Speaker 1: In twenty twenty three, Guyana's vice president, Baratcha Gayo was
Speaker 1: asked to speak at the oil and gas industry's biggest
Speaker 1: annual conference, Cambridge Energy Research Associates Executive Conference. It's put
Speaker 1: on by S and P Global and everyone calls it
Speaker 1: Sarah week at.
Speaker 2: It's my understanding, this is the fastest offshore oil development
Speaker 2: in history.
Speaker 3: How did it happen?
Speaker 2: Well, we support that vision, a fast baced development of
Speaker 2: the resources offshore, particularly in the context of net zero.
Speaker 2: We believe it's a wide strategy to do as much
Speaker 2: exploration as possible, now prove the resources, and then have
Speaker 2: them removed and transfer into financial assets that in the
Speaker 2: future can serve to transform the country.
Speaker 1: Particularly in the context of net zero. Let's get fat
Speaker 1: oil out and sold as quickly as possible. Net zero
Speaker 1: was meant to be a goal for companies and governments
Speaker 1: to work towards in emissions reduction target, not an incentive
Speaker 1: too fast track oil and gas production. But Jagdeo is
Speaker 1: putting into plane words there what the fossil fuel industry's
Speaker 1: approach to net zero has been all along, despite a
Speaker 1: whole lot of slickly produced ads to the contrary get
Speaker 1: as much oil out of the ground and sold before
Speaker 1: it's too late.
Speaker 4: Ghana is emblematic of what we are seeing in countries
Speaker 4: around the world. It's emblematic this broader wave of extractive
Speaker 4: colonialism that is playing out in frontier countries across the
Speaker 4: global South.
Speaker 1: Carol Muffett, President and CEO of the Center for International
Speaker 1: Environmental Law, has worked with Melinda Jinki, the attorney we
Speaker 1: heard from earlier this season.
Speaker 4: Countries that don't have a history or any significant history
Speaker 4: of oil and gas development or oil and gas dependence
Speaker 4: are being pushed into that dependence.
Speaker 1: That push tends to include swift backlash to any opposition.
Speaker 4: When people on the ground speak out against that development,
Speaker 4: when they ask difficult questions, when they ask why is
Speaker 4: this investment happening, what are the risks? What is really
Speaker 4: in this for the people of our country. They come
Speaker 4: under profound political pressure, they come under social and economic
Speaker 4: pressure you and they are criminalized and intimidated.
Speaker 5: Sometimes the pressure is just in the form of financial
Speaker 5: incentives or brigging the system in a particular direction.
Speaker 4: It's important to right noize God is a very small country,
Speaker 4: and that means that the universe of people with expertise
Speaker 4: in any given domain is also going to be comparatively small.
Speaker 4: I think that means that for an actor like Exam,
Speaker 4: it is really surprisingly easy and probably highly cost effective
Speaker 4: to identify those people and to take them of the
Speaker 4: equation one way or now, whether it's by offering them
Speaker 4: grants and donations, whether it's offering them jobs.
Speaker 1: That's true of journalists as well. When Keanu Wilberg first
Speaker 1: started covering the oil and gas beat for Kyter News,
Speaker 1: she had five colleagues working on the desk with her.
Speaker 1: Now it's just her. The others were all hired away
Speaker 1: by the government or the oil companies.
Speaker 6: While company's typical incentive is that you get a car,
Speaker 6: and almost every young journalist sees that as a very
Speaker 6: good incentive to.
Speaker 7: Switch. And I think also there's.
Speaker 6: This sort of esteem these very sexy titles corporate public
Speaker 6: and governance affairs, liaison for exemobile or snock or whats not.
Speaker 6: There's an appeal to these titles. If I did not
Speaker 6: see the need for staying and serving in my capacity,
Speaker 6: I would have been gone to because I was offered
Speaker 6: multiple times.
Speaker 5: So far in Guyana, the oil companies are sponsoring cricket
Speaker 5: making big donations to all of the environmental organizations that
Speaker 5: might have been opposed to oil, and hiring journalists away
Speaker 5: from newsrooms. Sometimes shutting down opposition is as easy as
Speaker 5: just offering people a higher salary, a big donation, or
Speaker 5: a free car. The critics who remain have to be
Speaker 5: willing to withstand negative political and social pressure. Here's Vice
Speaker 5: President Jagdeo.
Speaker 2: Again, the industry had some negatives at home because of
Speaker 2: what is taking place globally, this push the net zero.
Speaker 2: We have a lot of NGOs that have descended on
Speaker 2: the country, some saying don't leave the oil in the ground.
Speaker 2: It's flawed. With ten FPSOs operating offshore, we will be
Speaker 2: carbon negative. We're already carbon negative. Where the world is
Speaker 2: hoping to get to in twenty fifty, we're already there.
Speaker 2: Our force is bigger than England and Scotland combine, so
Speaker 2: it's a huge sink and they're for we have a
Speaker 2: balanced strategy to develop the oil and gas in the street.
Speaker 1: This is something Jagdeo has been saying a lot lately
Speaker 1: that even with ten FPSOs offshore, Guyana would still be
Speaker 1: a carbon sink. It sounds like he's just making up
Speaker 1: that ten pulling it out of the air, but it's
Speaker 1: actually a reference to something specific. In twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: the government asked Exxon to include a new metric in
Speaker 1: its environmental impact assessment for its latest drilling site. They
Speaker 1: wanted the company to lay out what the accumulative impact
Speaker 1: of all of its existing and proposed offshore activities would
Speaker 1: be on the country's greenhouse gas emissions. It concluded that
Speaker 1: even taking all of Exxon's biggest plans into account, the
Speaker 1: country could have ten FPSOs offshore and still remain a
Speaker 1: carbon sink. But and this is a really big but,
Speaker 1: it calculated only the emissions generated by extraction and refinement,
Speaker 1: not the emissions that come from the actual use of
Speaker 1: that oil and gas. To put that in perspective, the
Speaker 1: emissions associated with fossil fuels are about ninety percent how
Speaker 1: you use them burning oil and gas, and about ten
Speaker 1: percent how you got them to offset those operational emissions.
Speaker 1: One of Axon's partners in the offshore oil project, Has
Speaker 1: Corporation has made a big commitment.
Speaker 3: The government of Guyana on Friday signed the first sale
Speaker 3: agreement of its carbon credits to HASS cooperation at a
Speaker 3: tune of US seven hundred and fifty The sale agreement,
Speaker 3: which was signed on Friday State House, will support Guyana's
Speaker 3: efforts to protect the country's vast forests and provide capitals
Speaker 3: to improve the lives of Guyana's citizens.
Speaker 5: With this sale, announced last December, Guyana became the first
Speaker 5: country to receive and sell carbon credits under a new
Speaker 5: UN program designed to protect forests called Trees. Trees is
Speaker 5: part of the UN's Red Project, which stands for reducing
Speaker 5: emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. It allows polluting companies
Speaker 5: and governments to pay other groups and governments to offset
Speaker 5: their carbon emissions. So remaining a carbon sinc isn't just
Speaker 5: about greenwashing or promotion in Guyana. There's actual monetary value
Speaker 5: to it too.
Speaker 8: Carbon offsets basically just open up this window for emissions
Speaker 8: to actually get worse, because you can claim to have
Speaker 8: neutralized your greenhouse gas impact without actually having done so.
Speaker 1: Katain Joshi is a writer and energy analyst and something
Speaker 1: of an expert on carbon credits and carbon offsets. It's
Speaker 1: hard to see how Guyana's carbon credits will pencil out
Speaker 1: on the emissions front, especially because around the same time
Speaker 1: that this program was announced. The government made another big announcement.
Speaker 2: We've put an auction fourteen properties offshore. You can bid
Speaker 2: on any of them. About the maximum that would be allocated,
Speaker 2: would be per successful better.
Speaker 7: The reason is.
Speaker 2: That we want multiple companies there in Guyana exploring.
Speaker 5: If you are constantly being criticized about one contract, sometimes
Speaker 5: the best strategy is to throw fourteen new contracts in
Speaker 5: the mix. Several oil majors paid the twenty five thousand
Speaker 5: dollars fee required to enter the auction, that includes Chevron,
Speaker 5: Shell and Yeah Exxon, but the auction has now been
Speaker 5: postponed for several months, so we won't know until next
Speaker 5: year whether any new companies will be drilling offshore. Which
Speaker 5: brings us back to the question we've been grappling with
Speaker 5: all season long. How do we tackle energy poverty and
Speaker 5: the climate crisis at the same time when there's no
Speaker 5: real money in either for oil companies.
Speaker 1: For all they talk about it, and oil.
Speaker 5: Companies do talk a lot about getting energy to poor people.
Speaker 5: It's like their sole purpose in life these days. The
Speaker 5: reality is that in most places where they're drilling for
Speaker 5: oil and gas, it's being exported for profit, not used
Speaker 5: to provide sustainable reliable energy for locals. Nigeria, a Global
Speaker 5: South country that's been in the oil business since the fifties,
Speaker 5: for example, is currently last in the world for energy access.
Speaker 5: The simplest answer, but not the one that anyone in
Speaker 5: the global North seems to like very much, is to
Speaker 5: reduce energy demand in the global North to allow for
Speaker 5: an increase in demand in the global South. But that
Speaker 5: increase can't be to the excessive levels of say American
Speaker 5: consumers today, who are wildly wasteful with energy. But getting
Speaker 5: everyone to it, doctor Narasima Rau calls a decent living
Speaker 5: level of energy would change the math considerably for fossil
Speaker 5: fuel developments in places like Guyana. If you're a global
Speaker 5: oil major and your product is oil and gas, you'd
Speaker 5: prefer to just see demand a skyrocket everywhere, and that's
Speaker 5: where things like carbon credits and carbon offsets can be
Speaker 5: quite handy. They let people pretend they're reducing emissions, so
Speaker 5: the incentive to reduce consumption disappears entirely. But while they
Speaker 5: sound okay on paper, as does Jagdeo's creative math on
Speaker 5: how Guyana can become a top oil producer and remain
Speaker 5: a carbon sink, At the same time, none of it
Speaker 5: changes how the atmosphere actually works, reducing the impact of
Speaker 5: Guyana's oil industry on the global climate system. What actually
Speaker 5: requires shutting down the industry elsewhere like Texas for example.
Speaker 5: That's our story today. I'm Iman Westerbilt and this is
Speaker 5: the last episode of our special Drilled and Damages co
Speaker 5: Production Light Sweet Crude.
Speaker 1: Stay with us.
Speaker 9: I'm originally from Guyana. I as a teenager, I represented
Speaker 9: Guyana at Cricket. I was in the first class of
Speaker 9: engineers graduating from the University of Guyana, and then I migrated.
Speaker 9: We went to school in the United States and worked
Speaker 9: for for amac at time as a senior patroller engineer.
Speaker 9: I'm a Colledsta British but Trillium.
Speaker 1: Vincent Adams went from his job as a petroleum engineer
Speaker 1: at Amaco to the United States Department of Energy, where
Speaker 1: he worked for thirty years.
Speaker 9: I ended up at the highest level of the United
Speaker 9: States government as a senior executive of the US government
Speaker 9: within the US Department of Energy.
Speaker 1: And then he fully intended to retire.
Speaker 9: My plan was to do my my voluntary service that
Speaker 9: I was doing for Diana, right you know, I was
Speaker 9: going to spend more time now in Diana that I
Speaker 9: have the time to do that type of stuff. But
Speaker 9: then a lot of my friends, you know, ministers and
Speaker 9: the president you know, said please could you? So I said, okay.
Speaker 9: The President himself at to obill how long? I said,
Speaker 9: see if I you know, I've been planning for this
Speaker 9: retirement for a long time. I've been counting the days.
Speaker 9: Then I said, okay, I'll give you three years because
Speaker 9: I figured by three years i'll set up all the
Speaker 9: institutional systems and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: As the previous president, David Granger. And the job is
Speaker 1: a big one, updating Guyana's Environmental Protection Agency and starting
Speaker 1: a petroleum oversay program there because after decades of looking,
Speaker 1: the country had finally found oil. Unlike Melinda Jenki or
Speaker 1: Troy Thomas, Adams was not overly concerned about the climate
Speaker 1: implications of this discovery or with the industry moving quickly.
Speaker 1: In fact, he sees it as necessary.
Speaker 9: We have an opportunity to get rich, and we have
Speaker 9: an envelope, a small envelope, to produce as much as
Speaker 9: we get because the entire world is moving towards renewables.
Speaker 5: But that doesn't mean he fully supports Exon's expansion into Guyana.
Speaker 9: Exxon is doing it in a way that is very risky,
Speaker 9: which is an absolute no no.
Speaker 1: Adams has also said all along that Guyana should never
Speaker 1: have had a production sharing agreement that complicate contract we
Speaker 1: talked about early this season, and in both cases his
Speaker 1: reasoning is the same.
Speaker 9: We absolutely do not have We do not have the
Speaker 9: capacity to do that.
Speaker 1: When he was put in charge of Guyana's EPA, Adams
Speaker 1: says the office didn't even have a filing system, let
Speaker 1: alone a means to oversee major offshore oil production. By
Speaker 1: collecting fees that had been due to the agency for years,
Speaker 1: he was able to put some of those systems in place,
Speaker 1: hire more people, and even buy the agency a few
Speaker 1: vehicles to allow EPA officials to check up on permitted projects.
Speaker 1: His recommendation for the floating offshore production rigs was that
Speaker 1: there should be an EPA official on those rigs overseeing operations. Similarly,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the contract, he says for a
Speaker 1: country to make a production sharing agreement work, they need
Speaker 1: to have the capacity to be regularly auditing costs. Diana
Speaker 1: doesn't have either the oversight or the accounting capacity, so
Speaker 1: Adam's recommended a more straightforward contract.
Speaker 9: We should go for nothing more than just straight taxes
Speaker 9: and royalty contract or what is called a concession type contract.
Speaker 9: Give it a concession type contract, you know. Just to
Speaker 9: put it very simply, all it is, if you produce
Speaker 9: one hundred buyers of oil. I let's say I decide
Speaker 9: to be the government decided to take of that quantity.
Speaker 9: If you produce one hundred buyers of oil, I take
Speaker 9: torture buyers and you take you get seventy. I don't
Speaker 9: have to worry about cost or anything. All I would
Speaker 9: need is some high school kid who can count barriers
Speaker 9: as they're being produced. All I would need is a
Speaker 9: mechanic or a good electrician to make sure that that
Speaker 9: oil meter that measures the art it's running properly. I
Speaker 9: don't need all these accountants and everybody. Now, of course,
Speaker 9: that's putting it very very simplest giving. But that's the
Speaker 9: difference in the magnitude of the oversight that you've got
Speaker 9: to work.
Speaker 5: With these production sharing agreements or PSAs they're not going away.
Speaker 5: As it prepares to auction off more offshore drilling blocks
Speaker 5: to global companies, Guyana has drafted a new and improved PSA.
Speaker 5: Government officials claim it solves all the problems people had
Speaker 5: with the Exxon contract, but Adam says the country is
Speaker 5: no better equipped today to manage these complex contracts than
Speaker 5: it was seven years ago.
Speaker 9: Is there our companies by the way that the introduced
Speaker 9: this PSA nonsense because it solves them, especially like Sandy,
Speaker 9: know that a PSA is a nightmare for a country
Speaker 9: such as Guyana to verified cause.
Speaker 1: Adam says, the oil auction is a distraction, an attempt
Speaker 1: to shift the public's attention away from any problems with
Speaker 1: Exon and make it seem like the government is fast
Speaker 1: tracking oil profits.
Speaker 9: It's the biggest distraction that I've ever seen, which is
Speaker 9: the motusoprande. This is right in the middle of jag
Speaker 9: Diel's playbook. It's a distraction from this renegotiation state. So
Speaker 9: now everybody are going to start talking about this new
Speaker 9: model contract mechanism, Okay, And that's exactly where everybody are
Speaker 9: right now. And even if you go ahead and look
Speaker 9: at it, it's grossly it's to protect Exon.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 9: I'm telling you, Exon is calling all of the shots
Speaker 9: and running this country.
Speaker 5: Exon, Chevron and shell all requested big packets for the auction,
Speaker 5: and the government will announce next year which, if any,
Speaker 5: have decided to move forward with offshore drilling projects outside
Speaker 5: of the Starbuck Plan where Exon has staked its claim.
Speaker 5: So far, even if there are no takers, Excels drilling
Speaker 5: alone is set to make Guyana the world's largest oil
Speaker 5: producer per capita in the world by twenty thirty five.
Speaker 5: The country is on track to become a major gas
Speaker 5: producer now as well, with a new pipeline and gas
Speaker 5: plant set to begin construction this year.
Speaker 9: Ye're producing six hundred million cubic feet of gas a
Speaker 9: d Okay, you know how much we're going to be
Speaker 9: using in that by.
Speaker 1: Fifty Neither the government nor Exon has announced yet what
Speaker 1: the plan is for excess gas, but it could easily
Speaker 1: be sold on the global market, which brings us back
Speaker 1: to that balancing act that doctor Narasima Rau mentioned a
Speaker 1: couple of episodes ago. Is there a way to let
Speaker 1: Guyana build as big an oil and gas industry as
Speaker 1: it wants without exacerbating the global climate crisis. So far,
Speaker 1: the answer to that question from the government of Guyana
Speaker 1: is first that it's only responsible for its own emissions,
Speaker 1: not for those associated with the oil and gas produced there,
Speaker 1: which is exactly how everyone else in the world calculates emissions.
Speaker 1: The United States, for example, likes to point out how
Speaker 1: our emissions have been on the decline in recent decades.
Speaker 1: So does the UK, so does the European Union. The
Speaker 1: oil and gas produced by American, British and European companies
Speaker 1: all over the world that doesn't count. Guyana's leaders have
Speaker 1: also highlighted the country's leadership in forest conservation and consequently
Speaker 1: the service that it provides to the world as a
Speaker 1: carbon sink. And here again, yes, that does give it
Speaker 1: a leg up on most other oil producing countries when
Speaker 1: it comes to climate action. What then, is the answer,
Speaker 1: Because what we've described in Guyana throughout this season is
Speaker 1: not just happening there. Guyana's neighbors are also getting into
Speaker 1: the oil business in a big way. Right next door
Speaker 1: in Surinam, for example, Shell and Total Energies are regularly
Speaker 1: announcing big new offshore discoveries. Barbados were Prime Minister Mia
Speaker 1: Motley has become a global champion for climate action. It
Speaker 1: had its own offshore auction right around the same time
Speaker 1: as Guyana's In Africa, new fossil fuel industries are springing
Speaker 1: up in Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, Namibia and more, and the
Speaker 1: global North is ramping up too. The so called climate
Speaker 1: President Joe Biden in the United States has approved multiple
Speaker 1: large scale drilling projects longtime industry leaders Katar, Saudi Arabia,
Speaker 1: the United Arab Immirates, and Norway. They're all drilling as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. So is Brazil, which also supposedly just
Speaker 1: elected a climate friendly president. It's a global game of
Speaker 1: musical chairs where the company or the country left with
Speaker 1: the least untapped oil reserves wins and the rest of
Speaker 1: us lose in the biggest way possible. Unless unless the
Speaker 1: fever dream that capitalism built, this idea that more is
Speaker 1: always better, that the biggest consumers are the world's winners,
Speaker 1: gets tossed on its head. Even if we managed to
Speaker 1: do what a lot of climate advocates want and electrify everything,
Speaker 1: we must at some point grapple with the very simple
Speaker 1: fact that a lot of us on this planet consume
Speaker 1: a lot more than we need to.
Speaker 10: When I was first in Chile researching the social and
Speaker 10: environmental impacts of lithium mining there, and Chile is the
Speaker 10: world's number two producer of lithium, and also some of
Speaker 10: the kind of contentious politics around extraction of this mineral.
Speaker 10: I started to kind of think, you know, would it
Speaker 10: matter in terms of how much lithium was needed, how
Speaker 10: the sort of global energy transition is designed, or how
Speaker 10: the US energy transition is designed right THEA.
Speaker 1: Rio Francos is an associate professor of political science at
Speaker 1: Providence College and a member of the Climate and Community Project.
Speaker 1: Her research focuses on the impact of extractive economies and
Speaker 1: how we might rethink them, and she's been concerned for
Speaker 1: a while about the fact that if we keep everything
Speaker 1: else the same and switch to renewables tomorrow, we're pretty
Speaker 1: likely to end up with some major environmental crises on
Speaker 1: our hands. The land use and mining impacts of electrification
Speaker 1: are often cynically weaponized by those who would prefer to
Speaker 1: see us hooked on fossil fuels forever, but there's substance
Speaker 1: to them too, which got Rio Franco's thinking. Are we
Speaker 1: destined to replace one environmental problem with another? Or could
Speaker 1: we do things differently? And how differently would we need
Speaker 1: to do them to really change things.
Speaker 10: Are there futures in which less lithium and less of
Speaker 10: these other transition minerals are required than some of the
Speaker 10: most alarming kind of reports and predictions I began to
Speaker 10: see from the International Energy Agency and then the World
Speaker 10: Bank and multiple other forecasting agencies which were and remain
Speaker 10: pretty alarming in terms of how much mining they are
Speaker 10: predicting will occur or be demanded.
Speaker 1: Rio Francos recently looked at this question in great detail
Speaker 1: around transportation and whether there are decisions we could make
Speaker 1: today that would make the electrification of transportation more sustainable.
Speaker 10: So I was thinking a lot about an urgent and
Speaker 10: rapid and just energy transition in the US, but I
Speaker 10: was kind of thinking about both ends of the supply
Speaker 10: chain at once, Like here I am in Chile the
Speaker 10: to come at desert, seeing these mining related harms, and
Speaker 10: then there I go in the US kind of advocating
Speaker 10: for a rapid transition, like how do I align these
Speaker 10: two goals and how and is there a way to
Speaker 10: kind of have a less extractive energy transition, And the
Speaker 10: answer was that research didn't exist, at least not for
Speaker 10: the US transportation sector. I saw forecast after forecast that
Speaker 10: assumed basically a binary of the future. Right, Either we
Speaker 10: stay with the fossil fuel status quo and the existential
Speaker 10: crisis that that is causing for the planet and all
Speaker 10: of its people, or we transition to an electrified, renewably
Speaker 10: powered future. But that doesn't really change anything about how
Speaker 10: these sectors or economic activities are organized.
Speaker 1: There was a powerlessness to it all, a global giving
Speaker 1: up on ever doing things differently. Rio Franco's thought, surely
Speaker 1: this is not all actually set in stone.
Speaker 10: It's totally understandable to me that, you know, the vast
Speaker 10: majority of Americans use cars to get around because they
Speaker 10: live in contexts, even some urban contexts, but especially suburban
Speaker 10: and obviously especially rural context where there really is no
Speaker 10: other option. And so I neither blame individuals for those choices.
Speaker 10: But nor do I see our current transportation system as
Speaker 10: a paragon of freedom, right, I mean, especially when we
Speaker 10: consider how financially burdensome cars are for peign working class people.
Speaker 10: We're at a critical juncture in terms of specifically how
Speaker 10: that renewable energy transition is designed, who the winners and
Speaker 10: losers are, what decisions made around certain trade offs. Right
Speaker 10: in the thort of policy and resource decisions. So I'm
Speaker 10: worried that this moment, which could could if we think
Speaker 10: about it, critically, organize around it, and advocate for it,
Speaker 10: maybe put us on a slightly less car dependent path.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, none of it is set in stone. It's
Speaker 1: absolutely possible to shift energy demand and behavior with policies
Speaker 1: that support those shifts.
Speaker 10: But if we just take that snapshot year of twenty
Speaker 10: fifty and we look at lithium demand, our worst case
Speaker 10: scenario to our best case scenario is in ninety two
Speaker 10: percent difference. So if we just take the year twenty fifty,
Speaker 10: this future that we're looking at as er emission transportation sector,
Speaker 10: our worst case scenario is we maintain current levels of
Speaker 10: car dependency, car usage, Cars have this outsize kind of
Speaker 10: share of overall transportation modes, Vehicle ownership rates remain like
Speaker 10: the same as they are now, and we also get
Speaker 10: to continue on the trend of bigger and bigger batteries
Speaker 10: right that are getting more and more out of step
Speaker 10: with global averages.
Speaker 8: That's our worst case scenario.
Speaker 10: Things get kind of actually worse but electrified, and our
Speaker 10: best case scenario is we bring battery sizes back to
Speaker 10: sort of reasonable size. We expand how many folks are
Speaker 10: using buses or cycling. We densify our suburbs a bit,
Speaker 10: we have maximum levels of recycling and recovery that are
Speaker 10: technically feasible. That second future is ninety two percent less
Speaker 10: lithium than the first future. And I know that the
Speaker 10: ambitious future is probably beyond the realm.
Speaker 1: Of what feels ploki possible right now.
Speaker 10: And I understand that. You know, I am not like
Speaker 10: living in the clouds. I'm aware of that, but I
Speaker 10: think that having that option on the table, because in
Speaker 10: that most ambitious future, we totally limited emissions and everyone.
Speaker 1: Has a way to get around.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: But even in the least ambitious, most politically feasible future
Speaker 1: that Rio Francos and her colleagues imagined and modeled, some
Speaker 1: pretty simple decisions made a big difference.
Speaker 10: Another finding that I really like, just because it addresses
Speaker 10: folks who are understandingly concerned, all like, there is no
Speaker 10: America without car detent. You know, we can't move away
Speaker 10: from being heard a pentent.
Speaker 8: We just have to suck it up.
Speaker 10: And I say to those people, we could stay in
Speaker 10: scenario one, which is the one where we keep levels
Speaker 10: of car usage and vehicle ownership rates, and we don't
Speaker 10: identify anything and we want to sprawl. We can stay
Speaker 10: sorinary one and we can just bring our batteries to
Speaker 10: like the right size or not this gargantuan size, and
Speaker 10: in twenty fifty we could use forty two percent less
Speaker 10: lithium with the same amount of cars and the same
Speaker 10: amount of car usage and vehicle ownership if we just
Speaker 10: make the batteries a more normal size, like rather than
Speaker 10: the super size.
Speaker 1: It's not a smart car.
Speaker 10: You know, those tiny European cars. You know, I'm not
Speaker 10: even going there because again I know my audience, I
Speaker 10: know my limits of what I can suggest.
Speaker 11: So no, we're talking.
Speaker 10: About the Nissan Leaf, or we're talking about what people
Speaker 10: drive in Berlin or whatever.
Speaker 1: Narasimhrau and joyshri Rue both mentioned similarly small shifts with
Speaker 1: big payoffs.
Speaker 11: New homes in the US are significantly larger than new
Speaker 11: homes in some of the richest countries in Europe, and
Speaker 11: that's something that is not something one can regulate.
Speaker 12: In cold and one countries, sometimes we make it so
Speaker 12: hot and so cold in the rooms that it becomes
Speaker 12: not comfortable anymore. The default setting can be done in
Speaker 12: such a way so that overheating and overcooling can be reduced,
Speaker 12: and that can have a very high health implication, And
Speaker 12: we could see that without reducing employment, without reducing human
Speaker 12: well being, actually forty to seventy percent of twenty to
Speaker 12: fifty level of projected emission can be reduced by working
Speaker 12: on the demand side.
Speaker 11: I think we need to have incentives policy incentives for
Speaker 11: healthier diets that are more environmentally friendly.
Speaker 7: We do need policy that helps food planners, choice architects,
Speaker 7: city planners, investors to plan complexities with walking, sightly lanes,
Speaker 7: public transit systems to help people to make better choices
Speaker 7: for their own health and environment.
Speaker 1: Eating slightly less meat, living in more walkable cities, and
Speaker 1: in slightly smaller homes. None of these are actually the
Speaker 1: massive sacrifices that they're often made out to be. In fact,
Speaker 1: these are all things that tend to cost individuals less
Speaker 1: money while also improving health and quality of life. But
Speaker 1: it's important to understand that simply shifting demand or consumer
Speaker 1: behavior will not automatically curb fossil fuel production. We know
Speaker 1: this from history time and time again. Absent policies that
Speaker 1: manage an energy transition, fossil fuel companies will simply find
Speaker 1: new markets. The plastic boom is a great example. When
Speaker 1: demand for fossil fuels in transportation and residential energy decreased,
Speaker 1: the industry focused its attention on ramping up petrochemicals as
Speaker 1: a revenue stream that could make up the difference. It's
Speaker 1: happening with the fossil fuel push in the Global South
Speaker 1: right now too. The headline here is that there is
Speaker 1: a path forward, There is time to do something. There
Speaker 1: is a way to address global poverty and global warming
Speaker 1: at the same time. But it requires action, and it
Speaker 1: requires choices in the global North that might be briefly,
Speaker 1: briefly a little bit painful or a tiny bit unpopular. Historically,
Speaker 1: our politicians have not excelled at embracing short term pain
Speaker 1: for long term gain. But that doesn't mean they cannot
Speaker 1: or will not behave differently, just that they're unlikely to
Speaker 1: unless pushed. In the meantime, Global South countries like Guyana
Speaker 1: are going to continue to fund both development and climate
Speaker 1: adaptation anyway they can, even if it means selling oil
Speaker 1: to pay for sea walls.
Speaker 9: Address the.
Speaker 3: Immediately.
Speaker 5: That is it for this episode and this season. Thank
Speaker 5: you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: Don't forget to check out our discussion guide for the season,
Speaker 5: debunking the moral case for fossil fuels. There's a link
Speaker 5: to it in the show notes. Also, don't forget to
Speaker 5: subscribe to our newsletter for weekly analysis and our list
Speaker 5: of the five climate must reads each week. It never
Speaker 5: takes more than ten minutes to read, and it will
Speaker 5: keep you up to date on climate coverage. Light Sweet
Speaker 5: Crude is a co production of Drilled and Damages, both
Speaker 5: Critical Frequency original shows.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer and editor.
Speaker 5: Is Sarah Ventry. Sound design and mixing by Martin Saltz Ostwick,
Speaker 5: who also composed some original music.
Speaker 1: For the season. The song Beiji Boggi is written and
Speaker 1: recorded by Bill Rogers and licensed from the BBC Music Library.
Speaker 1: Long nam Tera Dishmann is performed by Joyce or Milla
Speaker 1: Harris in Guyana. The song Liquidator is a cover of
Speaker 1: a Harry J Allstars song performed by the Young Ones
Speaker 1: of Guyana, licensed by b Ame Music.
Speaker 5: Our fact checker is Anna Poujol Mazzini. Our first amendment
Speaker 5: attorney is James Wheaton. Our artwork is by Matthew Fleming.
Speaker 5: Graphic design for the discussion guide was done by E. J.
Speaker 5: Baker at Maybe Ventures. Marketing and PR were handled by
Speaker 5: Maggie Taylor and Tink Media. Huge thanks to Keana Wilberg,
Speaker 5: our reporter in Georgetown, for her help and amazing work,
Speaker 5: and to Antonio Juhas for her reporting and insight. Thanks
Speaker 5: also to all of the people in Guyana who opened
Speaker 5: their homes and offices to us and were so generous
Speaker 5: with their time, especially Annette Our June, Dane Gobin, Glen Law,
Speaker 5: and Melinda Jenkie. And thanks to Michael McCrystal, Salvador de Karrez,
Speaker 5: and Jamal Thomas for helping us navigate Guyana, and to
Speaker 5: Chef Delvin Adams for showing us Georgetown's incredible markets and
Speaker 5: his charming backyard cafe. This show is me possible in
Speaker 5: part by generous grants from the Dock Society's Climate Storytelling Lab,
Speaker 5: the William Collins Kohler Foundation, the File Foundation, and you
Speaker 5: are listeners. We appreciate the support and can't wait to
Speaker 5: bring you another season soon. In the meantime, don't worry,
Speaker 5: We'll still be bringing you weekly episodes on all things
Speaker 5: climate accountability, Thanks again and we'll see you soon.