Stop Rosebank

As the climate crisis manifests in yet another event of unprecedented - yet forewarned - devastation, this time in Jamaica, we are reminded that such events are not natural; they have been intensified by human decisions about energy policy and energy systems, and they are effectively fossil-fuelled. The ecological economist Jason Hickel articulates what we are seeing around the world succinctly and unforgettably: “the ecological crisis is ultimately playing out along colonial lines”.

Given the entanglement of architecture with energy systems - powerfully and provocatively distilled and summarised by historian Banrnabus Calder as a new maxim “Form Follows Fuel”: the built environments we are familiar with were shaped by (colonial) access to, availability of, and changing sources of energy. This means that the built environments of not only tomorrow, but of the next several decades, shall be profoundly shaped by the decisions made about energy policy and the kinds of infrastructure our governments allow to go ahead today. Campaigners have made it abundantly clear: the envisioned expansion of the Rosebank Oil Field, is incompatible with a Just Transition, and would lock us into decades of further fossil fuel extraction and use - doing absolutely nothing to lower our energy bills, at a moment when we should be phasing out the carbon economy, radically reimagining energy systems.as we know them and developing plans so that no community nor workforce is left behind.

For these reasons, the Architecture Fringe has signed the Stop Rosebank Campaign Open Letter as an organisation - adding our voice to the chorus, and is inviting its wider community and the architectural profession to join us by doing the same! By designing buildings and shaping architecture we may be able to, as Caroline O’Donnell and Dillon Pranger hypothesise in their essay Waste of Space, “affect, through the legibility of our work, the behaviours and the policies that shape our futures” but our collective ability to do so for the Common Good will be drastically curtailed if Rosebank goes ahead. Architecture must not sit this one out and we must speak out to #StopRosebank

You can take action as an organisation or individual here: https://www.stopcambo.org.uk/act