David McKenzie and Ingrid Formanek of CNN pointed to a painful irony: Namibia, which currently lacks a significant oil and gas industry like some neighboring countries, is feeling the harsh effects of climate change. It is warming faster than other parts of the planet, putting its agricultural industry at risk.
More fair share. Namibia, Botswana and Congo rightly want to reap the same benefits from their land as the Western countries in order to become rich.
“Someone who sits in Norway and has a very good quality of life because of the oil found in the North Sea is now telling the world they should run on renewable energy,” Niall Kramer, South African oil industry consultant and former an oil company executive, according to a CNN report last year. “If you’re sitting in Africa, your incentives are very different.”
The Times notes similar sentiments in the Congo: The auction highlights the double standards that many political leaders on the African continent have drawn attention to: how can Western countries, which have built their prosperity on fossil fuels that emit toxic fumes that warm the planet, demand that Africa forget about its reserves of coal, oil and a guest to protect everyone else?
Congo’s top climate official, Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, told the Times the country is focused on lifting Congolese people out of poverty.
“Our priority is not to save the planet,” he said. He wants Congo to be compensated either by more developed countries for protecting its rainforests and peatlands, or by oil companies.
Still stuck. That the world’s dependence on oil is far from over is embarrassingly clear.
As for Biden, his political future remains largely dependent on people’s perception of the economy, which, in turn, it’s time to partially to gas prices.
The decline in gas prices was seen as good news. The fact that gas prices, while still high, are declining is a fact the White House clings to as it claims the economy is better than people think.
“In fact, the typical driver will now spend about $35 less per month due to the recent decline in gas prices,” Heather Boushi, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told CNN’s Victor Blackwell on Monday.
Bad news about Biden’s climate program. He’s stuck in Congress where the Democratic Senator is from West Virginia. Joe Manchin argues that Americans cannot afford to spend more – at least not now – on the country’s transition from an oil economy. Manchin ignores the cost of inaction.
As White House officials and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will tell you, this view is misguided. This is an eight-member committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research, which is not a government agency that officially declares a recession.
Current U.S. officials and their counterparts around the world agree on the climate crisis. They also seem united in recognizing the political reality that voters love cheaper energy.
