This is Scott Amyx with today’s Climate Change Flash Briefing.
Oil & gas players cannot see beyond their short-term profits. And their economic self-interest forbids diversification away from oil and gas into renewable energy. For oil & gas special interest groups, they perceive renewable energy and climate change policy as a threat to their very existence.
For OPEC member countries such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, and Venezuela, they live and die by oil and gas. Since 2008, commodity price of oil dropped precipitously into the $30s and did not recover until the 2011 Libyan Civil War. Then during the 2014 – 2017 oil glut, the OPEC Reference Basket plummeted to $22.48/bbl in January 2016.
Venezuela never recovered. According to U.N. figures, some 2.3 million Venezuelans — almost 7 percent of the population — have left their homeland over the past two years amid economic devastation and political havoc. Other estimates place the number at closer to 4 million.
Stay tuned next time to find out which countries blocked the adoption of the UN climate change report at the recent Climate Change Summit.
