The International Energy Agency in 2021 had an unambiguous message: developing new fossil fuel resources is incompatible with restricting global heating to below 1.5C, a threshold beyond which the most disastrous climate impacts lie. Yet the oil and gas industry isn’t listening. Last year it committed half a trillion dollars for new capital expenditure on future drilling and extraction, while making outrageous profits of $4tn. Business as usual will destroy life as we know it.
Energy is fundamental for development and meeting basic needs. But producing it from coal, oil and gas is simultaneously the cause of the climate emergency. Clearly the issues of climate, energy and development must be addressed in an interconnected way. This is very difficult against a post-Covid backdrop when poor nations have record levels of debt. In the wake of the Ukraine invasion, rising interest rates have caused the dollar to surge – raising the cost of meeting loan repayments which are often denominated in the US currency. African nations spend up to five times their health budgets on debt obligations.
