Climate Hypocrisy
The "Global North" is the greatest contributor to global warming and still have the gall in them call out other nations for not doing enough.
Since this post is on hypocrisy;
Zaporizhzhia has the largest nuclear power plant in the world. It also happens to be under Russian control at the moment.
For the last 2 weeks, American media has been stating that the continued fighting around the plant might lead to a nuclear disaster. They want the IAEA to go in and check it, etc.
The plant is in Russian hands.
They are not bombing themselves.
This implies that Ukrainians/Americans are bombing the plant in an attempt to get back in.
Pick a side… Either you are bombing it because you don’t care OR you are concerned and stop bombing it.
On the theme of causing the problem that they are concerned about…
The climate problem is no longer the problem of the “developing” or the problem of the “global south”.
It has certainly kicked open the doors of the ”global north”. France has been alternating between forest fires and flooding, and ditto for southwestern America. Not like the rest of America has been faring better.
Soon, people in America would have to make a choice between watering grass on the golf course and growing crops. From Lake Mead to River Colorado, everything is running dry. England experienced a heatwave with houses catching on fire across the country due to the heat. Yesterday, London was flooded!
Even so, the only action that these countries are willing to take is to engage in “Branding”. If I have access only to gas, let me brand natural gas - “green”.
When the EU voted last month to classify natural gas as ‘green energy,’ it opened a window that Africa has been waiting for: access to low-cost funds to run energy projects that do not rely on solar, wind or geothermal.
During a press call at the US-Africa summit in Morocco last month, Adesina Akinwumi, the president of the African Development Bank said that “no part of the world ever developed using renewable energy alone. Gas is a fundamental energy source in Africa.” Nearly 300,000 women die every year by inhaling smoke and fumes from cooking-stove firewood, he added.
[…]
This planned move is enraging climate activists, who say Africa is now in danger of locking itself into fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, despite having the highest solar energy potential among all continents.
Source: Quartz
These climate activists are probably themselves using gas to power their homes. Frankly, this is not an African problem, this is a European problem. There is going to be a huge shortfall of gas in Europe and in their case, Winter quite literally is coming. Why would Africa not utilise the resource that is at their disposal to enrich themselves especially when Canada does exactly the same thing with a far worse source of fuel Tar Sands?
This is not about climate, it is about making sure the poor remain poor. If Europe did not buy Natural Gas, Africa would find that investment unworthy.
From that perspective, India’s second NDC is a progression beyond its 2015 ambition. However, India’s 2015 NDC also contained a target to create new forest cover capable of absorbing 2.5 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030. That target looks like it has been dropped from the new NDC altogether, likely because there was little clarity on its actual scope and because India was unlikely to meet it.
Source: The Diplomat
India released its Nationally Determined Contribution as a part of the Paris Climate agreement and there is criticism that it does not live up to the expectations that were earlier outlined.
Both of India’s NDCs allow a rise in emissions over the coming eight years – from around three gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2021 to over four gigatons in 2030. This is because an emissions intensity target allows emissions to grow, as long GDP grows faster. Similarly, committing to increase the share of non-fossil energy allows fossil energy capacity to grow, as long as it is outpaced by renewable capacity additions.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, the Paris Agreement does not specify each country’s fair share of emissions reductions.
Source: The Diplomat
The reason that there is no specific number as a part of the Paris Agreement is that the greatest country in the world was unwilling to commit to one. This brings us to…
The US, where a major “climate bill” was passed and is being hailed as a huge victory for the Democrats before the mid-terms, except…
The bill doesn’t include any mechanism to specifically phase out fossil fuels, the primary cause of the climate crisis, and, indeed, looks to lock in their use for decades to come due to a compromise struck with Manchin. Under the deal, regulations around drilling will be loosened and new leases will be offered in places such as the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska. Environmentalists have called this arrangement a “climate suicide pact”.
Source: The Guardian
[…] it requires the U.S. Department of the Interior to lease 2 million acres in federal lands onshore and 60 million acres offshore each year for oil and gas development (or whatever acreage the industry requests, whichever is smaller). These quotas must be met to allow federal leasing for onshore and offshore renewables development, respectively.
Source: Brookings
I had to pull the numbers out of Brookings Institute because literally, not a single mainstream publication is calling out this hypocrisy. There is more land being put aside for oil exploration than the oil industry can even hope to exploit over the year. 60 million acres each year, translates to 5 million acres a month or 160,000 acres a day!
But the branding has been on point. I do not know if the reporters in the US are just gullible and naive or being paid to write fluff pieces about the bill. Most likely just being paid to. This bill is the worst thing that could happen for climate change. If at all anything useful is being done by the bill, the concessions made to the oil industry completely undoes it and some more.
Across the Atlantic,
European buyers have had to temporarily set aside green aspirations in a rush for coal as the region’s energy crisis deepens, ramping up shipments from Australia, South America, Colombia and South Africa while tightening the global market.
Russia has resumed pumping gas via its biggest pipeline to Germany after a 10-day outage, allaying some of Europe's immediate supply fears but not enough to end the threat of rationing to cope with potential winter shortages.
Source: Reuters
Not like gas was exceptionally clean but moving back to Coal is just embracing the worst. This, at a time when 15,000 acres of forest have been burnt in France. Meanwhile, America is giving us a new geographical phenomenon to study, this one called Firenado. The fires in South West America have burnt over 50,000 acres.
All climate criticism is shameless hypocrisy. The biggest contributors to climate change - the industrialised nations - have been polluting the world for 2 centuries and even today they just want the developing countries to do more. In the meantime, these countries continue to make things worse by carrying on with their old ways.