Channelling Nero
On Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – the international body for assessing the science related to climate change – released its latest report which implores governments to up their commitments before 2030, to reach net zero by 2050, in order to keep warming in or around 1.5 C by 2100. Dubbed a “survival guide for humanity” by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the report, as expected, indicated that there was need for “rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions in all sectors”. Since fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas – are the main emissions’ culprits, this obviously entails stepping back rather than opening new areas for exploring and exploiting.
Even though this report, like its predecessors, is liable to be `back-burnered’, completely ignored, or partly or fully denied in some quarters, its release on Monday was no walk in the park. It was presented to delegates from most of the UN member governments at a meeting in Switzerland last week for approval. That process, referred to as unusual by journalists reporting on the meeting, was apparently a UN strategy aimed at ensuring that governments not only accepted the report’s findings, but used it as a basis for future actions. It almost backfired. According to reports, representatives from China, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, the United States and some countries in the European Union pushed back, nitpicked and haggled over wording, delaying the approval from last Friday – when the meeting should have ended – to Sunday.
None of the reports from the meeting stated exactly what the nitpickers wanted changed, whether they were successful, or to what extent. However, anyone who read the IPCC’s carefully worded press release, also issued on Monday just prior to the report, did not need to be a fly on the wall to deduce the battle(s) won. While it pointed to the harm caused by the burning of fossil fuels for over a century, the press release did not specifically call for them to be cut, focusing instead on what the immediate future should look like, “clean energy… low-carbon electrification, walking, cycling and public transport…”
There can be no doubt whatsoever about the clout the fossil fuel lobbyists have in the global political arena. It would not be stretching the truth to say that in some places they ‘run things’, to use a local idiom. To feed their unending greed, they have cleverly harnessed money, politics and power, which they offer in increments to those who would do their bidding. The exploitation of fossil fuels, particu
larly oil and gas, is, after all, among the industries with the largest profit margins in the world. As a case in point, the international statistics website Statista listed ExxonMobil as the sixth highest profitable company globally in 2022. Leading that list are Saudi Aramco (oil), followed by Apple (technology), Microsoft (technology), Alphabet (technology), and Equinor (oil).
Oil and gas, being the older industry with the wider global spread in terms of location, has successfully spawned a chorus of modern-day Neros in the countries whose economies are inextricably tied to it. How factually close they are to that infamous Roman emperor will ultimately be revealed, as all things eventually are. Suffice to say at this point that their obscene obsession with power and wealth motivates them to do the very least they can get away with, or nothing at all in the face of clear evidence of the ongoing damage being inflicted by fossil fuels; virtually fiddling while the planet burns or in some cases, drowns.
With regard to the latter, we should all be concerned at the known future events that science up to this point is unable to accurately predict. One is the rise in sea levels, estimated at one metre by 2100, but which in actuality could be higher depending on melting icebergs and ocean temperatures and disturbances, among other factors.
Indeed, based on the current prognosis, that likely catastrophe is some 77 years away. However, recent scenarios, including unprecedented flooding in unexpected places point to the need for immediate solutions. These are not problems that should be left for posterity to solve when the answers are readily available. Governments have to act; fence sitting will not cut it when, as Mr Guterres so aptly stated, humanity’s very survival is at stake. While individual citizens also have their roles to play in reducing their carbon footprints, they must also insist on accountability from governments; it’s an all or nothing situation and the faster we realise that the better for all of us.