The sad truth is consumption Oilcontinues to increase despite the climate crisis that the planet is experiencing. OPEC said it will rise 2.7% for next year unless the war in Ukraine and inflation affect the economy more than expected. In any case, oil has been around for a while, as with coal and natural gas, as with other fossil fuels that threaten the survival of humanity.
And this is to begin with, big oil companies are simply reluctant to abandon the production of ‘doomsday fuel’, as they are sometimes called, and they are fighting stubbornly to decarbonize the planet. In the words of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, “that’s how they grabbed humanity by the neck”, so much so that industry, traffic and much of the economy depend on oil.
This is not a figure of speech. A study done a few weeks ago by the climate change analysis lab Impact Map, oil companies spend $750 million each year on climate marketing, but on the other hand they plan to devote only 12% of their total investment to decarbonisation. In other words, despite multiple announcements about their environmental commitments, the reality is that practice shows they are not planning to straighten course, at least not immediately.
The ‘Big Oil’s 2022 Agenda’ survey is the result of an analysis of more than 3,000 messages and announcements launched by the five largest hydrocarbon producing companies worldwide: British BP, Dutch Shell, French Total, and Americans ExxonMobil and Chevron. 60% of all these messages included references to environmental commitments. According to the research, the cost of all these ads (in the media, on billboards, blogs, social networks, etc.) is “a conservative estimate” of $750 million for a single year.
This data is then compared to what these companies plan to dedicate to low-carbon activities in 2022, which is only 12% of the total budget for their property investments, which ranges from 87,000 to 96,000 million euros. Dollar.
When the authors of the report asked companies to provide data proving compliance with their environmental commitments, none providedAccording to Faye Holder, a co-author of the report and a researcher on Impact Map.
For Holder, this contradiction between such an avalanche of pro-climate messages and anti-climate actions constitutes a case of greenwashing.
Powerful ‘lobbies’ of oil companies
And this oil companies and gas and coal companies authentic lobbydisciplined and effectively organized, acts to try to minimize the damage caused by tackling climate change. This was demonstrated, for example, at the recent COP26 conference in Glasgow, which brought together different countries to continue moving towards decarbonisation.
The largest delegation present at that convention did not correspond to any country, however important, but to the fossil fuel industry. According to conservation organization Global Witness, after consulting the list of contributors, More than 500 people attending COP26 were part of this industry. Their aim was to press in favor of the interests of hydrocarbon companies, which they thought should be banned from entering, as this entity suspected.
Global Witness spokesman Murray said the impact of the oil lobby is “one of the main reasons why 25 years of UN climate talks have not resulted in a real cut in carbon emissions.”
More and more entities remember this as a precedent: The World Health Organization (WHO) did not take the tobacco ban seriously until all tobacco industry representatives were excluded from WHO meetings.It’s where they go to relativize and question the dangers of tobacco.
One of the largest oil lobby groups identified at COP26 was the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), whose spokesman, Alessandre Vitelli, argued that its raison d’etre was “to find more efficient ways in the market to reduce emissions,” and said: There are also sectors.
Inadequate emission reduction targets
Beyond these industry efforts in public relations and political influence, the reality is that large companies in the industry clearly have insufficient decarbonisation targets To achieve the goals set in the Paris Agreement.
This came about through research led by the organization Climate Analytics, published in Nature Communications, which concluded that the decarbonisation scenarios that companies like BP, Shell or Equinor have publicly committed to themselves are not ambitious enough to prevent the planet from warming. Above 1.5ºC before 2100.
Even British Petroleum’s strategy, the most daring of those analyzed, results in an average maximum warming of 1.65ºC, very high Respecting the Paris Agreements because, as the researchers confirm, “every fraction of a degree counts.”
Bill Hare, executive director of Climate Analytics, considers it “important not to allow oil companies to create scenarios that do not meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement.”
As a result of all this, a few days ago, under the leadership of the World Health Organization (WHO), 1,000 professionals and 200 organizations operating in the health sector from all over the world signed an agreement. Urge the governments of the planet to ratify the Fossil Fuels Nonproliferation Treaty immediatelya figure reminiscent of what was done with nuclear weapons decades ago to limit the atomic arsenal.
“The current dependence on fossil fuels is not just an act of environmental vandalism. “From a health perspective, it is an act of self-sabotage,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
These professionals and organizations recall in their writings that the threat posed by hydrocarbons to human health is not a general or abstract threat. Just the opposite. “Air pollution kills more than seven million people a year worldwide”they are pointing
In short, the dirty energy industry seems to be doing everything possible to prevent it from being withdrawn and converted to sustainable sources. The challenge for humanity is to accelerate the transition to an energy future without oil, gas or coal.
Antonio Guterres: “Same tactics as tobacco companies a few decades ago”
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is one of the main voices against the still domination of the planet by oil companies and other dirty energy industries. This summer, during a summit with leading world leaders in June, he didn’t hesitate to scold them openly: “You represent the world’s largest economies as well as the largest emitters. Your first mission is to protect people. “Nothing is more obvious than the danger of the expansion of fossil fuels,” Guterres said in his speech at the Great Economies Forum on Energy and Climate.
Guterres also denounced the pressure exerted by the gas, oil and coal industries on governments and economies: “Apparently, fossil fuel producers have humanity by the throatHe added that these crackdowns are “the same ugly tactics Big Tobacco used decades ago.” Just like in the tobacco industry, most lobby The responsibility of fossil fuels and their financial accomplices should not escape responsibility.”, the UN Secretary-General added. In these last words, he touched on the fact that the big banks on the planet continue to finance dirty energies with huge sums and without it they will not be able to survive.
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