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What does it really take to challenge the UK government on climate – and win? Enter climate winner – Sarah Finch of the legendary UK “Finch ruling”. From Surrey oil well to the Supreme Court, Sarah Finch and the Weald Action Group took the government to task – forcing it to rewrite how it assesses the environmental impact of new oil and gas projects, forever! And now she’s sharing the story. Sarah Finch of the “Finch ruling” herself joins Climate Curious’s Ben Hurst to share how a grassroots campaign grew into one of the most consequential climate legal victories in recent UK history. Tune in to explore what this landmark win looks and feels like from the inside, why Sarah believes that ordinary people can drive extraordinary change, and celebrating the recent news of her 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize win in Europe, alongside five other women.
Check out the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize Winners: https://www.goldmanprize.org/current-winners/
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Created by TEDxLondon
Executive produced by Josie Colter
Produced by Ben Beheshty
Curated by Deesha Chandra
Hosted by Maryam Pasha and Ben Hurst
Communications by Tara Cooper and Issey Gladston
00:00 Supreme Court shock
00:45 Meet Sarah Finch
02:54 What the ruling changed
06:05 Environmental roots
08:15 Oil in my backyard
11:05 From protest to courts
16:21 Inside the legal fight
21:11 Funding and team resilience
24:26 Finch case fallout
25:28 Case goes national
26:17 Supreme Court win
28:30 What the ruling changes
30:44 No new fossil fuels
32:02 How grassroots began
35:05 Law as a tool
38:09 Working with lawyers
40:17 Advice for activists
42:14 Personal transformation
44:38 Next battles ahead
45:54 Goldman Prize impact
47:46 Closing credits
Supreme Court shock
[00:00:00] Sarah Finch: It was such a clear judgment. So, you know, we, we all filed in and just listened to one of the judges, read out a summary of their judgment and it was so clear and so eloquent. I was just thinking, yes, [00:00:15] this is what we’ve been saying for five years, but he’s saying it even better than us. It was just amazing.
[00:00:21] Ben Hurst: This is Climate Curious, the podcast for people who are bored, scared. All confused by climate change.
[00:00:28] Maryam Pasha: I’m Maryam Pasha, the director and [00:00:30] curator at TEDxLondon, and the co-host of this podcast alongside the amazing Ben.
[00:00:34] Ben Hurst: Hi, I’m Ben Hurst, activist and advocate exploring what positive masculinities can look like and self-confessed climate norming.[00:00:45]
Meet Sarah Finch
[00:00:45] Ben Hurst: Today’s episode starts in a quiet corner of the English countryside in Surrey. And ends in the Supreme Court. Our guest is Sarah Finch, the driving force behind one of the most important [00:01:00] climate rulings in recent UK history. In 2025, Sarah won a landmark victory in the Supreme Court in a climate case that she bought on behalf of the Wield Action Group.
[00:01:12] Ben Hurst: The Finch ruling has had wide [00:01:15] ramifications including causing the. Government to rewrite its guidance on environmental assessment of new oil and gas fields. For this, Sarah was named one of times’ 100th most innovative climate leaders of [00:01:30] 2024, and she won the Sheila Cheney Foundation’s Campaigner of the Year Award.
[00:01:35] Ben Hurst: And now Sarah has just been announced as the 2026 Goldman Environmental Prize winner, which if you don’t know, is a big [00:01:45] deal. Sarah, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast. It’s an absolute pleasure to have you.
[00:01:54] Sarah Finch: Oh, thank you for inviting me. It is a pleasure to be on.
[00:01:57] Ben Hurst: No, you are, you are so welcome.
[00:01:59] Ben Hurst: I, I [00:02:00] always feel like, so we have these guests who have like, done incredible, amazing things and I always feel like it’s so weird to just sit down and have a chat with the person for like 45 minutes. But I wanna start with, um, a question which is, uh, this might be a [00:02:15] difficult question to answer. Um. You’ve got a, a ruling named after you.
[00:02:20] Ben Hurst: And I’m, I’m, the thing that I want to know is like, do you ever just like wake up in the morning and look at yourself in the mirror and like, just say that like, like it’s [00:02:30] the Finch rule. Like, ’cause that feels like, it feels like an incredibly like it. Crazy thing to happen.
[00:02:37] Sarah Finch: Yeah, I kind of do. I kind of do.
[00:02:40] Sarah Finch: Um, and I’m always like, there’s barely a day goes by that I don’t read [00:02:45] some reference to it in an email or an article. And I think like, oh, that’s me.
[00:02:50] Ben Hurst: I, I’m the
[00:02:50] Sarah Finch: one, but it’s not me. It’s a ruling that shares my name.
[00:02:53] Ben Hurst: Right, right, right.
What the ruling changed
[00:02:54] Ben Hurst: And would you give us like a. Maybe elevate a pitch top line summary.
[00:02:59] Ben Hurst: [00:03:00] What is the Finch ruling and why has it been so important in regards to like the, the climate movement and specifically in the uk?
[00:03:08] Sarah Finch: Okay. The Finch ruling relates to environmental impact assessment, so anybody who wants to like. [00:03:15] Dig a coal mine, drill for oil, drill for gas. They have to go through a process called Environmental impact assessment where they look at all the possible effects this might have on the environment.
[00:03:24] Sarah Finch: And what the Finch ruling means is that they have to look at the effects of actually [00:03:30] burning the fuel that they’re going to produce. So the effects on the climate, not just of getting it outta the ground, but then later burning it. Um, and it sounds very obvious that, yeah, one of the impacts of of like producing oil is.
[00:03:43] Sarah Finch: That you burn it and it affects the climate. [00:03:45] But up until the Finch ruling that had been generally overlooked. This,
[00:03:49] Ben Hurst: this is absolutely nuts to me because surely So what were they tracking then before, before this point? What impacts were they
[00:03:56] Sarah Finch: measuring? It’s totally nuts. So the, so the fin ruling came [00:04:00] about as a case I bought against one site, this one oil site.
[00:04:04] Sarah Finch: Mm-hmm. Which was given permission to expand and the. Environmental impact assessment process. It looked at the greenhouse gases that would be produced on the site [00:04:15] itself. It’s a small site, so there’s some diesel generators, like some vehicles moving around the site, couple of trucks, right. Um, but they didn’t look at, you know, the 10 million tons of oil that they were gonna produce, which would go off and then be refined, then burnt.
[00:04:27] Sarah Finch: That was. Act deliberately [00:04:30] excluded from the environmental impact assessment and that was pretty typical like this, right at, at the time, it just seemed like a sort of weird thing that had happened in that case, but then we quickly found it had happened, you know, all around the place. So the White [00:04:45] Haven Coal Mine, the new coal mine, it would’ve been the first deep coal mine built in the UK for 30 years.
[00:04:50] Sarah Finch: Same thing happened. They didn’t look at the climate impact of burning the coal. Wow.
[00:04:56] Ben Hurst: So the, so the, because obviously these things are what negligible [00:05:00] this is that’s, that’s like literally psycho. Okay.
[00:05:03] Sarah Finch: Yeah. But it’s before
[00:05:04] Ben Hurst: we
[00:05:04] Sarah Finch: go, I think it’s just because planning law, you know. It is just way at all less now was way outta step with climate policy.
[00:05:13] Sarah Finch: Right? And so the people that make [00:05:15] decisions on sort of onshore oil and gas sites, like the one we were dealing with, county councils, they’re used to looking at the local environmental impacts. You know, they’re very expert in, you know, the local impacts of these of developments, but. [00:05:30] Climate is something that wasn’t on anyone’s radar a few decades ago, and their planning policies just hadn’t caught up with it.
[00:05:37] Sarah Finch: So yes, luckily that’s all changed now.
[00:05:40] Ben Hurst: Yeah. And I guess for, for a local council, that’s like quite a big shift in the way [00:05:45] that you think from, uh, um, micro or local level into the macro level of like, where is all of this stuff that’s being produced or found going in the world, and what are people gonna be doing with it?
[00:05:56] Ben Hurst: We’re going to dive in in a second. Into some of that, the, [00:06:00] the legal drama of it all. ’cause I think there’s a, a massive story here for you to tell.
Environmental roots
[00:06:05] Ben Hurst: Um, but I wanna start maybe with a, a, a little bit of your, your history, your law, your backstory. Like who, because sometimes I imagine that when you do something of this magnitude or you are involved in something of this magnitude, you have something named after you that, that the conversation just becomes about this kind of landmark moment.
[00:06:26] Ben Hurst: Um, and maybe who you were. Before this kind of gets [00:06:30] missed. So I’m, I’m super interested in like who Sarah Finch was before the Finch ruling. Um, and, and maybe like a, a little bit of the story of when you were younger, like what got you into this kind of stuff. Why did you start thinking about like climate and all of [00:06:45] these kind of conversations?
[00:06:47] Sarah Finch: Oh, I was always very interested in the environment. You know, from childhood, but, you know, climate wasn’t on, you know, was unaware of climate change. Of course then, so yeah, when I was a kid in the seventies, it was all [00:07:00] about acid, rain, tropical deforestation. And I was, I was a, uh, quite an anxious child and I was really worried about the threats of the environment always.
[00:07:08] Sarah Finch: That was always my thing. Um. And one day when I was still still at school, I [00:07:15] remember seeing an ad in the local paper for Friends of the Earth meeting, and I just thought, these are my people. That name spoke to me and I thought like, right, I’m gonna grow up and I’m gonna work for Friends of the Earth. I didn’t know what they did or anything about them.
[00:07:27] Sarah Finch: I just loved the name. So I was always a [00:07:30] kind of environmental kid. Um, and so. Uh, yeah, I did work for Friends of the Earth. I did like through my working life, I’ve always worked, uh, for organizations that are involved in the environment in one way or another. [00:07:45] So climate, I think I first became aware of, you know, global warming we used to call it
[00:07:50] Maryam Pasha: mm-hmm.
[00:07:50] Sarah Finch: In the late eighties and sort of. Um, when I worked with Friends of the Earth in the nineties, that was on our [00:08:00] agenda a bit. We had a campaign called Air Pollution and Global Warming. I think it wasn’t, it wasn’t about the level that it is now. Um, but so both in my work life and as a volunteer activists, I’ve always been interested in environmental [00:08:15] issues.
Oil in my backyard
[00:08:15] Sarah Finch: And so then how did I get into the Horse Hill case? Again, I was, you know, used to think of climate as a sort of national policy or international policy level thing. And then one day I found out there was [00:08:30] plans for an oil well close to my home. I like thought what? Right,
[00:08:33] Maryam Pasha: right. That’s
[00:08:34] Sarah Finch: like, I didn’t, I didn’t know even that there was oil and gas produced onshore at that point.
[00:08:40] Sarah Finch: Right. I knew, I, I thought like everyone does. It’s all kind of like oil rigs out to sea. [00:08:45] Um, so that moment, I guess when I thought. Oh shit. This is happening in my backyard, so I decided to get involved in that particular campaign Then.
[00:08:54] Ben Hurst: Right. So it was, it was like the proximity of it all that kind of pushed you into action.[00:09:00]
[00:09:00] Ben Hurst: Well, you, ’cause you were already, so you were working at Friends of the Earth and you were doing activism before that, or at the same time as that.
[00:09:06] Sarah Finch: Yeah. Um, so yeah, I worked at Friends of the Earth in the nineties. Mm-hmm. Um, so this was a long time after that. So I’d, yeah. Always done a mix. I, I did, uh, [00:09:15] spell working at Green Peace too, as a climate press officer.
[00:09:18] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:09:18] Sarah Finch: Um, in. The early two thousands and I did, um, got involved in local things where I could as well. Um, yeah, not so much climate. I [00:09:30] campaigned on the King’s North Coal-fired power station. We had a climate camp there. I went to that. Um, but yeah, it was, it was a shock when I realized there’s oil production actually happening in my neighborhood.
[00:09:40] Sarah Finch: It was something I thought of as a sort of national scale or international scale [00:09:45] issue.
[00:09:45] Ben Hurst: And the thing that always fascinates me about like, uh, con, uh, cases like this is that pe I, I feel like people kind of stumble into them. Do you know what I mean? Like, you, you weren’t like a, a lawyer or a politician, right?[00:10:00]
[00:10:00] Ben Hurst: No. Not in the work that you were doing. So how did you arrive at the point of believing that it was possible to challenge. What was going, because oil production feels like a big, like even just in the, in the actual physical sense of [00:10:15] drilling for oil. Is it fracking? Is that what it’s called?
[00:10:17] Sarah Finch: Well, yeah, that’s a whole other can of words.
[00:10:20] Sarah Finch: Okay. Yeah. You can’t call it fracking because the UK government has a very tight. Definition of what fracking is, right, based on the volumes of fluid used. So if you [00:10:30] use not quite enough fluid, you can’t call it fracking, so no, it’s not fracking, it’s a sort of fracking type, fracking technology.
[00:10:35] Ben Hurst: Okay. So I feel like the, the, the machinery that’s used to do this, like, it’s just big, right?
[00:10:41] Ben Hurst: Like it’s a big thing that happens or drilling for oil. [00:10:45] And I, I always. Try and imagine myself in this scenario, like knowing that this was happening in my neighborhood. I don’t know what I would do. Like I, I feel like I would just feel. Maybe very paralyzed. What, what was [00:11:00] it that made you believe that it was possible to do something about what, what was happening?
From protest to courts
[00:11:05] Sarah Finch: It, it was other people. Yeah, it was
[00:11:08] Ben Hurst: right.
[00:11:08] Sarah Finch: You know, same. I felt completely paralyzed. Like I found out about this proposal. I didn’t do anything for [00:11:15] months. I just got thinking like, oh,
[00:11:16] Ben Hurst: I can’t believe it. I
[00:11:17] Sarah Finch: should do something about this oil drilling proposal. But I didn’t know what, but, um, it was at the time.
[00:11:25] Sarah Finch: This was in like early 2010s. There were quite a number of these sort of [00:11:30] fracking type applications around the wheel. Mm-hmm. Which is the fancy name we use for an area of Southeast England. Um, and so there were people in all of those places all getting concerned and all going through the same kind of learning curve of [00:11:45] like, oh, what, how do we fight this?
[00:11:47] Sarah Finch: And so we got, got together and we formed this network called the Wield Action Group. Mm-hmm. And it was, thanks to. All of those people, many of whom are much cleverer than I am, and really looked into it all in a great level of [00:12:00] detail that we kind of got confident to take it on and to fight those applications.
[00:12:05] Sarah Finch: But going to the law was not the first thing in anyone’s mind. Mm-hmm. That was more of a last resort after we tried all kinds of protests, um, [00:12:15] all kinds of activism. You know, objecting formally through the proper channels, all of that. You know, it wasn’t until the, um, that Horse Hill site, the one nearest to my house, had got its third sequential [00:12:30] planning permission, and it had got permission to produce oil for 20 years.
[00:12:33] Sarah Finch: We thought, you know, we’d utterly lost. It was like the last resort. Let’s challenge this in the courts.
[00:12:40] Ben Hurst: So, so this wasn’t, this wasn’t like a. A, a walk-in [00:12:45] blaze of glory, like landmark movement where you just did it one time and it was finished straight away.
[00:12:50] Sarah Finch: No, no. It was, um, it was like a basically a 10 year struggle.
[00:12:56] Sarah Finch: Uh. Which happened to end with a, you [00:13:00] know, fantastic legal victory. Yeah. But it wasn’t like we had this theory of change of like, oh, we are gonna do this. We’ll bring this case against the site and we are gonna change the law on oil and gas production, you know, for the whole country. Not at all. It was, it was [00:13:15] a kind of a last resort that turned out to be the best.
[00:13:20] Sarah Finch: Result possible.
[00:13:22] Ben Hurst: Oh man. The, I mean, it’s good news. That’s a good, that’s a good ending, which is positive. What, what did those, um, protests that you [00:13:30] guys were doing beforehand, like before you got to the last resort of trying to challenge or change the law, what did your action look like? Was it like very di was it, were you like gluing yourselves to fences and stuff?
[00:13:41] Ben Hurst: Like what was the vibe?
[00:13:43] Sarah Finch: Not me personally, [00:13:45] but lots of other people were doing that. Okay. So there was, yeah, there was a lot of slow walking in front of lorries. Tankers. Mm-hmm. Going in and outta the site because, um, slow walking is not illegal. Yeah. You can’t
[00:13:58] Ben Hurst: prosecute,
[00:13:59] Sarah Finch: slow them up and down. [00:14:00] Um, lock ons, people like lock themselves.
[00:14:03] Sarah Finch: Across the gates. Um, people, there were times people invaded the site. They climbed up on the rig or away from the site. Even people like climbed onto lorries when they were parked up somewhere so they couldn’t move.
[00:14:14] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm. [00:14:15]
[00:14:15] Sarah Finch: Um, then there was a whole other strand of campaigning, which was about targeting the supplies to these companies because, uh, you know, the oil company is impervious to campaigning.
[00:14:25] Sarah Finch: Really. They don’t care what you think,
[00:14:26] Ben Hurst: but
[00:14:27] Sarah Finch: some of the suppliers, so haulage [00:14:30] companies, you know, who bring in all the kit. In to enable them to do this. We wrote to Hoish companies going like, look, you know this, you not, this is like a eco thal industry. Please don’t facilitate it. And we did have, you know, some results with some [00:14:45] companies like, okay, we don’t want, you know, the bad publicity associated with this.
[00:14:50] Sarah Finch: So there was all that going on. And then there was attempts to persuade the different regulators. So the county council, but also you know, the environment agency who has to give. [00:15:00] Uh, environmental permits with things, health and safety, executive talking to all of them. So yeah, action of every kind on every front.
[00:15:08] Sarah Finch: Um, so yeah, culminating in, you know, a very serious effort to persuade the [00:15:15] council not to give this permission. Um. Which they ignored and they went ahead.
[00:15:20] Ben Hurst: Okay. I was gonna say, did it, was any of it successful? Did it feel like it was working or was it just very like bang, banging your head against a brick wall kind of situation?
[00:15:28] Sarah Finch: Well, in the case of that site, horse [00:15:30] Hill, it felt like banging your head against a brick wall, right? There were other sites where, um. So the Wield Action Group sort of spanned part Surrey Sussex and The Isle of White. And in some other places there were cases where we were successful, where Plan, the local [00:15:45] council did refuse permission or where, um, so for example, Leh Hill nearby that one.
[00:15:53] Sarah Finch: Eventually failed because the Forestry Commission who own leased the land. Mm-hmm. So they would not renew the lease of the [00:16:00] land. The, so there were, there were various things that were successful.
[00:16:04] Ben Hurst: Okay.
[00:16:04] Sarah Finch: But the Horse Hill site, um. Was the one that we just couldn’t defeat.
[00:16:09] Ben Hurst: It was the thorn in
[00:16:09] Sarah Finch: your side. So that is kind of poetic that that’s the one that’s kind of ruined it [00:16:15] for everyone else.
[00:16:16] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Commemorated as the, the massive, uh, achievement. Okay.
Inside the Legal Fight
[00:16:21] Ben Hurst: I feel like it’s time for us to get into. The, the court. I wish we could like insert the law and order theme tune or something here. I dunno, Ben, if that’s, if that’s illegal to do that. But insert theme music here. I want to know. Um, I, I don’t have like a great understanding of how the.
[00:16:40] Ben Hurst: The court system in the UK works, but I, I, from what I [00:16:45] understand, this all ended in the Supreme Court, right? Which is the, the biggest court in the country, the biggest court in the land. What was the journey from beginning to end with your interactions with the court to get to the Supreme Court?
[00:16:58] Sarah Finch: Okay.
[00:16:58] Sarah Finch: Yeah. I mean, I had. [00:17:00] Previously no knowledge of the, of the law either, and I still, okay, good. I’m glad. Like, I feel like I, I now know a lot about this little area of environmental impact assessment law, but not all sorts of other law. Mm-hmm. So the first stage, it, it, the kind of case it is, it’s called a [00:17:15] judicial review.
[00:17:16] Sarah Finch: And that’s where you ask a judge to look at a decision that’s been made by. Any kind of public body. Okay. And say, was this decision made in the correct way? So you’re not asking ’em to say was, was it the right decision or not? It was, did they go through [00:17:30] all the proper processes that they should have done, um, when they made this decision, okay.
[00:17:34] Sarah Finch: And we argued that they hadn’t because the environmental impact assessment had failed to look at the. Um, downstream impacts of which is what you call the, you know, the, [00:17:45] the emissions when the oil is eventually burnt, you know, off later at a different date in a different place. They
[00:17:50] Ben Hurst: always use such tricky language for this.
[00:17:52] Ben Hurst: I dunno why they just don’t just say what it is. I
[00:17:54] Sarah Finch: know they call not only downstream is one word, but then scope three. Yeah.
[00:17:58] Ben Hurst: Is
[00:17:58] Sarah Finch: the scope three [00:18:00] emissions. But so yeah, we argued that though. Decision hadn’t been made correctly. So the aim of that is to get basically that planning permission quashed, that’s the technical term as well.
[00:18:10] Sarah Finch: And then they would have to remake the decision. So. So you [00:18:15] apply for a judicial review. Mm-hmm. So you like submit a written application to the court, like, we want to have a judicial review. So we did that and they came back No.
[00:18:25] Maryam Pasha: Correct.
[00:18:25] Sarah Finch: Like a judge looked it on papers, like, no, you can’t have a judicial review.
[00:18:29] Sarah Finch: So we are like, oh, we’re [00:18:30] not stopping here. So we then applied to have a court hearing to look up whether we could have a court hearing. Um. Again, they said no. So then we went to the Court of Appeal, like, please let us have a judicial review. But this [00:18:45] time we were like, this is the point of national importance.
[00:18:47] Ben Hurst: Right?
[00:18:48] Sarah Finch: You know, this needs to be cleared up properly. Um, it’s, we need to have a judicial review. And so they said yes. So then, uh, sort of like a. More than a year had gone by, by this stage. Mm-hmm. And then we did [00:19:00] have our judicial review, which was a court hearing, but because it was during COVID it was done on Microsoft teams, which is quite weird.
[00:19:07] Sarah Finch: Yeah. There’s judges with their wigs on, you know, and then the people watching in their dressing gowns. Um, but
[00:19:14] Ben Hurst: it was, [00:19:15] is there was a, a, um, a local council meet. Did you ever see that? Like a local parish meeting on during COVID that was like absolutely massive with Jackie Weaver?
[00:19:24] Sarah Finch: Yeah.
[00:19:25] Ben Hurst: Where it all, was it like that?
[00:19:26] Sarah Finch: It was like, well,
[00:19:28] Ben Hurst: not, not
[00:19:29] Sarah Finch: as powerful. And it was [00:19:30] a bit better managed than that Good because it was run by a judge. So yeah, we, so we had the, our judicial review there and we made all our arguments and then we lost then because the judge said, oh, like, this is ridiculous. Um, you couldn’t expect, sorry, county [00:19:45] counsel to assess these downstream emissions because they’re so far removed.
[00:19:49] Sarah Finch: They’re not really in effect of the development. Wow. So it would be unreasonable to expect them to do that. My course, we thought like, hold on, that’s not right. Because there are actually recognized methodologies [00:20:00] for counting greenhouse gas emissions. Right. So maybe not in planning, but in other sort of activities, companies have to count their greenhouse gas emissions.
[00:20:10] Sarah Finch: Right. So we, we went. Apply to go to the Court of Appeal. Um, so that happened [00:20:15] a year later. So we went to the Court of Appeal, um, argue this again, and in the Court of Appeal we had three judges. And one of these judges agreed with us, but the other two didn’t. But they had, they didn’t agree for a different [00:20:30] reason than the first judge.
[00:20:31] Sarah Finch: They didn’t say it would be impossible. We’d established, of course, it’s perfectly possible to do this, but they said it should be a matter of discretion for the planning authority, whether they do it or not. Which again, what
[00:20:42] Ben Hurst: does? What does that mean?
[00:20:43] Sarah Finch: Well, that mean, yeah, we thought that’s just [00:20:45] not good law because that means like Surrey County Council could say.
[00:20:49] Sarah Finch: Yes, we’ll count in the greenhouse gas emissions. Another council could make the opposite decision. Right. It’s like you, how can it, how can you have a law which
[00:20:57] Ben Hurst: is basically
[00:20:58] Sarah Finch: could choose to, yeah. Yeah. [00:21:00] So we, so we thought, by this time, it’s like, that’s really not good enough. So then we have to go. But apply again to the Supreme Court, which is the highest court.
[00:21:10] Sarah Finch: So that’s like your last chance.
[00:21:11] Maryam Pasha: Okay.
Funding and team resilience
[00:21:11] Sarah Finch: Um, but I like this all, so this all [00:21:15] took years and months and took lots of fundraising. You know, using the law is incredibly expensive,
[00:21:22] Maryam Pasha: right?
[00:21:22] Sarah Finch: So for each round of going to court, you know, you had to pay money for court fees and lawyers time, et cetera. So it [00:21:30] wasn’t like.
[00:21:31] Sarah Finch: An easy decision of each time to scale up to the next court. We had to really think about, you know, we’re gonna be asking people to donate a lot money for this. Like,
[00:21:40] Maryam Pasha: okay, so
[00:21:40] Sarah Finch: when it came, when we’ve basically lost in the high court and the court of [00:21:45] appeal, not to mention the previous loans, we thought like, is it really ethical to like ask to go out fundraising again for something?
[00:21:53] Sarah Finch: When it seems like we are just gonna lose every time, right? So it was quite a big decision whether to go to the Court of Appeal.
[00:21:59] Ben Hurst: [00:22:00] So this was being funded by the people living in the wild like this. This was people in the local community. Local people who were actually
[00:22:06] Sarah Finch: given
[00:22:06] Ben Hurst: their own money. Local
[00:22:07] Sarah Finch: people, local people, and people in the sort of wider.
[00:22:10] Sarah Finch: Climate campaign, so, okay. Yeah, yeah.
[00:22:14] Ben Hurst: So, so, [00:22:15] so, so, ’cause I, that was not how I imagined that this would’ve been happening. I did, for some reason, I didn’t assume that it would’ve been people giving money out of their own pocket to change this. I imagine there would’ve been some kind of body, it may be friends of the earth or, or someone [00:22:30] who would’ve
[00:22:30] Sarah Finch: no.
[00:22:30] Sarah Finch: Got hand
[00:22:31] Ben Hurst: and funded it.
[00:22:32] Sarah Finch: They that did come in and by the time of the Supreme Court, we got funded by a group called Law for Change.
[00:22:39] Ben Hurst: Okay.
[00:22:40] Sarah Finch: So that lifted that pressure off us. But the first two rounds was all basically, you know, music [00:22:45] events, sponsored walks, you know, everybody pitching in. Um, some of the wealthier residents gave us bigger donations, right?
[00:22:53] Sarah Finch: But by and large it was all people just giving 20 quid, 50 quid, you know?
[00:22:59] Ben Hurst: [00:23:00] Man. So how did, how did, how do you keep going in a situation like this? Like, was there, was there a point where you reached breaking point, you were like, I, I just don’t care anymore, or like you felt like maybe too overwhelmed or you couldn’t carry on?
[00:23:13] Sarah Finch: Yeah, there were [00:23:15] several points where we just thought like, okay, maybe just let this rest now. Mm-hmm. But that was the. Uh, the kind of beauty of having a team of us involved.
[00:23:23] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:23:24] Sarah Finch: And I should say it’s called the Finch ruling, which I’m very proud of, but that does give the false impression that I did it on my [00:23:30] own.
[00:23:30] Sarah Finch: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Which is not the case. So the Wield Action Group, I did it on behalf of the Wield Action Group with the Wield Action Group, and they were all fantastic. So. There were, you know, times if one person’s energy dropped a bit, there’d be someone else going like, come on now, we gotta keep going. [00:23:45] But also we just felt it was such an important case.
[00:23:48] Sarah Finch: Yeah. Because although when we started, it was just about one little oil field in Surrey, we very quickly realized it was about a point of national law that needed to be clearing [00:24:00] up and the whatever. Verdict we came up with, that would be a precedent for lots of other bigger developments. So we kind of felt we owed it
[00:24:09] Ben Hurst: right,
[00:24:10] Sarah Finch: um, to keep going and.
[00:24:12] Sarah Finch: Particularly, there was a really bad moment. So [00:24:15] probably the worst moment in the whole thing where, you know, I really regretted ever having started, oh, was in December, 2022 when Michael Gove, who was the environment minister mm-hmm.
Finch case fallout
[00:24:26] Sarah Finch: Gave permission or not the environ minister, the planning minister, he gave permission for the, for the coal mine, ENC Cumbia.
[00:24:33] Sarah Finch: And he, this was after we’d lost in the court of appeal and he said in his judgment, you know, the Finch case has established that you don’t need to look at these emissions from [00:24:45] Bernie. Oh. Um, so I kind of felt that had we been really naive and we’d made this whole thing a lot worse.
[00:24:53] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:24:53] Sarah Finch: Um, so then we thought, well, we can’t.
[00:24:56] Sarah Finch: If we’ve got a chance to get this judgment overturned, [00:25:00] we’ve got to try.
[00:25:01] Ben Hurst: Yeah, yeah, yeah. In the words of Michael Jordan, it became personal to you. ’cause that’s, that is like to ha also to have your actual name dropped in in in evidence as I have. Well
[00:25:10] Sarah Finch: just say that decision document by Michael Gove. I’d like search [00:25:15] my name in it.
[00:25:15] Sarah Finch: The word finch appears 85 times. Oh man. It’s just terrible, you know? Yeah. I just felt awful
[00:25:25] Ben Hurst: that you had
[00:25:25] Sarah Finch: to
[00:25:25] Ben Hurst: carry on. Yeah.
[00:25:26] Sarah Finch: That So, yeah, things like that.
Case goes national
[00:25:28] Sarah Finch: And the fact that the case had gained a national profile. Mm-hmm. Various other parties had kind of got themselves. So what started out as a case of like.
[00:25:39] Sarah Finch: Finch on behalf of the Wield Action Group versus Surrey County Council now had [00:25:45] all these other parties attaching themselves right In parties. Everybody evolved. The government on one side. Yeah. West Cumbia Mining Limited. The ones who wanted to build the minor Cumbia, they sort of joined the case at the Supreme Court stage, but then we had like Friends of the Earth and [00:26:00] Greenpeace on my side, so it was like a.
[00:26:02] Sarah Finch: There was so many people with an interest in this Yeah. That we, we kind of had to keep going.
[00:26:07] Ben Hurst: So you just ended up like accidentally in the middle of like a, essentially a trade war for oil or something like, just a massive Yeah. [00:26:15] Storm of stuff going on.
[00:26:16] Sarah Finch: Definitely.
[00:26:17] Ben Hurst: Um, okay.
Supreme Court win
[00:26:17] Ben Hurst: So talk to me about the Supreme Court ruling.
[00:26:22] Ben Hurst: What, how did, like, how did that happen and how did you find out that you’d won? I like how do, how do you find out that you [00:26:30] win something like that? Is it in the court in the moment?
[00:26:33] Sarah Finch: Well, it’s announced in the court, but I was told 24 hours ahead.
[00:26:39] Ben Hurst: Okay.
[00:26:40] Sarah Finch: But I was told you must not leak this news like you [00:26:45] mustn’t tell anybody.
[00:26:46] Sarah Finch: I had to, what happens, have a complete poker face. So I had to go to the Supreme Court where there were crowds of people outside with banners and journalists going, oh, which way do you think it’s gonna go? Yeah,
[00:26:57] Ben Hurst: still
[00:26:57] Sarah Finch: fine. And I was having to go like, oh, I don’t know. [00:27:00] So that was, that was very strange. 24 hours for me.
[00:27:04] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:27:05] Sarah Finch: But also happy. ’cause I knew, I knew I was really, really happy, but I, ’cause I couldn’t smile, you know?
[00:27:11] Ben Hurst: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to keep it, keep your face still. [00:27:15] Um, and so what was the situation in the, in the ruling? Is the Supreme Court one person? Is it just one guy, like one guy sitting on a throne
[00:27:24] who
[00:27:25] Sarah Finch: makes a big
[00:27:25] Ben Hurst: decision?
[00:27:26] Sarah Finch: No, there, there were five judges in our case. Okay. I think there’s [00:27:30] 12 Supreme Court judges and you get a different selection of them. So we had five. Um, so. You have to get a majority. So when we were in the hearing, we’re thinking like, oh, this, this judge seems to be sympathetic [00:27:45] to what we’re saying. Oh, I’m not sure about that one.
[00:27:47] Sarah Finch: And trying to do the maths, we only need three. Um, and so in the end, yes, it was a three, two decision, which means that we won. So amazing,
[00:27:57] Ben Hurst: incredible, incredible.
[00:27:59] Sarah Finch: But not, [00:28:00] and not just that it was such a clear judgment. So, you know, we, we all filed in. Sat down to listen, um, with me trying not to give anything away.
[00:28:09] Sarah Finch: Um, and just listened to the, one of the judges read out or a summary of their judgment [00:28:15] and it was so clear and so eloquent, and I was just thinking, yes, this is what we’ve been saying for five years.
[00:28:22] Ben Hurst: Yeah,
[00:28:22] Sarah Finch: but he’s saying it even better than us. It was just amazing.
[00:28:25] Ben Hurst: You’re like, thank you, somebody, somebody gets it.
[00:28:28] Ben Hurst: Which is what we’ve been looking [00:28:30] for.
What the ruling changes
[00:28:30] Ben Hurst: So what are the. Effects of what hap like what happened after the ruling. So they, they make that decision. It’s really clear, uh, three to two that they can’t do what they’re doing. Is it that they can’t drill for oil?
[00:28:46] Yeah.
[00:28:46] Ben Hurst: Without justifying or without explaining or counting the cost of,
[00:28:51] Sarah Finch: well, what, yeah, what it, what it meant was you can’t give permission for, for drilling for oil or gas without.[00:29:00]
[00:29:00] Sarah Finch: Cal calculating the full climate harm. Um, and it doesn’t say that you can’t then do it. Mm-hmm. It’s like. Environmental impact assessment is a kind of process. It’s not an, it’s not an outcome. So the simple, [00:29:15] um, thing that happened as a result of that was that planning permission for that one site at Horse Hill in Surrey was now overturned.
[00:29:22] Sarah Finch: And so if they wanted to do it, they would have to apply again, right? But. It also meant because the Supreme Court is the highest [00:29:30] court, so what they say goes, um, there were a number of other sites in the system with legal challenges kind of pending, but automatically meant all of those had to be heard again.
[00:29:42] Sarah Finch: So almost immediately, like within a month, [00:29:45] you know, the government had said it wouldn’t defend the permission for the coal mine. And then, you know, the next month. They wouldn’t defend the permissions for the Rose Bank and Jack Door oil and gas sites in the North Sea. So then those sons had, their hearings got found [00:30:00] to be unlawful and various other, you know, smaller onshore sites as well and various projects kind of almost immediately.
[00:30:08] Sarah Finch: Were overturned or Wow. Applications withdrawn. So it was like nine pins, and then the government said it would [00:30:15] rewrite its guidance for the offshore oil and gas industry, which is much bigger than onshore. So 98% of our oil is produced. In, in the North Sea. Mm-hmm. So the government would rewrite that guidance to make it clear what those [00:30:30] developers had to do if they wanted to open a new site.
[00:30:33] Sarah Finch: Um, and they’ve written much stronger guidance, which means that they have to be really open and transparent about all of their. Um, greenhouse gas emissions,
[00:30:44] Ben Hurst: right?
[00:30:44] Sarah Finch: Yeah.
No new fossil fuels
[00:30:44] Ben Hurst: [00:30:45] Because essentially what we are talking about here is like the, the reality that there is just no justification really for, for drilling for oil at this point, right?
[00:30:53] Ben Hurst: Like there, there should be no new opening of, of projects to draw for, for more oil.
[00:30:58] Sarah Finch: No, the [00:31:00] science is absolutely clear on that, right? That, I mean, various, you know, all GU international bodies have looked at it and said there. Is no room for any more, any new oil or gas or coal if we are gonna stay [00:31:15] within the, you know, globally agreed tar climate targets.
[00:31:17] Sarah Finch: Mm-hmm. You know, there’s more than enough in already operating, already permitted sites already to blow us past, you know, 1.5 degrees warming so scientifically. [00:31:30] There isn’t any justification for any new oil obvious, you know, then the fossil fuel industry doesn’t like to accept that. So they come up with all these get outs, like, oh, but if we have carbon capture and storage, then it’ll be fine.
[00:31:43] Sarah Finch: Or, yeah. Oh, well if we, [00:31:45] we can open our oil field here because probably another oil field somewhere else we’ll close. Um, so, you know, it’s not like they’ve accepted it, the. You know, I, I think the end of fossil fuels is happening. Mm-hmm. But they, they’re gonna [00:32:00] fight for every last drop.
[00:32:01] Ben Hurst: Right.
How grassroots began
[00:32:02] Ben Hurst: And, and speaking of, speaking of that fight, let’s go back to, uh, horse Hill.
[00:32:08] Ben Hurst: Let’s go back to like, I want to think about like how, how these changes actually happen. ’cause I think we have a lot [00:32:15] of listeners who are people in local communities who are. Feeling moved to some kind of action. Maybe not entirely sure about which type of action they should be taking, taking part in. Um, but definitely want to do something.
[00:32:28] Ben Hurst: Know that things need to [00:32:30] change. I’m interested in like that room, that first meeting with a, a room full of people. Where were you? Like, was it. Is it in like somebody’s living room? Is it in a pub? Is it like in a community center? How did this all start for you as a group? [00:32:45] Oh,
[00:32:45] Sarah Finch: it’s, it’s hard to pinpoint any first meeting because I think you’d have to go back.
[00:32:50] Sarah Finch: It’s all a
[00:32:50] Ben Hurst: blur.
[00:32:50] Sarah Finch: The first meeting of the people that are now in the wheel actually was probably on a roadside in Bulke, in Balkam, in Sussex when we were all there protesting [00:33:00] against, uh, the plans to drill at Balkam, which is like 10 miles down the road from Horse Hill. That was the first. Of these sites to really get started.
[00:33:08] Sarah Finch: So I think we, you know, we went along to protest at the roadside physically. Mm-hmm. And that was probably the first time we all met, but there have [00:33:15] been meetings in people’s houses, in pubs, in community halls. Um, and I think, you know, something I think that’s was really beneficial for the wheel group is that it’s just people there had incredible skills.
[00:33:28] Sarah Finch: There’s like [00:33:30] people that are really good organizers, people that are really good communicators. I, you know, half of us, if, you know, if those key people hadn’t been there, probably wouldn’t have happened. You just need, or you need the right mix of people.
[00:33:44] Ben Hurst: Right. So it’s, it’s [00:33:45] like finding, finding your people and it will figure itself out.
[00:33:49] Ben Hurst: There’s no, like, we need to organize this first meeting. You kind of just do the thing and then it turns into, yeah.
[00:33:55] Sarah Finch: Well, I mean we, but then within that, there were first meetings, so we would
[00:33:59] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:33:59] Sarah Finch: You know, the [00:34:00] first public meeting. So something we would do where there was a new site would, you know, hire the village hall, um, and just.
[00:34:07] Sarah Finch: Put posters up around and flies through people’s doors and have a public meeting to inform people. Because although, you know, these companies, [00:34:15] they have some responsibility. They’re meant to have public consultation. They don’t really do it so often. The first thing people would know would be because we put a flyer through their door.
[00:34:25] Ben Hurst: And did, did it feel like when you started out [00:34:30] doing this, uh, the, the work was it. Did you have a sense that it was going to evolve into something absolutely massive? Or did it feel like you were just gonna go to that first, uh, court meeting and be like, stop, and then they were gonna stop? [00:34:45]
[00:34:46] Sarah Finch: It’s hard to say now.
[00:34:47] Sarah Finch: I don’t think I ever saw beyond the next step really. Okay. I certainly didn’t imagine that it would take on this national scale that it has. We were very much focused on fighting one site and then fighting the [00:35:00] next, and then fighting the next. Or I was. Mm-hmm. Um,
[00:35:04] Ben Hurst: yeah.
Law as a tool
[00:35:05] Ben Hurst: What, what would you say you’ve learned about how the legal system works?
[00:35:11] Ben Hurst: Because I, I feel, I feel like this has been the, the big thing [00:35:15] right? Is it started as protest and direct action and ended with you being completely immersed in how the country works Yeah. And how law works. What, what are your big takeaways from that? That,
[00:35:28] Sarah Finch: well, no, it’s a. [00:35:30] I mean, I think previously I was very mistrustful of the law.
[00:35:33] Sarah Finch: Mm-hmm. And I kind of thought it was a career for people who wanted to make a lot of money outta exploiting people’s difficulties. I think I didn’t, wouldn’t have ever naturally occurred to me as a way to sort of solve a problem that I was [00:35:45] facing. Mm-hmm. Um, which was very ignorant. And I’m sure there’s a lot of people, uh.
[00:35:50] Sarah Finch: Don’t, don’t have that view. But then I would say I do, yeah. It’s not, not ignorant to me, I think, but also the law. It’s not like the law is this monolith. There’s the [00:36:00] different aspects, you know, there’s civil law and there’s criminal law, and Right. There’s certain things, and I think the law in the widert sense, it’s also being used against protestors, climate protestors, you know, Palestine, protestors, et cetera.
[00:36:11] Sarah Finch: So it’s quite understandable that a lot of people have a bad [00:36:15] impression of the law because. You know, because good people are being criminalized. So yeah, I think maybe the law has a, or the. Parts of it that are on the right side have a job to do in [00:36:30] making themselves appear more accessible and understandable.
[00:36:33] Sarah Finch: And, you know, the, the, some of the legal processes and language is so arcane that, you know, it kind of turns you off. But then when you get in there, you realize that some of these environmental lawyers [00:36:45] are the most amazing activists themselves. They’re people who’ve chosen to be lawyers. Precisely because you know, they want to save the planet or work for people’s human rights, whatever.
[00:36:55] Sarah Finch: So Right. I’ve now my. Impression, the law has done a total, you [00:37:00] know, reverse. And now I think that lawyers are, are, are allies.
[00:37:05] Ben Hurst: Mm. Yeah. Which is a, a, a big shift because in my mind they like, even though we’ve spoken to incredible lawyers who have done. Like absolutely [00:37:15] massive pieces of work to change things.
[00:37:17] Ben Hurst: I think I still think of law through the lens of like a TV court drama. Do you know what I mean? Where there’s like the, the good lawyer and the bad lawyer and people are like just fighting and it’s just a personal thing where they’re trying to one up [00:37:30] each other rather than Yeah. Like fighting for anything that really matters.
[00:37:33] Ben Hurst: Um,
[00:37:33] Sarah Finch: yeah, I mean I think that’s a very common perception. That was my perception and I think it does need to change. Mm-hmm.
[00:37:40] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm. Um,
[00:37:40] Sarah Finch: but I think. What I also think about the law is it is very expensive. It [00:37:45] is very slow, and you’re not at all guarantee to get the results you want outcome. So I don’t think it should be anyone’s like first choice of campaigning tool.
[00:37:55] Sarah Finch: Really. Um, well, unless they really, really know what they’re doing. Right,
[00:37:59] Ben Hurst: right.
[00:37:59] Sarah Finch: But [00:38:00] I think, yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s a very, it’s a gamble and an expensive gamble, which in our case, spectacularly paid off.
[00:38:08] Ben Hurst: Paid off.
Working with lawyers
[00:38:09] Ben Hurst: And how, how did you guys. Bridge that gap between grassroots activism and legal expertise was, was it like, were there people in the group who had that expertise from the beginning or did you have to partner with solicitors and lawyers
[00:38:25] Sarah Finch: and people?
[00:38:25] Sarah Finch: No. Find those. We partner, there were people in the group who had some experience, so the WID action [00:38:30] group had fought a previous. Legal fight, which was a, against an injunction because the, the same oil company that was at Horse Hill mm-hmm. They took, they tried to take out an injunction against persons unknown, which means anybody to [00:38:45] prevent them from like doing anything, saying anything, going anywhere near any of their sites, et cetera.
[00:38:49] Sarah Finch: It was a very, uh, and when there’s, when something, there’s an injunction in place, it means doing something like. What would normally be minor trespass or, you know, a, a minor [00:39:00] little thing if that becomes a, a crime that you could go to prison for or face a big fine. Right. So pe the wheel acts group had fought this injunction, which had involved partnering with lawyers to get it scaled back.
[00:39:12] Sarah Finch: So those people then had [00:39:15] a, a sense like, oh, the law is something of which we can use.
[00:39:18] Ben Hurst: Right.
[00:39:18] Sarah Finch: And I do remember when we went, um. So when we were, uh, before this planning permission had been given for Horse Hill, we were objecting to it. Some of them were like, oh, we should talk to a lawyer and like, see if, uh, what [00:39:30] you
[00:39:30] Ben Hurst: like
[00:39:30] Sarah Finch: nonsense.
[00:39:30] Sarah Finch: And I thought,
[00:39:31] Ben Hurst: shouting up,
[00:39:32] Sarah Finch: what isn’t that a bit premature? Whatcha talking about? But they did go and talk to a lawyer. Um, and then we ended up going back to that lawyer afterwards going like, okay, so we, this has been permitted. What can we do now? But, so yeah, we, we met [00:39:45] lawyers and I’d say. Um, yeah, that’s an essential, unless you are some kind of incredibly self-taught lawyer person yourself mm-hmm.
[00:39:53] Sarah Finch: You need lawyers. Um, but our lawyers were great and so they’re now, they were, we were all a team. I [00:40:00] felt. It wasn’t like, oh, we have to talk to the lawyers. You know, it’s like, great, let’s talk to these helpful people that are going to, right, right. Tell us how we can win this case.
[00:40:09] Ben Hurst: Right. Let’s ask our friends who might have some of the answers to these questions as opposed to, oh, get the lawyers in.[00:40:15]
[00:40:15] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Um, okay.
Advice for activists
[00:40:17] Ben Hurst: If you are, I want you to imagine you are speaking to somebody who wants to take some kind of similar action, so they want to block some kind of development or project that’s happening in a local area. Is there any advice you would give to somebody who finds themself in that position?
[00:40:35] Sarah Finch: Yeah, the first thing I would say is find all the other people who think like you.
[00:40:39] Sarah Finch: Right? ’cause that’s gonna be a lot easier. It’s like, don’t try to do it in a lonely way, and also trust people [00:40:45] that might be coming at it from a different angle, you know, just. Try to build your network, you, you know, you need everybody. And particularly if it’s something to do with climate change, it’s such a huge problem that we need everybody.
[00:40:58] Sarah Finch: So yeah, partner [00:41:00] with them. And then the other thing I would say is like, don’t be discouraged. Like even if everything’s going badly, if you think you are in the right, just keep going. In a way, even if you lose, there might be other. [00:41:15] Benefits along the way. Yeah. At least you are educating people. At least you are doing something.
[00:41:19] Sarah Finch: Um, so take courage, you know, you don’t know what’s gonna win. Try everything because you dunno what’s gonna be the thing that eventually wins.
[00:41:27] Ben Hurst: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s not, it’s not all [00:41:30] just about this singular outcome. There are other things, and that’s one of the big things I’ve, I’ve thought whilst listening to you share, is that all of these.
[00:41:38] Ben Hurst: Things are so connected in, like, I wouldn’t have assumed that Rosebank would’ve been connected to this, for example. Um, but [00:41:45] actually like one change over here can impact 17 different things all around in different places.
[00:41:51] Sarah Finch: Yeah. I mean, I think that’s the beauty of the law. It’s very powerful if you do win.
[00:41:56] Sarah Finch: And so yeah. Bank is now the test [00:42:00] case of the Finch judgment, I think at the moment. Mm-hmm. At some point the government will have to decide again whether to allow it and it’ll, they’ll have to. Be do it in a finch compliant way. So
[00:42:11] Ben Hurst: yeah. As they, as they should.
Personal transformation
[00:42:14] Ben Hurst: Um, I want to think about before we wrap up here, I guess first question I would like to ask you is.
[00:42:25] Ben Hurst: Do you feel that this journey over the years that you’ve been doing this [00:42:30] work, and over the years that you’ve been campaigning and fighting, um, against this drilling that’s been going on, do you feel like this has changed you in any way? Do you feel like you are like a, a different person now at the end of this journey, or does it feel like [00:42:45] it’s all just an extension of who you were?
[00:42:48] Sarah Finch: Well, I think both. I mean, I think I always was like a total environment obsessive. Mm-hmm. And that hasn’t changed, but I think I’m more confident now or, well, not more con, more confident [00:43:00] and more optimistic.
[00:43:01] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm.
[00:43:03] Sarah Finch: I think, I mean I think the big win has has just made me feel really like, wow, so you can change something.
[00:43:12] Maryam Pasha: Yeah. You know,
[00:43:13] Sarah Finch: ordinary people [00:43:15] organizing together in their communities can sometimes win even against something as big as the climate crisis. So I think I feel more optimistic and I still suffer from climate anxiety.
[00:43:26] Maryam Pasha: Yeah.
[00:43:27] Sarah Finch: A lot. And I still get. Incredibly [00:43:30] depressed and scared. Um, when I read all about the impacts and the projections and the typical points, but I kind of, I have this confidence, well, at least I’m doing something.
[00:43:38] Sarah Finch: You know, it’s like I am doing something. It’s, you know, keep going. So I feel like I have become a. [00:43:45] A more optimistic person.
[00:43:47] Ben Hurst: Mm-hmm. And given, given your time again, do you think this would be something that you would do again? Do you think that, that it feels like it was worth it in the end? Like, would it be a a, a fight that you would choose again?
[00:43:59] Sarah Finch: Totally. [00:44:00] Mm-hmm. Totally. Yeah. I mean, well, having seen the outcome it could have. Yeah. How could you not? Yeah.
[00:44:08] Ben Hurst: Yeah.
[00:44:08] Sarah Finch: But even. You know, we could so easily, it could have been different, you know, we could have had three, two [00:44:15] Supreme Court judges the other way. Yeah. But it still would’ve been worth it, I think.
[00:44:20] Sarah Finch: Um, and I think if something’s, if you feel strongly that something’s right, I think you just have to do it. Because if you don’t, then you’ve got to deal with your kind of guilt and your conscience. Yeah.
[00:44:29] Ben Hurst: [00:44:30] Yeah. You’ve gotta live with the fact that you didn’t do anything when, when you knew something was wrong.
[00:44:35] Ben Hurst: Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. The.
Next battles ahead
[00:44:38] Ben Hurst: Last thing I wanna ask you before we wrap up is, what is next for the Finch ruling? What’s, what’s the next frontier for you?
[00:44:49] Sarah Finch: Defending the Finch ruling? Right. Well, so. So the next proof of it I think will be rosebank, you know, will, what decision will the government make there?
[00:44:59] Sarah Finch: [00:45:00] They’ve kind of kicked it off a bit down the line again by, you know, they’ve gone back to the developer to ask for yet more information about it. So that will, that’s still, that’s still a kind of proof of it that’s hanging. But also, uh, the Prime Minister has said that he wants to replace environmental impact [00:45:15] assessment regulations with something else called environmental outcomes reports.
[00:45:19] Sarah Finch: So. Is this just a way to get rid of the inconvenient Finch ruling? Right. So that’s gonna be consulted on over this summer. So yeah, we’ll see [00:45:30] what the Prime Minister’s thinking on that is this summer. So it may be that we have to have a big fight to defend the environmental impact assessment, not just because of that Finch ruling, but other aspects of it as well.
[00:45:40] Sarah Finch: So yeah, it’s, it’s. It’s never over.
[00:45:44] Ben Hurst: The [00:45:45] work never stops. Yeah. The hustle never stops. Truly. Um, Sarah, thank you so much for, for joining us. Thank you so much for chatting with us.
Goldman Prize Impact
[00:45:54] Ben Hurst: Um, and, and Sarah, you are the winner of the Goldman Prize. Is it? This year’s 2025, the Gold 20. The Goldman
[00:46:03] Sarah Finch: Prize for Europe. The Goldman Prize.
[00:46:05] Sarah Finch: There is six winners and I’m the Europe one.
[00:46:08] Ben Hurst: Oh, so the accolades don’t stop, do they? You get laws named after yourself, your rulings named after yourself. [00:46:15] Goldman Prizes. What does the Goldman Prize actually, uh, do for you? Like impractical terms? What does it allow you to do?
[00:46:21] Sarah Finch: Well, I mean, it’s, I can’t get over it.
[00:46:25] Sarah Finch: I honestly have the biggest case of imposter syndrome here, but it’s, [00:46:30] it’s an incredible honor, you know, and it will. Elevate me to the level of being, you know, one of, you know, several hundred people have won this prize over 30 something years of, um mm. And so I hope you’ll just give me a much, a bigger platform to keep talking about [00:46:45] climate, um, and to boost, uh, the work of grassroots activists.
[00:46:49] Sarah Finch: Who are fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground all over the world. Um, ’cause although the Goldman Prize is, they, they give prizes to individuals, you know? Mm-hmm. Every one of those individuals, I’m [00:47:00] sure is part of a, a community network. We’re working really hard together. So yeah, I hope it will just give me a platform to keep on, keep on keeping on.
[00:47:11] Ben Hurst: And it’s, it’s such a strange thing to feel, uh, imposter [00:47:15] syndrome about, because it’s not even something that you try to get. It’s, it’s not like you, you set out to try and achieve it. They just give it to you because you’re doing things that are important. Um, so don’t feel, well, feel what you wanna feel, but don’t feel any imposter syndrome about you deserve it.
[00:47:29] Ben Hurst: [00:47:30] You’ve done the, you’ve done the work. Um, and I hope that it will yeah, really boost your, your platform and give you access to some, some other people that will be able to sway. Some more of these decisions in your favor because I think that you guys deserve that. [00:47:45]
Closing credits
[00:47:46] Maryam Pasha: Thank you for joining us this week. We really hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.
[00:47:49] Ben Hurst: If you did, please hit the follow button to make sure that you get next week’s release. While you’re at it, please leave a rating and a review.
[00:47:57] Maryam Pasha: Now let’s shout out to our fabulous team [00:48:00] behind the pod
[00:48:00] Ben Hurst: executive produced by Josie Colter,
[00:48:03] Maryam Pasha: produced by Ben Beheshty.
[00:48:04] Ben Hurst: music also by Ben Beheshty,
[00:48:06] Maryam Pasha: communications by Tara Cooper and Izzy Gladston.
[00:48:10] Ben Hurst: curation by Deesha Chandra,
[00:48:11] Maryam Pasha: hosted by Ben Hurst.
[00:48:13] Ben Hurst: and Maryam Pasha. [00:48:15]
[00:48:15] Maryam Pasha: and remember,
[00:48:16] Ben Hurst: stay curious.
