whitehaven colliery in Cumbria, criticised by environmentalists as a \u201ccarbon bomb\u201d. He approved it.<\/p>\n Looking through the decision document, Finch\u2019s stomach turned as she saw her name appear 85 times \u2013 Gove repeatedly citing her case as showing emissions from the coal dug up from Cumbria were irrelevant to the planning application. She felt naive. She had not expected her attempts to block a local oil well could end up relaxing planning rules for fossil fuel developments entirely.<\/p>\n There was one last hope: a last-ditch application to the supreme court<\/a>. A split judgment at the court of appeal had given Finch the chance to appeal to the UK\u2019s highest court. Against the odds, it accepted her case \u2013 the first climate case it had ever heard.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the stakes kept getting higher. Legal objections to other fossil fuel projects \u2013 including the Cumbria coalmine and the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil fields in the North Sea \u2013 were frozen, awaiting the outcome of Finch\u2019s case. The Cumbria mine\u2019s developer and the government intervened as interested parties on the side of Surrey council; Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace joined on the side of Finch.<\/p>\n On a sunny morning in June 2024, almost five years after Finch began her legal challenge, the decision came<\/a>. The climate impact of burning coal, oil and gas must be taken into account when deciding whether to approve projects, wherever that burning takes place, the court ruled.<\/p>\n Finch celebrates outside the supreme court in London after the landmark ruling in June 2024. Photograph: Carl Court\/Getty Images<\/p>\n It was a small change in interpretation of the Town and Country Planning Act, but the effect was momentous. Permission for the Cumbria coalmine was quashed by the high court<\/a>. The government spent a year rewriting guidance for the offshore oil and gas industry, pulling support from Jackdaw and Rosebank, which were then ruled unlawful<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Finch ruling has been one of the most groundbreaking environmental cases of the century. But it is already under threat. The government has said it is considering replacing the entire environmental impact assessment regime, which could nix it entirely. In any case, the government still has discretion and, with fuel shortages caused by the war in the Middle East boosting calls for drilling, there are fears that Rosebank and Jackdaw could be revived<\/a>.<\/p>\n On Monday, Finch was awarded one of the world\u2019s most prestigious annual environmental prizes, alongside six other women from around the world. The Goldman Environmental prize, founded in 1989, has to date honoured 239 grassroots activists from 98 nations.<\/p>\n Finch, meanwhile, continues campaigning. \u201cIt\u2019s a kind of war of attrition with the fossil fuel industry,\u201d she says. But she believes its days are numbered. \u201cYou know, renewable energy is more efficient, cheaper, cleaner, less prone to being disrupted by mad dictators.<\/p>\n \u201cIn every way, I think clean energy is preferable and that\u2019s our future. But it\u2019s just not happening fast enough.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It started with a notice in the local newspaper and ended with winning one of the world\u2019s most…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407940,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[246,61,60,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-407939","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407939\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407940"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}