Can you trust a murderer on the climate?

 

Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman presented a series of plans to address the dangers of global warming.

But critics say the moves are just a smokescreen to keep fossil fuels propelling its economy. Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil producer, announced it planned to raise crude production from 12 million barrels a day to 13 million barrels by 2027 – a move scientists, energy experts say goes against what is needed to stave off the most catastrophic effects of climate change.

Saudi Arabia has justified the contradictory moves of reducing its own carbon emissions while still taking oil out of the ground and selling it worldwide as part of a plan to create a “circular carbon economy“. This envisions continuing to extract carbon-filled fuel out of the earth while employing new technologies to capture, store or sell its emissions – essentially an offset scheme.

 Critics have accused the Saudis of “greenwashing” – or claiming something is good for the environment when in reality the opposite is true.

Matthew Archer, a researcher at the Graduate Institute Geneva, explained, “It’s absurd to think that an economy based on the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels can be ‘circular’ in any meaningful sense of the word. The only way it works is if you rely on technologies that don’t exist yet,” said Archer. “These initiatives are … full of language that’s as ambitious as it is ambiguous, with very few concrete plans and no accountability mechanisms.” 

Archer said, the only way to rapidly decarbonise to avert catastrophic consequences of global warming is to ban new fossil fuel developments and invest massively in renewable energy and public infrastructure projects. “Anything short of that isn’t just greenwashing, it’s dangerous and delusional.”

‘Dangerous and delusional’: Critics denounce Saudi climate plan | Climate Crisis News | Al Jazeera