英国绿党领导人呼吁提高油气利润税用于野火防护

Zack Polanski calls for higher taxes on oil and gas profits to fund wildfire prevention
Green leader Zack Polanski has called for oil and gas companies that have made bumper profits during the Iran war to be taxed at a higher rate to help fund climate mitigation across the UK and protect the British public against wildfires.
“Should fossil fuel companies be earning or making a single penny of profit at the time we’re seeing these disaster crises?” the self-styled “eco-populist” leader asked during a press conference on Wednesday.
“I think there’s a conversation to be had about every single penny of excess profit that those fossil fuel companies are making going straight into wildfire prevention, straight into tackling the climate crisis and climate adaptation.”
The Green Party’s 2024 manifesto calls for an increase in the windfall taxes paid by oil and gas companies and states the party would introduce a carbon tax on all fossil fuels, whether produced in the UK or imported.
Over the past few days, both Shell and BP declared their highest quarterly profit in four years as oil and gas prices soared following the conflict between the US and Iran.
Asked whether he feared new windfall taxes from the UK government as a result, Shell’s chief executive Wael Sawan told CNBC that “policies need to be long term” so that “investors know what to expect, irrespective of the cycles that will inevitably play out”.
Both Sawan and Meg O’Neill, BP’s new chief executive, stressed that the UK remained heavily dependent on fossil fuels and called for an increase in drilling in the North Sea.
Polanski’s comments came as Britain endured a record-breaking summer, with back-to-back heatwaves sparking widespread drought and worsening wildfires. Last month ranked as the driest July and sunniest month on record for England and Wales.
Almost 2,900 excess deaths were linked to the May and June heatwaves, when temperatures hit more than 35C and 38C respectively. The extreme heat left hospitals declaring critical incidents as they struggled to cope with an influx of patients, while business and schools across the country were forced to close because of a lack of air conditioning or other forms of cooling.
Polanski called for Andy Burnham’s new Labour government to provide financial support for households to heatproof their homes, as well as ensuring there were free, accessible cool spaces in every local area.
He also reiterated his party’s call for water companies to be brought under full public control, adding that they had failed to secure the UK’s water supply and failed to build new reservoirs. Half of England and all of Wales have been declared in drought, with water companies introducing widespread hosepipe bans in response.
“People have died and we know that more heatwaves will come, and we know that next year we could have even more extreme temperatures,” Polanski said on Wednesday. “I hope this moment can be a reset where we can talk about the really important things more.”
The Green leader also used the press conference to take credit for the change in Labour government. “I think my biggest achievement . . . was toppling a very unpopular prime minister,” he said, adding that if the Green Party had not won the Gorton and Denton by-election, Sir Keir Starmer would not have faced a “leadership crisis”.
His comments came as the Greens struggle to regain the momentum they experienced after Polanski became leader in September 2025, with polls showing the party’s popularity has fallen to 11 per cent.
Meanwhile, Labour at 25.7 per cent has overtaken Reform UK for the first time in more than a year, benefiting from a drop in support for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK as well as the Greens.
Polanski added that Burnham was currently enjoying a “honeymoon”, but said the announcements he had made so far to tackle the cost of living crisis and improve public services had “little substance”.
He criticised Burnham for indicating he may permit oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, including at the highly contentious Rosebank and Jackdaw fields, for his reappointment of Shabana Mahmood as home secretary and for his failure to select former energy secretary Ed Miliband as chancellor.
Earlier this year, the Climate Change Committee, the government’s independent climate adviser, warned that Britain was failing to prepare for worsening heat, floods and droughts and said about £11bn annually would need to be spent on so-called adaptation measures.