‘Our house is on fire, Andy’: Activists send stark message to PM over new oil and gas drilling

Hillside mural demands PM Andy Burnham confront the climate emergency

A 1,120-square-metre statement on scorched earth

Poinews.com – In a dramatic intervention aimed squarely at the new UK government, Greenpeace joined forces with art collective A Letter From Lucy to paint a massive mural onto a wildfire-scarred hillside at Sychnant Pass, inside Eryri National Park in Conwy. The piece, rendered in eco-friendly, plastic-free paint formulated for sports pitches and applied straight onto the fire-blackened ground, depicts Prime Minister Andy Burnham tipping a barrel labelled “oil and gas” into a blaze. Beside the illustration, bold lettering declares: “Our house is on fire, Andy.”

The slogan echoes Greta Thunberg’s 2019 address to world leaders, in which she warned that “our house is on fire.” The timing was deliberate: the mural was unveiled on the final day of a public consultation over Rosebank, the largest undeveloped oil field in the UK. A parallel consultation covering the Jackdaw gas field had closed just seven days earlier.

A summer of record-breaking extremes

The protest lands at the close of what is shaping up to be the warmest summer on record for Britain. Five consecutive heatwaves have struck since June, pushing drought conditions across nearly three-quarters of the country and leaving more than 27 million residents under water-use restrictions. Greenpeace points to an estimated 2,700 excess deaths linked to the May and June heat events alone.

Maja Darlington, a Greenpeace campaigner, stressed that the toll is borne disproportionately by those with the least capacity to shield themselves.

“The climate crisis is already hitting working people hardest – firefighters on the front line, bus drivers exposed to inhumane conditions, nurses collapsing on the job.”

Consultations, court rulings, and the road ahead

Rosebank received initial approval in 2023; Jackdaw followed in 2022. Both consents were struck down in January 2025 when a Scottish court found they had failed to account for emissions generated by combusting the extracted fuel. Developers have since resubmitted revised environmental assessments, and this week’s consultations represent the final regulatory hurdle before ministers reach a definitive decision.

“A change of emphasis” or a quiet reversal?

Despite Labour’s manifesto pledge not to issue new North Sea licences, Burnham has signalled what his deputy leader Lucy Powell characterised as a “more pragmatic” posture toward North Sea oil and gas. Powell framed the shift as a “change of emphasis” rather than a wholesale policy reversal, explaining that Burnham wished to “work with the industry” so that oil and gas could keep contributing to the energy transition “over the long term.”

Greenpeace pushes back

Darlington rejected the government’s framing outright.

“There is nothing pragmatic about watching communities be battered by climate chaos while the Prime Minister flirts with expanding the very industry driving it. This summer has been an endless showreel of fossil-fuelled disasters playing out across the country.”

Campaigners have dubbed Rosebank a “carbon bomb.” Figures cited by Greenpeace place the project’s lifetime emissions at 254 million tonnes of CO₂ — roughly 70 per cent of the UK’s total annual output in 2024. Oxfam research, also referenced by Greenpeace, estimates that if both Rosebank and Jackdaw proceed, their combined lifetime emissions “would contribute to an estimated 65,495 excess heat deaths globally – equivalent to wiping out the entire population of Clacton-on-Sea.”

“Does the Prime Minister really want to stand with the oil companies making billions, rather than the millions already paying the price? Our message is simple: be brave – say no.”