THIS week we remembered the dead and injured of the Piper Alpha disaster.

I was moved to tears by the story of how an oil platform fire that might have subsided or been put out turned into a deadly explosion. Workers on two nearby platforms, Claymore and Tartan, which pumped to Piper Alpha, could see that the platform they were pumping to was alight.

But they had been told never to shut off the oil and gas they were pumping, even to a burning platform. This order caused the deaths of 167 people by causing a massive second explosion. The oil bosses could see no circumstance in which it was appropriate to stop pumping.

Piper Alpha led to a transformation of how the oil and gas industry treated the safety of its North Sea installations. But the fossil fuel industry continues to put us all at risk by fuelling the climate breakdown.

The sea is on fire. It’s been the hottest June in North America, shocking scientists with the extent to which the existing records have been broken. And we’re being asked to celebrate yet more fossil fuel extraction in the Cambo field, west of Shetland.

For decades we’ve been fed a diet of lies and dishonesty by the fossil fuel industry. From 1977, companies like Exxon knew that burning oil and gas was changing the climate. As the years went on they chose to act on this knowledge. And the way they acted on this knowledge is criminal.

They chose to fund research obscuring the role of fossil fuels in causing climate change. They sought to locate responsibility for the climate crisis with individuals. As they lobbied governments to build transport systems that relied on motor cars, they shifted the blame for environmental problems to people forced to drive.

READ MORE: All you need to know on proposed Shetland Cambo oil field project

This drew from the strategy used by the tobacco industry to keep people addicted to cigarettes long after it was clear that they caused cancer. It employed FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubt. So they set the scene for any action that might deal with climate change to be viewed as a frightening threat to our way of life. And was the climate actually changing anyway? And even if it is, what’s the point of us doing anything to stop it when others are doing much more to exacerbate it elsewhere?

The tobacco companies killed hundreds of thousands with this approach. The fossil fuel companies look set to cause even more deaths.

And it is all their fault. It isn’t the fault of people using plastic bags, driving their cars, or not doing their recycling. The fossil fuel companies created an economy addicted to oil and gas.

It could have been so different. We could have avoided the pollution associated with fossil fuel burning. We could have had an economy based on renewable energy. It is already cheaper with only two decades of substantial development. It is cleaner and doesn’t impose the massive costs that fossil fuels do on the health of people and nature.

So as Canada is suffering from record temperatures of 49.5C – a massive 4.5C hotter than the previous record temperature – the consequences of the corporate lies told by those fossil fuel companies becomes clear. We are faced with a choice of paying massive sums to mitigate the fossil fuel companies’ destruction, or living on an increasingly uninhabitable planet. A planet in which people are dying from heat in Canada. It could happen to us and will happen if we do not act.

In the US alone big tobacco companies were sued for $365.5 billion (£265.5bn). The damages awarded against the fossil fuel companies will make those billions look like pennies. What tobacco did ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. What the fossil fuel bosses are doing is ruining the lives of everyone.

READ MORE: Climate change rhetoric must be met with action now in race to net zero

The techniques used by fossil fuel companies will be familiar. The argument goes something like this: “Climate change might not be happening. And if it is happening, it isn’t fossil fuels causing it, and it might be a good thing. Even if it is happening and fossil fuels cause it and it isn’t a good thing, we can’t do anything about it because someone somewhere else will cause emissions.”

It needs to stop. As scientists warn us that the “heat dome” in Canada would not be possible without the climate breakdown we need to face the reality that there cannot be any more extraction. The application for the Cambo field must be rejected.

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. We need to move on from fossil fuels. For too long we have allowed the lies, dishonesty and fear tactics of big oil to set us on a path to destroying the climate.

Just as the safety measures which could have saved the workers on Piper Alpha were implemented too late, so we risk acting too late to transform our dependence on oil and gas. We need to plan for existing jobs to be replaced in new, clean industries, a just transition and a Green New Deal.

In 1988 a minor fire turned into a major explosion because oil and gas bosses refused to put people’s safety ahead of their profits. We risk the same at a global scale.
The difference is that we now know how destructive this approach is. We can stop it. And that means no more extraction.

It means taking a robust approach to those oil executives who care only for profit, and funding the new, clean economy based on the interests of us all. The oil bosses want to continue pumping into the fire. The time to avoid disaster is now.