Speaker 1: I grew up on an island called Wikenham. It's an
Speaker 1: island in the Zukuba River and it's a low right
Speaker 1: at about or even below sea level. An important feature
Speaker 1: you will notice on the island is there is what
Speaker 1: we call this sea wall or sea dam that's necessary
Speaker 1: for keeping the ocean out.
Speaker 2: This is doctor Troy Thomas. He's a math professor at
Speaker 2: the University of Guyana. It's easy to tell when you're
Speaker 2: talking to him he's a professor. That quick description of
Speaker 2: his home island you just heard it actually spanned about
Speaker 2: five minutes because he wanted to explain a few things
Speaker 2: along the way, like what sort of island Wiknam is.
Speaker 1: It's not a rock sticking up in the ocean, quite
Speaker 1: like we might have for a lot of Caribbean islands.
Speaker 1: It's an island form from the position where the large
Speaker 1: river brings down all this material from higher areas and
Speaker 1: deposited at the mouth of the river.
Speaker 2: There are more than three hundred islands like these in
Speaker 2: the Essequibo River, which is Guyana's largest, and having to
Speaker 2: keep the ocean out is not a problem that's unique
Speaker 2: to waken them.
Speaker 1: Dana itself, while it's a large land mass, you'll find
Speaker 1: that more than ninety percent of its population reside on
Speaker 1: a narrow strip, the coastal strip, and that coastal strip
Speaker 1: where the population resides is below sea level.
Speaker 2: That's not because Guyanese people have a particular affinity for
Speaker 2: the coast.
Speaker 1: And what happen is that a lot of the lands
Speaker 1: on the coastal area would have been re claimed from
Speaker 1: the sea, I think mainly by the Dutch. That's something
Speaker 1: we inherited from the days of colonialism and slavery and
Speaker 1: all that. You know, the colonies were really designed to
Speaker 1: get labor in or if we can call that atrocity labor,
Speaker 1: and to get whatever is produced out. That is our
Speaker 1: legacy and that's where the population exists today.
Speaker 2: Thanks to rising sea levels caused by climate change, the
Speaker 2: people who live on the coast, ninety percent of the
Speaker 2: country's total population are directly in harm's way.
Speaker 1: So what I've seen within my lifetime is that we've
Speaker 1: been getting more frequent flooding where the sea is actually
Speaker 1: coming in, and this seems to happen a few times
Speaker 1: per year, and that has a knock on effects. If
Speaker 1: you have salt water coming in, then it's going to
Speaker 1: start to affect farming. It's going to affect animals. It's
Speaker 1: not just the say, the inconvenience of flooding. Now and then.
Speaker 2: When Exon Mobile first discovered oil in Guyana in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 2: doctor Troy Thomas focused on the same thing everyone else
Speaker 2: did the contract. At the time, he was head of
Speaker 2: Transparency Institute Guyana, a government watchdog group, so he was
Speaker 2: looking into the role that government corruption might have played
Speaker 2: in the contract. That eventually led him to file a
Speaker 2: lawsuit challenging the permits the government had given to Exon.
Speaker 2: The law in Guyana stipulates that drilling and exploration permits
Speaker 2: are only valid for five years and then you need
Speaker 2: to reapply. But Exon had permits good for more than
Speaker 2: twenty years.
Speaker 1: We actually got those permits reduced to the correct time.
Speaker 2: For Doctor Thomas was represented by Melinda Jenkie and it
Speaker 2: was one of her first attempts to block oil drilling
Speaker 2: in the country. As time went on, doctor Thomas started
Speaker 2: to think about the more long term impacts of the
Speaker 2: offshore drilling project.
Speaker 1: I have small kids. What kind of environment to be
Speaker 1: leaving for them? And if you don't have the healthy environment,
Speaker 1: you don't have the basis for anything that really.
Speaker 2: So he and Melinda Jankie started working together on a
Speaker 2: different sort of case, one that takes the long view.
Speaker 2: That's our story today. I'm Mimi Westerveld and this is
Speaker 2: Light Sweet Cruit. Last up, we talked about how Attorney
Speaker 2: Melinda Jenkie helped shape Guyana's environmental legislation, including its constitutional
Speaker 2: right to a healthy environment. In May twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: Jankie went to court to defend that right on behalf
Speaker 2: of doctor Troy Thomas and Kadad de Fritis. Defradus is
Speaker 2: a young indigenous man from Guyana's South Rubenuni region, which
Speaker 2: borders the Brazilian Amazon. They argue that the greenhouse gas
Speaker 2: pollution created by petroleum drilling in the country violates citizen's
Speaker 2: right to a healthy environment and that the government is
Speaker 2: failing to do what the constitution requires of it to
Speaker 2: protect the environment for the benefit of present and future generations.
Speaker 2: The case was filed against the Guyanese government, not Exonmobile,
Speaker 2: but the judge in the case quickly added the oil company.
Speaker 2: Their first course of action has been to try to
Speaker 2: get any of doctor Thomas's testimony that mentions climate change
Speaker 2: thrown out, even references he's made to Exon Mobil's own
Speaker 2: internal documents about climate change. Their argument is, get ready
Speaker 2: for it. He is not a climate scientist, but there
Speaker 2: are tons of climate reports written for non specialists, including
Speaker 2: most of those internal Exonmobile documents.
Speaker 3: According to ESSU, climate change is a matter of scientific opinion.
Speaker 3: Climate change is not fact. They say that all of
Speaker 3: these things need to be proved by experts, and that
Speaker 3: doctor Thomas is not an expert and therefore cannot say
Speaker 3: that climate change exists, for that extreme weather exists, etc.
Speaker 3: In addition, we have quoted extensively, of course, from esso's
Speaker 3: own documents, including the greenhouse Gas review that came out
Speaker 3: I think round about nineteen eighty nine or sometime around then.
Speaker 3: They say this is hearsay and they want to take
Speaker 3: it out.
Speaker 2: Their own documents are hearsay.
Speaker 3: They say that their own document is hearsay and has
Speaker 3: to be taken out. We have also referred to Darren
Speaker 3: Woods's testimony on Oath to Congress last year in October
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, when he said that Exon Mobile has
Speaker 3: long known about climate change, and they say that this
Speaker 3: also is hearsay and should be taken out.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty three, a new peer reviewed study into
Speaker 2: Exxon was published in the journal Science by doctor Jeffrey
Speaker 2: Soupran and his colleagues at Harvard University. It showed that
Speaker 2: not only did Exon's own scientists suspect that burning fossil
Speaker 2: fuels was changing the climate in potentially dangerous ways, but
Speaker 2: that they were terrifyingly accurate in those predictions. I asked
Speaker 2: Supran what he thinks about some of the arguments Exons
Speaker 2: subsidiary ESO is making in Guyana.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like, what do you say, is pretty fabergostering.
Speaker 4: It does in some ways mirror, for instance, as the
Speaker 4: tobacco industry's gradual shift in public affairs focus, you know,
Speaker 4: from the West to other parts of the world. You know,
Speaker 4: when regulation and campaigns and scientists have studied camping down
Speaker 4: on them in the US and Europe, you know, they
Speaker 4: started to target China and India and South America and
Speaker 4: other demographics with equally if not more heinous or messaging
Speaker 4: campaigns in tactics.
Speaker 5: So clearly it's.
Speaker 4: Astonishing, right and at this point they're just contradicting what
Speaker 4: they knew decades ago. They're contradicting what they say on
Speaker 4: their own website. All I can say is tell me
Speaker 4: where to go testify.
Speaker 2: Jankie is waiting to find out if the judge will
Speaker 2: approve Exxon's request to leave several paragraphs of doctor Thomas's
Speaker 2: testimony out, but Thomas is not overly concerned. He says,
Speaker 2: either way, the argument and the ask are clear.
Speaker 1: It's not petroleum per se. It's not about Exo Mobile
Speaker 1: or some specific oil company. It's that this thing that
Speaker 1: we're doing has a net negative impact on our well being,
Speaker 1: which our constitution seeks to guarantee. And it's nowhere being closed.
Speaker 1: It's nowhere near net zero or anything like that. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: So then for me as a citizen, this is a
Speaker 1: law of my land, and I'm saying to my government,
Speaker 1: look what we have here, Look what you're doing. This
Speaker 1: is operating outside of what the loss is. So you
Speaker 1: can get into economic ventures, but your economic ventures cannot
Speaker 1: have this scale of impact on my health and well being.
Speaker 2: The question of balancing climate concerns with the need for
Speaker 2: economic development is not unique to Guyana. Of course, it's global.
Speaker 2: But there's a particular argument that's been growing louder as
Speaker 2: oil companies FastTrack projects in global South countries. So when
Speaker 2: you deprive people of fossil fuels, you deprive them things
Speaker 2: like clean water. Alex Epstein is the author of a
Speaker 2: book called The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels, which was
Speaker 2: first published in twenty fourteen, but has had a bit
Speaker 2: of a resurgence lately. That clip that you just heard
Speaker 2: was from a talk he was invited to give at
Speaker 2: Google in twenty seventeen. In his book, Epstein argues that
Speaker 2: fossil fuel use correlates with increased life expectancy and improved
Speaker 2: well being. He also argues that fossil fuels are cheap
Speaker 2: and abundant, and that their benefits far outweigh their risks.
Speaker 2: A whole army of pundits and politicians have begun echoing
Speaker 2: this argument in recent years.
Speaker 6: When push comes to shop, it's like, is it the
Speaker 6: environment or poor people? If your idea is that we
Speaker 6: have to limit growth, to say of the planet, If
Speaker 6: we limit growth, poor people starve.
Speaker 2: That's Canadian philosopher and frequent Joe Rogan podcast guest Jordan Peterson.
Speaker 2: Michael Schullenberger made similar arguments in his book Apocalypse never.
Speaker 1: The idea that the Congo would need to limit its
Speaker 1: emissions is offensive.
Speaker 2: Poor country, you should be able to get a hydroelectric gamor
Speaker 2: or a coal plant or a.
Speaker 7: Nuclear plant or whatever because they're poor, full stop.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 8: There's no negotiation, that's it.
Speaker 2: Fossil fuel lobbyists and spokespeople make this argument all the
Speaker 2: time too. Of course, here is Mandy Gunnisakara, a spokesperson
Speaker 2: for the CO two coalition, testifying to Congress during a
Speaker 2: hearing on climate disinformation in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 9: And parts of the developing world, life expectancy today is
Speaker 9: ten to twenty years shorter, and children under five regularly
Speaker 9: succumbed to preventable diseases. The reality is that we could
Speaker 9: change these outcomes by sharing our six successful energy technologies,
Speaker 9: not by prohibiting their use as a result of misaligned
Speaker 9: environmental policies.
Speaker 10: At that point in time, there was published research that
Speaker 10: already showed that increasing energy use is not necessary to
Speaker 10: increase life expectancy.
Speaker 2: That's Julius Steinberger, an ecological economist at the University of
Speaker 2: Lausan and a lead author on the most recent report
Speaker 2: from the Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change. Steinberger has
Speaker 2: studied the intersection of environmental issues, energy choices, policy, and
Speaker 2: economics for decades.
Speaker 10: So, for instance, I published a paper all the way
Speaker 10: back in twenty ten that showed that the amount of
Speaker 10: energy required to reach high life expectancy is going down
Speaker 10: and down and down over time. And so we already
Speaker 10: had a pretty good level of knowledge to show us
Speaker 10: that you need a certain amount of energy in order
Speaker 10: to have some kind of a decent living standard. But
Speaker 10: that amount does not require an insane amount of growth.
Speaker 10: It's not like everybody needs to get to the amount
Speaker 10: of energy that the US is consuming on a per
Speaker 10: capita basis. Far from that. You know, a tenth of
Speaker 10: what the US is consuming on a per capita basis
Speaker 10: would probably do.
Speaker 2: You find In most cases, the folks making these so
Speaker 2: called moral case for fossil fuels don't deny that climate
Speaker 2: change is happening. That's part of what can make their
Speaker 2: arguments compelling. Instead, they argue that it's not as bad
Speaker 2: as it's been made out to be, and that certainly
Speaker 2: it is not worse than energy poverty that's a term
Speaker 2: used to describe lack of access to a reliable energy source.
Speaker 2: They argue energy poverty is a much more urgent crisis
Speaker 2: than climate change. It's one of those arguments that just
Speaker 2: rings true on the surface. What's good for the gander
Speaker 2: is good for the goose, right, And you've got to
Speaker 2: solve more immediate problems like access to energy before you
Speaker 2: can get into the bigger long term issues like climate change.
Speaker 2: Got a walk before you run. It also leans on
Speaker 2: a weakness in the climate movement, which is overwhelmingly white
Speaker 2: and wealthy and therefore very susceptible to arguments like its
Speaker 2: elitist to deny people in Africa the miracle of fossil fuels.
Speaker 10: Just to be clear, the reason that poor people starve
Speaker 10: is a question of distribution. It is because of a
Speaker 10: question of imbalance of power.
Speaker 2: As for the idea that it's elitist to deprive the
Speaker 2: global South of fossil fuels, this.
Speaker 8: Is very important how we manage our emission in this
Speaker 8: decays and so of course, so when I just see
Speaker 8: that many countries are thinking in terms of fossil free, weell,
Speaker 8: I just feel that, you know, those policies are not
Speaker 8: really well informed by signs.
Speaker 2: This is doctor Joyashri Roi, an Indian economist and lead
Speaker 2: author of the chapter in the most recent report from
Speaker 2: the Inner Governmental p Chanel on Climate change that dealt
Speaker 2: with the issue of how to tackle development and decarbonization
Speaker 2: at the same time.
Speaker 8: I see as an economist, you know, I just see that, oh,
Speaker 8: there is going to be there committing for so much
Speaker 8: of stranded asset which will become valueless at very near future.
Speaker 2: What doctor Roy is talking about there is all the
Speaker 2: oil and gas that the world won't want or need
Speaker 2: as it transitions away from fossil fuels. These are referred
Speaker 2: to as stranded assets, and oil companies have been worrying
Speaker 2: about how to deal with them for years now. Their
Speaker 2: current strategy is to drill as fast as they can
Speaker 2: to make as much money as they can before anything
Speaker 2: gets stranded.
Speaker 8: What worries me is that when these decisions are taken
Speaker 8: for the fALS and fueled expansion, I just feel that
Speaker 8: how these countries would manage or aren't they having any
Speaker 8: built in transition policy within that, because when the assets
Speaker 8: becomes stranded and people are going to lose their jobs,
Speaker 8: is there any social protection policy built in so that
Speaker 8: the investments the employees are protected from job losses. That's
Speaker 8: something which worries me.
Speaker 2: Doctor Steinberger also notes that the idea of political compromises
Speaker 2: around fossil fuel expansion is outdated and unscientific.
Speaker 10: So I think that this talking point is a bit
Speaker 10: of a holdover, including in climate circles from days gone
Speaker 10: by when there was more of a carbon budget left
Speaker 10: for anything. Right now, it's pretty much negative. And so
Speaker 10: the idea was, well, the global North countries should do
Speaker 10: the utmost and pay the most to do that, and
Speaker 10: the global South countries should have more leeway and more time.
Speaker 2: That was a big topic of conversation in the nineties
Speaker 2: and into the two thousand so when the Kyoto Protocol
Speaker 2: was being hotly debated. It was the first international climate
Speaker 2: treaty that would have required emissions reductions. At the time,
Speaker 2: it was the fossil fuel industry that fought hardest against
Speaker 2: this idea. They used the fact that emissions reductions commitments
Speaker 2: were not being universally applied to torpedo Kyoto. Here's an
Speaker 2: example of how they talked about it.
Speaker 11: The US is preparing to sign a United Nations treaty
Speaker 11: on the Global climate, but their global agreement isn't global.
Speaker 11: One hundred and thirty two of one hundred and sixty
Speaker 11: six countries are exempt. So while the United States is
Speaker 11: forced to make drastic cuts in energy use, countries like India, China,
Speaker 11: and Mexico are not. The countries responsible for almost half
Speaker 11: the world's emissions.
Speaker 2: Won't have to cut back. Check it out for yourself.
Speaker 11: It's not global and it won't work.
Speaker 2: Now. It's the industry arguing that global South countries should
Speaker 2: be allowed to continue using and developing fossil fuels for longer.
Speaker 10: You know, it's a bit like the tobacco industry. This
Speaker 10: is another sort of tobacco industry trajectory that the fossil
Speaker 10: fuel companies are following. So the Marlborough men never died.
Speaker 10: I mean, of course he did diveline cancer, the real
Speaker 10: malabor men. But he you know, the saying is he
Speaker 10: never died. He just moved to Africa. And the fossil
Speaker 10: fuel companies are kind of doing the same thing. They're
Speaker 10: basically lobbying African governments and really trying to get across
Speaker 10: this message that in order to develop, Africa needs fossil
Speaker 10: fuels because of so much an action, because of the
Speaker 10: great acceleration and emissions, that time is passed. We're no
Speaker 10: longer in a time when that's a reasonable kind of
Speaker 10: statement according to the math of emissions to make any more.
Speaker 10: So that's one issue. The other issue is that it
Speaker 10: is no longer cheaper to build a coal power plant
Speaker 10: than to build a renewable power plant. If you're basically
Speaker 10: encouraging an African country at this point to invest in
Speaker 10: fossil fuel electricity generation, and you're encouraging them to go
Speaker 10: into debt and spend more and more money into the
Speaker 10: future than they would need to for any renewable technology.
Speaker 10: So that's also a very very questionable thing to do
Speaker 10: on any kinds of grounds. The fossil fuel companies are
Speaker 10: really trying to die in the global North, perhaps but
Speaker 10: create ongoing almost colonial dependence in the global South.
Speaker 2: Most media reports that have grappled with this so called
Speaker 2: moral case for fossil fuels have criticized messengers like Alex Epstein,
Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson, and Michael Schellenberger reporting on faults in their
Speaker 2: ideologies or past histories, but economic research has debunked the
Speaker 2: message itself to there's no data to back up the
Speaker 2: claim that we need to increase fossil fuel development to
Speaker 2: solve poverty.
Speaker 5: We can conclusively put in a coffin bang the lid
Speaker 5: chut with big old males saying fossil fuel use does
Speaker 5: not contribute significantly to improvements in life expectancy.
Speaker 2: Research from doctor Steinberger and other economists over the past
Speaker 2: several decades has also found over and over again that
Speaker 2: we do not, in fact rely on fossil fuels for
Speaker 2: improvements to our quality of life either.
Speaker 10: The first article that counters this and counters it in
Speaker 10: a way that is extremely convincing and statistically robust and
Speaker 10: so on, was actually published in nineteen seventy four in Science.
Speaker 10: It's called Energy and Lifestyle. It basically says American quality
Speaker 10: of life would be just as high if we used
Speaker 10: a fraction of the energy we are using, and it
Speaker 10: demonstrates it using a statistical method that is perfectly robust.
Speaker 10: And so this idea that we need more economic activity,
Speaker 10: more resource use, more energy use in order to have
Speaker 10: high quality of life or health or living standards is
Speaker 10: really quite false.
Speaker 2: It's not just economic studies that show fossil fuels don't
Speaker 2: actually correlate with improved life expectancy or increased per capita wealth.
Speaker 2: Does the promise of oil wealth actually pan out for these.
Speaker 12: Countries generally does not pan out for anyone other than
Speaker 12: the elites of those countries. That's what the record shows.
Speaker 2: This is Steve Call, the journalist who wrote the book
Speaker 2: Private Empire about Exonmobile. While working on that book, Call
Speaker 2: spent years traveling to Chad and Equatorial Guinea in Venezuela
Speaker 2: to get a sense of how Exon operated outside the US.
Speaker 12: What happens is that the elites that control the resource
Speaker 12: that produces sudden wealth and sudden opportunity generally don't distribute
Speaker 12: the benefits equitably. Talking about some utopian socialist kind of
Speaker 12: perfect distribution, but even just to reinvest it in a
Speaker 12: sustainable strategy of private enterprise led development just generally doesn't happen.
Speaker 12: And it's not just about the greed of elites.
Speaker 13: It's also.
Speaker 12: About the way sudden wealth distorts the patterns of investment
Speaker 12: in a country. By essentially alleviating the pressure to educate
Speaker 12: a new generation of young scientists and tech entrepreneurs or
Speaker 12: wealth creators, or people who are going to figure out
Speaker 12: how to save and improve agriculture in an era of
Speaker 12: climate change, that all of these urgent problems that emerging
Speaker 12: countries face in the global South. I mean, they get
Speaker 12: displaced by the easy money that comes from a resource boom.
Speaker 2: The example development economists most often give is a comparison
Speaker 2: between South Korea and Nigeria. It's not a perfect example, because,
Speaker 2: of course, there are non economic cultural reasons for the
Speaker 2: way that countries developed to but it's an interesting contrast.
Speaker 12: I mean, in the nineteen fifties, Nigeria and South Korea
Speaker 12: had roughly the same per capita income, and they were
Speaker 12: both very poor countries. South Korea had just emerged from
Speaker 12: a terrible long experience of wargn occupation, and Nigeria was
Speaker 12: blessed with this huge oil bounty, and South Korea chose
Speaker 12: to kind of industrialize on its own without a lot
Speaker 12: of resources, and in a single generation, one country got
Speaker 12: rich and the other one cycled through the resource curse.
Speaker 12: And economists point to that and say, statistically, Nigeria may
Speaker 12: look like it had greater wealth, but in the experience
Speaker 12: of its society, the wealth, you know, ran off shore
Speaker 12: and often kind of displaced opportunities that Nigeria might have
Speaker 12: had to build a more sustainable economy.
Speaker 2: There are examples in North America too. In Canada, Alberta's
Speaker 2: trillions of dollars in oil and gas revenues have benefited
Speaker 2: companies tremendously, but its schools are carrying a fifty million
Speaker 2: dollar budget deficit. In Louisiana, residents pay about ten percent
Speaker 2: higher than the national average for energy, despite having been
Speaker 2: an oil and gas state for decades. So if we've
Speaker 2: seen this happen all over the world where oil makes
Speaker 2: companies and maybe a few key politicis and consultants a
Speaker 2: lot of money but leaves everyone else worse off, then
Speaker 2: why would it be any different in Guyana, especially when
Speaker 2: there's nothing forcing it to be different. Here's Melinda Jenki again.
Speaker 3: It is incredibly stupid for anybody to say, well, because
Speaker 3: you did something bad and broke it, we now have
Speaker 3: a right to do something bad and break it even further.
Speaker 3: It's morally indefensible, of course, but it is also incredibly
Speaker 3: stupid because the climate, the global climate system, is precisely
Speaker 3: what it says, it's a global climate system.
Speaker 2: Jenkie particularly bristles when that argument is disguised as a
Speaker 2: concern for justice by NGOs and pundits who often suggest
Speaker 2: that global South countries should be given more time to
Speaker 2: transition off of fossil fuels.
Speaker 7: Why would you say that when in every single former
Speaker 7: colony people are saying, stop the oil, we don't want it,
Speaker 7: and places like Uganda and Mozambaca, you know, they're putting
Speaker 7: their lives on the line to stop oil. And you
Speaker 7: sit in your comfortable university room and say, oh, well,
Speaker 7: I've decided that I'm in the interesting justices. People shouldn't
Speaker 7: have to get rid of the fossil fuels until twenty fifteen.
Speaker 7: And in order to make this really.
Speaker 3: Fair, the first world should now immutually convert.
Speaker 2: To renewable energy.
Speaker 7: In other words, all the white people go straight for
Speaker 7: renewable energy, dump the stuff on the third world. But
Speaker 7: I'm doing this under the guise of a just transition.
Speaker 2: All the white people go straight for renewable energy, dump
Speaker 2: the fossil fuels on the third world. But I'm doing
Speaker 2: this under the guise of just transition. Janki has a
Speaker 2: very different view on the morality of fossil fuels than
Speaker 2: the many global North white men who pontificate on the subject.
Speaker 2: Guyana currently acts as a carbon sink. It absorbs far
Speaker 2: more CO two than it emits. Janki says that instead
Speaker 2: of embracing fossil fuel development, Guyana could sell carbon sink
Speaker 2: services to the rest of the world and use that
Speaker 2: money to transition to cleaner sources of energy. She worries
Speaker 2: that the country's embrace of oil will destroy its natural
Speaker 2: capital and leave it behind in the global push toward
Speaker 2: energy transition, and that's way more dangerous than missing out
Speaker 2: on fossil fuels.
Speaker 3: I think it's really important that people stop thinking of
Speaker 3: Ghana as a developing country that needs to be helped
Speaker 3: and starts looking at us and saying, Wow, these guys
Speaker 3: are a carbon sink and they are under threat because
Speaker 3: of Exxonmobile and the other oil companies, and we have
Speaker 3: a responsibility to rein in those oil companies because those
Speaker 3: are oil companies coming from the global North.
Speaker 2: For decades, global South countries have been asking for funding
Speaker 2: the rewards environmental stewardship, including carbon storage, and for development
Speaker 2: financing that enables a transition away from fossil fuels. Negotiators
Speaker 2: from the island nation of Vanawatu first brought this idea
Speaker 2: up at a UN Climate negotiation summit in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 2: More than twenty years later, in twenty thirteen, Yabsano was
Speaker 2: representing his home country of the Philippines at another UN
Speaker 2: climate summit when a super typhoon destroyed his hometown.
Speaker 14: We have to ask ourselves, can we ever attain the
Speaker 14: ultimate objective of the convention, which is to prevent dangerous
Speaker 14: anthropogenic interference with a climate system. By failing to meet
Speaker 14: the objective of the convention, we may have rapified our
Speaker 14: own doom. And if we have failed to meet the
Speaker 14: objectives of the Convention, we have to confront the issue
Speaker 14: of loss and damage.
Speaker 2: Sano made an impassioned plea at the meeting. He announced
Speaker 2: he was going to start a hunger strike until rich
Speaker 2: countries agreed to help countries like the Philippines prepare for
Speaker 2: super typhoons and other disasters that will become more severe
Speaker 2: and more frequent with climate change. Global North countries agreed
Speaker 2: to create a fund of one hundred billion dollars per
Speaker 2: year by the year twenty twenty. In the ten years
Speaker 2: that have followed, those countries, including the United States, have
Speaker 2: backtracked and minimized the small commitment they made. Instead of
Speaker 2: focusing on compensation, Global North countries wanted to focus on solidarity,
Speaker 2: sharing technical know how, and writing loans to countries that
Speaker 2: are no longer able to get insurance as disasters become
Speaker 2: more frequent and severe. But global self countries argue that
Speaker 2: not only were they in this mess because of the
Speaker 2: global North's chosen path of development, but also they were
Speaker 2: too broke to deal with it because of colonialism.
Speaker 15: It's that colonialism in the fossil fuel era reconfigured to
Speaker 15: the world economy.
Speaker 2: This is Harpre Paul, a human rights lawyer and an
Speaker 2: expert in UN climate finance negotiations.
Speaker 15: The Indian subcontinents share of the global economy shrank from
Speaker 15: twenty seven to three percent between seventeen hundred and nineteen fifty,
Speaker 15: and it's estimated that at the same time, the UK
Speaker 15: benefited by approximately forty five trillion US dollars from its
Speaker 15: colonial rule of the Indian subcontinent alone. And there are
Speaker 15: similar stories to be told of colonial endeavors in the Americas,
Speaker 15: in the African Continent and beyond.
Speaker 2: In other words, the economic costs of climate change are
Speaker 2: only the latest in a long history of economic extraction
Speaker 2: and transfer of wealth away from global seuth countries and
Speaker 2: indigenous peoples. The Loss and Damage Fund that rich countries
Speaker 2: agreed to create was meant to begin to repay that
Speaker 2: debt with one hundred billion dollars a year, but so
Speaker 2: far contributions have fallen far short of that goal, and
Speaker 2: any money that has come in has mostly been in
Speaker 2: the form of loans that are putting countries further into debt.
Speaker 2: It's been described as a climate debt trap. Here's Prime
Speaker 2: Minister of Barbados, Mia Moli.
Speaker 13: The bottom line is to build back, we have to borrow,
Speaker 13: and when we borrow, it is added to our debt
Speaker 13: to GDP. And when our debt to GDP raises, our
Speaker 13: credit rates and drops, and then we are unable to
Speaker 13: meet the basic fundamental demands that normally development requires us.
Speaker 13: There has to be a recognition of being able to
Speaker 13: isolate that debt which is necessary to build resilience or
Speaker 13: to build back from a climate disaster, as opposed to
Speaker 13: the normal aspects of development.
Speaker 2: Instead, as Harjeet Singh, who's followed these negotiations for several years, explains,
Speaker 2: polluters continue to receive incentives in the form of subsidies
Speaker 2: from their home governments.
Speaker 16: Yeah, getting subsidies to the tune of eleven million dollars
Speaker 16: a minute, eleven million dollars a minute, and yet they're
Speaker 16: not being held accountable and they're using these public resources
Speaker 16: and further causing the problem.
Speaker 2: In that context, it's easy to see why global salth
Speaker 2: Countries with fossil fuel resources like Guyana are turning to
Speaker 2: the unlikeliest of sources, global oil majors to pay for
Speaker 2: climate adaptation. Here's Antonia Juhas, the investigative journalist. We heard
Speaker 2: from last time.
Speaker 17: Ninety percent of the population lives on the coast, So
Speaker 17: ninety percent of the population is expected to live in
Speaker 17: a place that's going to be underwater by twenty thirty.
Speaker 17: You're going to move ninety percent of the population where
Speaker 17: there's no good example anywhere in the world of relocation
Speaker 17: to where, because where in Guyana isn't impacted by climate
Speaker 17: That's the other thing, isn't already being harmed by extreme weather.
Speaker 17: And where's the money going to come from? So if
Speaker 17: the money is supposedly going to come from the oil,
Speaker 17: that means you have to drill the oil, which you're
Speaker 17: going to burn, which is how you further destroy the climate,
Speaker 17: so that you can move the people to get away
Speaker 17: from the results of the climate crisis. You do have
Speaker 17: to think about moving people you don't want them to
Speaker 17: be underwater. But one really good step while you're thinking
Speaker 17: about planning to move people is to stop the thing
Speaker 17: that's forcing you to move them. Guyana very much wants to,
Speaker 17: like many others in the world today, say that it
Speaker 17: can pay to protect its forest by drilling for oil,
Speaker 17: and it's a devil's bargain.
Speaker 2: Jankie's not ready to accept that bargain. She's tireless in
Speaker 2: her commitment to this work, but she's also fighting a
Speaker 2: pretty solitary fight. Most of her countrymen don't want to
Speaker 2: see the Guyanese industry killed off so much as they
Speaker 2: want oil money to actually make their lives better, and
Speaker 2: that includes the country's environmentalists.
Speaker 18: So we have a relationship, as you know, with Exxon
Speaker 18: Foundation and that's a long term grant for four years.
Speaker 18: And yes, the obvious question is, you know, should we
Speaker 18: be taking money from the oil company.
Speaker 2: That's our story next time. Late Sweet Creep is a
Speaker 2: drilled and Damage's co production. Both shows are critical frequency originals.
Speaker 2: Our editor and senior producer is Sarah Ventri. Sound design,
Speaker 2: mixing and mastering by Martin saltz Ostwick. Our fact checker
Speaker 2: is Anna Prujel Mazzini, and our first amendment attorney is
Speaker 2: James Wheaton. The show is reported and written by me
Speaker 2: Amy Westervelt. Additional reporting by Keana Wilberg in Guyana and
Speaker 2: Antonio Juhas in DC. We had additional assistants in Guyana
Speaker 2: from Jamal Thomas, Salvador Deakerre's Wilderness Explorers and the staff
Speaker 2: at Kaiman House. Special thanks to Michael McCrystal for his
Speaker 2: help as well. Her theme song is Bird in the
Speaker 2: Hand by Foreknown. The cover of The Godfather Love theme
Speaker 2: is by Young Ones of Guyana and licensed from BBE Music.
Speaker 2: Additional music by Martin Saltz Ostwick. Our artwork is by
Speaker 2: Matt Fleming. Marketing is handled by the Great Maggie Taylor
Speaker 2: pr and Ter Media outreach by the wonderful folks at
Speaker 2: Tink Media, Lauren Passel, Ariel Nissenblatt and Devin Andrade. The
Speaker 2: show is supported in part by generous grants from the
Speaker 2: Doc Society, File Foundation, the William Collins Kohler Foundation, and
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.