21st Century Politics
The Wall Street Journal has a piece on real politics in this third decade of the 21st century, showing first and foremost we have yet to barely grapple with the environmental challenges caused by industrialism. Industrial thinking completely dominates every aspect of the processes, thinking, and structure of established political economy, even that of the environmental opposition.
The article is about an oil project in Uganda, which in the end will bring less than a quarter million barrels a day of not the highest quality crude to market, needing “to be heated to 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit) to keep Uganda’s waxy crude liquid” to transport. The project is run by the French oil giant TotalEnergies, whose reserves long ago were largely in Iraq. That this project was greenlit demonstrates what a hard and expensive time the companies once known as “Big Oil” are having getting new oil out of the ground anywhere.
The nut of the piece is the politics. The worst aspect is the project is smack in the middle Murchison Falls National Park, one of the embattled wildlife arks of Africa. “‘We have to stay on the lookout for any threats from animals,’ said Sam Mugwere, one of three park rangers armed with AK-47 rifles and stationed around the construction site. ‘Sometimes we shoot in the air to scare away charging elephants.’”
If wildlife concerns were the only issue, it would never have made the Journal. It wouldn't have been heard aside a few, easily ignored, raised voices. It’s prominent in the Journal because of our not very sophisticated and entirely insufficient climate politics – blame Al Gore, I certainly do.
With our current climate politics, on one side you have the Ugandans, TotalEnergies, and the Chinese oil company Cnoooc. On the other, quite a cast of characters comprised of the egregiously self-righteous and just the plain egregious. They include France’s Friends of the Earth as the environmentalists, a group founded in the US a half-century ago by the noble conservationist David Brower, along with some recent American group called the Climate Accountability Institute.
The opponents also include the ESG lot, “more than a dozen international banks and insurers—including HSBC, Barclays and major French lenders that have helped finance previous TotalEnergies projects—who publicly said they won’t support” the pipeline necessary to bring the Ugandan oil through Tanzania to get it to the Indian coast for export. Bringing up the rear, the European Parliament, now there's a reputable lot.
The politics of this, lets even use the word injustice of it, is a bunch of people overwhelmingly responsible for climate problems and for that matter wildlife destruction, dictating to the people of Africa. Until America and Europe take responsibility for their own actions, they have no right to tell the Africans much of anything. Most certainly not while Americans and Europeans with less population than Africa, still release the majority of climate emissions, with the entirety of Africa's emissions remaining insignificant.
The Journal sums up the argument well, “It is unfair, they say, to ask poor countries to safeguard global carbon sinks and nature reserves that rich Western countries, which are responsible for most historic emissions, destroyed long ago in pursuit of their own economic development.”
“The energy transition shouldn’t be looked at globally where we are all lumped together,” said Irene Batebe, permanent secretary at Uganda’s energy and minerals ministry. “When you look at our pollution levels, you cannot say Uganda has overpolluted.”
While reading this piece, I was engaged in chat with a Nigerian friend who a few years back moved to wilds of northern Canada to work with their oil sands. Funny how so many of Nigeria's best are educated in the oil business and simply tragic for Nigeria they can't keep them. We were having a running conversation I've had with a number of Nigerians for almost a decade, where I advocate Nigeria quit exporting their oil, using it only for domestic consumption.
This was an especially easy argument to make in 2014-15 when I was there trying to help Goodluck Jonathan get reelected. The Great American Shale Revolution was in full gear and global oil prices were plummeting, reaching less than $40 a barrel. I remarked to anyone who would listen, “No way you guys should be exporting oil at that price. Really you shouldn't be exporting oil at any price, you could use it much better yourselves.”
I have to say this has been as popular an argument with Nigerians as telling Americans for decades of the need to use less oil. The real heart of the matter is the accepted definition of development uses America as the ultimate goal, an energy intensive model based on using and wasting cheap and plentiful fossil fuels, ignoring all, emphasis on all, environmental consequences.
Disregarding the environmental consequences – we always have and mostly still do – oil is no longer cheap or plentiful, this is why the Uganda project ever came into play. There isn’t enough remaining oil supply to economically take a billion Africans and bring them up to just 10% of the oil consumption of an average American, again, regardless of any environmental implications.
We have a no longer viable industrial model of development based on massive use of fossil fuels. It remains the dominant, unchallenged economic paradigm. The recent idea that we can continue this same model simply by switching out fossil fuels for renewables, even throw-in nukes, is a non-starter.
We have so many entrenched processes and powers upholding a dominant industrial culture that to truly think of how to do things differently is exceedingly difficult, if not close to impossible. In many ways, Africa has a certain advantage in this process. They do not have industrialism to push aside, they have the ability to begin anew. If Africa truly thinks new, it will need to burn a little oil. The still burning plenty of oil industrial world has absolutely no right to say anything.
Nonetheless, this isn't the right way to look at the Uganda project. It's not being done for African consumption. Like Nigeria for decades, the vast majority of oil will be exported. If the industrial world wants to stop that, it needs to start by drastically cutting its own consumption, getting its own corporations under control, and show the Ugandans the money they will receive for not exporting. Welcome to the politics of the 21st century.