Oil brings wealth and displacement to Middle East
Imagine all Houstonians had to move away every summer because the heat routinely reached unbearable levels.
Millions of residents of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates will need to leave their homes by the end of the century if global temperatures continue rising at the current pace.
While climate change will bring warmer temperatures, more prolonged droughts and more destructive storms to Texas, the Middle East will literally become uninhabitable, with summer heat indexes exceeding 165 degrees Fahrenheit.
The irony that global warming will make the world’s most important fossil fuel-producing region unable to sustain human life will trigger schadenfreude among some. But for the royal families that rule these nations, climate change is a threat to their very existence and a potential refugee crisis for the rest of us.
Greenhouse gases are trapping more heat in the earth’s atmosphere, dramatically raising average temperatures. Higher temperatures vaporize more water, increasing humidity. Hot and humid weather is harder on humans than dry heat, which is why we calculate a heat index that includes humidity.
Humans cannot survive more than six hours in a heat index exceeding 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and it takes an astronomical amount of energy to cool such air.
If global temperatures continue to rise at the current pace, the Middle East will be about 7 degrees warmer in 2050. That’s 50 percent higher than the average global increase, according to researchers at the Italian Aerospace Research Center and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.
Entire afternoons with heat indexes exceeding 165 degrees will become routine after 2070, according to the researchers. In 2003, Saudi Araba recorded the modern era’s highest heat index of 178 degrees Fahrenheit.
“The Saudi’s are going to be an early victim of climate change,” said Jim Krane, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute and author of a new book, “Energy Kingdoms: Oil and Political Survival in the Persian Gulf.”
Saudi officials no longer deny human-driven climate change, and they support the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius. But preventing the
Global warming will make an important oil region unable to sustain human life.
worst of the warming will come at a high price for oil-producing countries.
“Climate action is going to destroy their economies as they are now,” Krane said. “If the world is going to make a concerted effort to turn away from fossil fuels, there needs to be a comprehensive plan of action that protects countries that depend on them for their livelihood.”
The leaders of oil-producing countries want help diversifying their economies and creating good jobs outside of fossil fuel production. But they know the world has rarely followed through on promises to help nations that suffer from global action.
OPEC nations consistently try to block binding limits on fossil fuel uses, while paying lip service to climate change. Cynically, authoritarian rulers know that climate action will take an immediate political and economic toll, while their nations will overheat long after they are dead.
While some regimes focus on retaining power, Middle Eastern business leaders are looking for new uses for oil and gas.
“The demand for petrochemicals is growing faster and more quickly than for fuel, and its a non-combustion use for crude,” Krane added. “It’s a feedstock where the carbon is locked in the product.”
National oil companies are funding research into capturing carbon from the atmosphere, pushing for tighter limits on other greenhouse gases and reducing the carbon footprint of their carbon by boosting energy efficiency and emissions controls in the oil fields.
“Their emissions are a tiny fraction of ours,” Krane said. “Domestically, they want to bring in renewables, energy conservation, and higher fuel prices. They are imposing appliance standards, even for their cars.”
These small steps, though, are insufficient. The region is already heating up, sea levels are rising and soon residents will begin moving out of the area long before it technically becomes uninhabitable.
Outdoor workers already wear special cooling vests in summer, and electricity demand for air conditioning is skyrocketing. The Dead Sea has shrunk by a third over the last decade from higher temperatures, while the Persian Gulf is rising due to polar melting.
Poorer Middle Eastern nations like Bahrain, Jordan and Yemen will suffer the most. Residents have little extra money to spend cooling their homes and businesses. The risk of mass migration is high.
Climate change presents an extreme dilemma for the Middle East, one they have not fully confronted. Texans face a similar challenge, and we have not done much better.