The push to phase out fossil fuels in the short term is “doomed to fail”, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a new report produced by his Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. The report argues that current efforts to arrest changes in the Earth’s climate have never stood a chance.
“People know that the current state of debate over climate change is riven with irrationality,” Blair notes at the start of the report, to add that “voters feel they’re being asked to make financial sacrifices and changes in lifestyle when they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal.”
Further, the former premier and strong supporter of the energy transition throws his weight behind developing nations insistence on getting the chance to develop their own hydrocarbon resources in order to reap the same benefits of industrialization that the developed world enjoyed as it became developed.
“But for that developing world,” Blair wrote, “there is an equal resentment when they’re told the investment is not available for the energy necessary for their development because it is not “green”. They believe, correctly, that they have a right to develop and that those who have already developed using fossil fuels do not have the right to inhibit them from whatever is the most effective way of developing.”
This has been a major point of contention among climate change advocates from different parts of the world. Lending institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF have insisted on tying their lending to commitments from borrowers to commit to shunning oil and gas, against which many developing nation leaders have rebelled on the ground that the developed world wouldn’t be where it is today were it not for oil and gas, and it was hypocritical to deprive the developing world of the chance to enjoy the opportunities they open.
The report as a whole focuses on promoting carbon capture, small modular nuclear reactors, and dialing down the alarmism when discussing climate change and the energy transition.
By Irina Slav for Oilprice.com
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