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“This is fossil capital, stupid!”


To support fossil fuel companies, the largest banks continue to increase their investments in them, even in covid 2020 (Rainforest Action Network, 2021).

One might think that fossil fuels have become unextractable Such support will be blocked in the future, but this ignores the promise of huge profits before the transition begins.

self-service

Fossil capital and agribusiness are thus largely responsible for causing climate change. Oil companies like ExxonMobil and Shell knew this for decades (as early as 1957 – Grasso, 2022, p. 25), but they lied and cheated all along, taking advantage of their vast wealth and influence to avoid being asked to admit this responsibility.

Since the Paris agreement to limit global warming to two degrees was signed in 2016, fossil fuel companies have spent billions trying to undermine it (influence diagram2019).

Sadly, they hit it big in the cause. In recent years, they have shifted tactics from outright climate skepticism and denial to greenwashing, such as setting false net-zero carbon targets based on unproven carbon capture and storage technologies and reforestation on a dubious scale (Kusnets, 2020).

But nothing really changed.these sirens skeptical businessmanwith their selfishness climate delayed discoursecontinue to occupy a dominant position in the world’s power corridors.

Renewable

For years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) did not even mention fossil fuels in its publications, not even in its 2018 Summary for policymakers on global warming of 1.5 ºCand the continued dominance of Fossil Fuel Related Companies Evidence from the Conference of the Parties (the main international decision-making body on climate change) attests to the continued hegemony of fossil capital.

Prospects for a green recovery from the Covid pandemic have dimmed as only 2.5% of recovery spending went to green activities (Callaghan and Murdoch, 2021).

It is not until 2021 that the International Energy Agency (IEA) recognizes that the business model of the fossil fuel industry is unsustainable.

The International Energy Agency expects oil demand to fall sharply, from 90 million barrels per day to 24 million barrels per day by 2030, and accelerate investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency, as well as the electrification of transport, industry and heating, to reach Net zero emissions by 2050.

possible

Even now, however, the IEA offers no clear guidance on how to convince fossil fuel companies to accept this decline (World Energy Outlook 2022).

The situation seems hopeless, but in fact the way forward is clear. Citizens everywhere must call on their governments to enforce the necessary changes in the fossil fuel industry, halt all new fossil fuel development, and explicitly propose a phase-out of existing production.

Transformation across all sectors needs to be planned with clear timescales to 2030 and beyond, with appropriate regulation of industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use, with a focus on energy efficiency, decarbonisation, electrification and carbon sequestration.

As Christian Breyer and colleagues have shown, it is actually possible to achieve 100% renewable energy system in Europe by 2040.

the author

Peter Somerville is Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at the University of Lincoln.

refer to

McGuire B. (2022) Greenhouse Earth: A Resident’s Guidee. London: Icon Book.

M. Grasso (2022) From Big Oil to Big Green: Getting the Oil Industry on the Climate Crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.



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