With quite a few Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries having already realised the status of being oil-producing nations, or are otherwise on the cusp of doing so, the news that the climate change researchers are now preoccupied with seeking to place precise measurements on the extent of the global Climate Change threat and are now estimating just how much of the world’s coal, oil and natural gas reserves should be left unburned in order to slow the increase in climate-changing gases in the atmosphere, may well create some measure of institutional discomfort.
Trinidad and Tobago, and now, Guyana, two of the founding members of CARICOM, are already oil producing countries while Suriname is on the cusp of a major expansion. Jamaica, too, would appear to be developing an incremental interest in its own oil prospects whilst the internal differences in The Bahamas on the issue as to whether the country should pursue its oil prospects appears to be still alive.
All of these countries will almost certainly be paying varying levels of attention to what researchers from the University College of London have recently had to say about oil recovery pursuits in the light of what they say are the increasingly disturbing global Climate Change signals. The researchers now, reportedly, have calculated that if the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement are to be met then almost 60% of the world’s oil and gas reserves and 90% of the coal reserves need to remain in the ground. This, the researchers say, in order to slow the increase in climate-changing gases in the atmosphere.
Energy Expert and lead author of the recently released report, Dan Welsby, is quoted as saying that the new paper produced by the researchers “adds further weight to recent research that indicates the global oil and fossil methane gas production needs to peak now. It was found that global production needs to decline at an average annual rate of around 3 per cent (through) 2050.
It’s been long known that emissions from burning fuels for electricity, transportation, and other uses, are the primary drivers of climate change. Scientists say such heat-trapping gases are causing sea-level rise and extreme weather events around the world though such revelations are unlikely to staunch the rueful feelings of countries in the region, including Guyana, that have to do with the fact that they may have far less time to ‘make hay’ while the sun shone than they had imagined.
The study that preceded the present one was executed some months prior to the drafting of the 2015 Paris Accord which embodied pledges to reduce warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), but preferably to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The previous study conducted by University College of London scientists probed the extent to which countries would have to limit fossil fuel emissions to hold warming to 2 degrees Celsius. They found that a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and 80% of coal reserves would need to stay in the ground.
However, emissions reductions proposed in this latest study dramatically increases the amount of fossil fuels that would need to stay in the ground to meet Paris targets.
The study comes less than a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the world will likely cross the 1.5-degree-Celsius warming threshold in the 2030s under five scenarios of emissions reduction. Scientific consensus is that any warming past 1.5 degrees Celsius could result in catastrophic impacts, such as loss of species.
While acknowledging the IPCC’s report, Welsby said he wanted to model a scenario that would limit the worst impacts of climate change.
What Caribbean Community oil-producing and oil-seeking territories will be pondering is the recent pronouncement by the editor-in-chief of the publication Annals of Global Health, Dr. Philip J. Landrigan that “the nations and corporate entities need to readjust their targets and leave oil, gas and coal in the ground if we’re ever going to get there.” Countries like Guyana and Suriname, oil-rich but both ranked among the substantively poorest countries in the region may find that position hard to take. It is, however, difficult to see how a recent editorial by some of the finest minds in the climate change business calling on world leaders to take emergency action to push back global warming can be completely swept aside.
Interestingly, a report just over a week ago coming from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that poor people and people of colour will be impacted disproportionately by severe heat, flooding and air pollution caused by the world’s changing climate.
