Fight vs Global Warming and reality
During Paris 2015 conference on global warming, 196 countries out of 198 signed a global agreement. The conference talked about impact of Global Warming and price they are willing to pay to maintain global temperature within a threshold. This is really serious topic, the change in temperature impacts agriculture and food security, droughts, floods, storms and hurricanes. Global warming is greatest challenge for 21st century and it can't be fought alone.
Richer countries like USA, Canada, European union took more responsibility to take the world in new age of renewables from natural gas and petroleum. While developing countries planned to shift from mediocre Coal plants to renewables. Even with this in goal, everyone knew, there would be intermedieate dependence on petroleum. So let's take a look at current petroleum economics.
There are 198 countries but top 10 countries have 87% of global crude oil. Not all of these countries are working together. OPEC consisting of all but USA/Canada among these 10 and few more has 82% of global crude oil. This theoritically can give them all the bargaining power. But there are many issues in Opec themselves. Saudi Arabia and Iran has 40 year long cold war. Iraq and Iran had waged bloody war for a decade and before USA invasion of Iraq, they were bitter enemies. Since USA has left Iraq, ISIS has controlled major portion of Iraq and country has gone through civil wars to finally become a client state of Iran. Kuwait was invaded by Iraq and USA and other non OPEC and OPEC countries had to save it as coalition. Libya went through bloody Civil war. Venezuela is still in grips of insurgency. Russia and USA have been rivals since WW2 and have very competing global ambitions.
Finally there is petro dollar. Before WW2, countries could buy oil in gold. After WW2, most of the world depended on USA to stabilize a currency. Due to this, all crude production used to happen in US dollars. USA has been blamed to support civil wars in oil rich countries but simultenously USA has been asked to not be impacted by oil pressures.
Out of these countries, USA had put massive sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, 2 of the 3 largest oil rich countries. As USA has petro dollar, every country consciosuly deals with these two countries.
Now, let's take a look at global consumers of crude oil. USA is highest consumer, followed by China. In fact, as a group European Union still is ahead of China. USA and Europe are developed countries with huge demand for oil. Also these countries are democratic countries where public opinion is crucial. These countries are part of colder parts of the world so during winter its crucial for oil/natural gas to be supplied to homes. These countries are already past regular needs like feeding their population so they are most keen to clean fuel.
China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico are developing countries. They are 44% of world's population. They have less number of crude oils and need to develop their economy and feed their population. Global warming will affect these countries as well but they have immidiete needs which trump global warming.
Coming to 2020, world has faced global pandemic which wasn't seen in 100 years. During this time, use of crude oil dropped, many parts of the world saw resurgence in wildlife, lakes becoming cleaner, air becoming less polluted.
Since Pandemic, the gap between rich and poor has widened accross the world. How this impact fight vs global warming? The rich can benevolently sacrifice for fight vs global warming while for poor where it was already difficult to survive before, now, with changes in global economy its downright impossible. The radical proposals put forth by rich are totally inconsiderate about entire population and its survival. They are coming off as Marie Antoinette's statements. If poor are hungry, let them have cake.
Source : https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/04/economic-inequality-wealth-gap-pandemic
Another major blow to war vs global warming is war in Ukraine. Ukraine war is not simple war. There are big geopolitical repercussions to who wins in this one. But apart from that, there are major environmental repuercussions. Firstly, USA stopped a multibillon dollar project with Canada to produce crude oil, thereby reducing dependence on middle east. While Europe in its bid to move to clean energy moved away from middle east and heavily depended on Russia for crude oil. Both USA and Europe planned to move to clean solar energy as soon as possible. Germany even dropped its dependence on nuclear power where it was leading country. Russia used both of these as its bargianing chip. If the people in these countries are angry due to rising fuel costs, they will overthrow the rulers and make Russia's war in Ukraine simpler. But by doing this, Russia directly gave big blow to fight vs global warming.
In order to stop Russia, Europe and USA had punishing sanctions on Russia, even worse than Venezuela and Iran. But this time it broke patience of developing nations. Already suffering from Pandemic, these developing countries could not accept sanction on 1 more oil producer. Even though Russia has 8th reserves of crude oil, its largest producer behind just USA. Many countries are trying to negotiate directly with Russia, dropping of petro dollar. This challenges USA supremecy directly. While Europe has cut itself off Russian oil, it has faced largest inflation in decades. Protests are happening in developed world. Developing world lead by China and India is doubling down on its oil purchases from Russia. USA in its bid to secure itself from inflation is now buying oil from Venezuela in desparation. Its true that in geopolitics there is always space for hypocrisy.
Global warming is global issue. But its impossible for developing world to solve this at same rate as developed world. Now that developed world is under pressure itself, there is huge challenge on how it can help entire world move to reneawables. Because these projects takes decades to succeed and trillions of dollars in investments. Any disruption in global supply chain is disastrous.
Now it's going to be really interesting to see if leaders from the world can rally their citizens behind a higher cause. Because if we are not able to survive 8% inflations today, we will not be able to survive 20% inflations when global warming becomes out of control for sure. For the first time in history, the new generations have less hopes than previous generations. The greed has no end.
Richer countries like USA, Canada, European union took more responsibility to take the world in new age of renewables from natural gas and petroleum. While developing countries planned to shift from mediocre Coal plants to renewables. Even with this in goal, everyone knew, there would be intermedieate dependence on petroleum. So let's take a look at current petroleum economics.
Finally there is petro dollar. Before WW2, countries could buy oil in gold. After WW2, most of the world depended on USA to stabilize a currency. Due to this, all crude production used to happen in US dollars. USA has been blamed to support civil wars in oil rich countries but simultenously USA has been asked to not be impacted by oil pressures.
Out of these countries, USA had put massive sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, 2 of the 3 largest oil rich countries. As USA has petro dollar, every country consciosuly deals with these two countries.
China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand, Mexico are developing countries. They are 44% of world's population. They have less number of crude oils and need to develop their economy and feed their population. Global warming will affect these countries as well but they have immidiete needs which trump global warming.
Coming to 2020, world has faced global pandemic which wasn't seen in 100 years. During this time, use of crude oil dropped, many parts of the world saw resurgence in wildlife, lakes becoming cleaner, air becoming less polluted.
Since Pandemic, the gap between rich and poor has widened accross the world. How this impact fight vs global warming? The rich can benevolently sacrifice for fight vs global warming while for poor where it was already difficult to survive before, now, with changes in global economy its downright impossible. The radical proposals put forth by rich are totally inconsiderate about entire population and its survival. They are coming off as Marie Antoinette's statements. If poor are hungry, let them have cake.
Another major blow to war vs global warming is war in Ukraine. Ukraine war is not simple war. There are big geopolitical repercussions to who wins in this one. But apart from that, there are major environmental repuercussions. Firstly, USA stopped a multibillon dollar project with Canada to produce crude oil, thereby reducing dependence on middle east. While Europe in its bid to move to clean energy moved away from middle east and heavily depended on Russia for crude oil. Both USA and Europe planned to move to clean solar energy as soon as possible. Germany even dropped its dependence on nuclear power where it was leading country. Russia used both of these as its bargianing chip. If the people in these countries are angry due to rising fuel costs, they will overthrow the rulers and make Russia's war in Ukraine simpler. But by doing this, Russia directly gave big blow to fight vs global warming.
In order to stop Russia, Europe and USA had punishing sanctions on Russia, even worse than Venezuela and Iran. But this time it broke patience of developing nations. Already suffering from Pandemic, these developing countries could not accept sanction on 1 more oil producer. Even though Russia has 8th reserves of crude oil, its largest producer behind just USA. Many countries are trying to negotiate directly with Russia, dropping of petro dollar. This challenges USA supremecy directly. While Europe has cut itself off Russian oil, it has faced largest inflation in decades. Protests are happening in developed world. Developing world lead by China and India is doubling down on its oil purchases from Russia. USA in its bid to secure itself from inflation is now buying oil from Venezuela in desparation. Its true that in geopolitics there is always space for hypocrisy.
Global warming is global issue. But its impossible for developing world to solve this at same rate as developed world. Now that developed world is under pressure itself, there is huge challenge on how it can help entire world move to reneawables. Because these projects takes decades to succeed and trillions of dollars in investments. Any disruption in global supply chain is disastrous.
Now it's going to be really interesting to see if leaders from the world can rally their citizens behind a higher cause. Because if we are not able to survive 8% inflations today, we will not be able to survive 20% inflations when global warming becomes out of control for sure. For the first time in history, the new generations have less hopes than previous generations. The greed has no end.
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