How refreshing! Africa’s most sensible energy official, Amani Abou-Zeid, the African Union’s commissioner for infrastructure and energy, said earlier this month that African countries will use the UN’s COP27 climate talks in Egypt next month to advocate for a “common power position that makes fossil fuels mandatory for expanding economies and for electric power. “It can no longer be taken for granted that countries in sub-Saharan Africa, where another six hundred million people lack electricity and use firewood and charcoal for indoor cooking and heating, with atrocious effects on respiratory capacity and mortality: will stick to the recommendations of the International Energy Agency and the World Bank’s mirrored magic image on renewable energy.
Avoid fossil fuels, African politicians say, as wind and sun will boost the continent’s pursuit of commercial progress and improve living standards. But each and every one is hopeful that African countries, such as China and India, will not be frustrated in their rise on the same scale of power, from wood and coal to the subtle derivatives of oil and herbal gas, which the West has used in its rise to human improvement.
The Awakening of Africa
Climate replacement models that await an imminent apocalypse with absolute certainty lack credibility with politicians in emerging countries where genuine environmental upheavals are connected to poverty and lack of economic development. Western carbon imperialism, a corollary of the climate alarmist and Net Zero movements that have reigned in Western capitals for the past two decades, is being challenged by emerging countries.
As COP26 in Glasgow last year headed into its final day, a negotiating organization from 22 countries, plus China and India, dubbed “like-minded emerging countries,” opposed the U. S. ‘s “mitigation-focused” technique. The US and the EU. Diego Pacheco, Bolivia’s lead negotiator representing the LMDC, said that “developed countries are pushing very this 1. 5 degrees Celsius narrative. We know this narrative will take them back to the global. “
N. J. Ayuk, executive chairman of the African Energy Chamber, is adamant: “Africans don’t hate oil and fuel corporations. We love oil and we love fuel even more because we know that fuel will give us the possibility to industrialize. No country has evolved through complicated wind and green hydrogen. Africans see oil and fuel as a path to good fortune and a solution to their problems. Demonizing oil and fuel corporations won’t work.
European hypocrisy
Asking Africans to leave their fossil fuel resources in the flat in exchange for charitable donations and “development funding” from Western governments and multilateral agencies like the World Bank to invest in unreliable solar and wind power is not only immoral and unconscionable, it is obviously unenforceable. . As Vaclav Smil’s paintings have irrefutably demonstrated, no country in the world has evolved without the dense power that comes from fossil fuels.
Claims to the contrary through others like IEA leader Fatih Birol seem little more than propaganda exercises on behalf of a committed establishment that cannot be trusted, even for maximum fundamental information about force politics. In a recent editorial, Birol said, “I communicate with decision-makers all the time and none of them complain about relying too much on blank force. On the contrary, they would like to have more. They regret not moving faster to build solar and wind power plants, to power buildings and vehicles, or to extend the life of nuclear power plants.
Perhaps Mr Birol would like to recall that the destruction of German industry is almost certain through the fait accompli presented through the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines last month and what may be a permanent loss of most European imports of pipeline fuel from Russia, whatever it is. The final results of the Russian-Ukrainian War. No amount of sunshine and wind power can save Germany from an ignominious retreat from its quixotic Energiewende as its citizens scramble for firewood to keep warm this winter as shortages of herbal fuel tighten. Last week, Germany Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that five lignite-fueled power plants — the dirtiest way to generate electricity — would reopen “temporarily,” of course.
But most telling of all is the sheer hypocrisy of Western European governments that have changed course in their strategy towards African energy projects in the face of an energy crisis they themselves created, after self-sanctioning the EU for Russian fuel supplies. According to The New York Times, not to be left behind in the push for renewable energy and the climate crusade, “European leaders have gathered in African capitals, eager to locate themselves in Russian herbal fuel. “So now that Europe wants herbal fuel, it is perfectly general to ignore the World Bank’s refusal to finance fossil fuel investments on the continent (as elsewhere).
The more it changes, the more it is the same
Critical awareness of the link between fossil fuels and progress among African leaders such as Amani Abou-Zeid and N. J. Ayub has accelerated through the crisis of power that is affecting the West, especially in Europe and Britain. Commitments to net-zero policies are now concerned with keeping the cost-of-living crisis at bay and keeping their citizens warm (including firewood) while calling for voluntary “demand reduction” and mandatory energy rationing. Newly installed Prime Minister Rishi Sunak supports his predecessor, Liz Truss’s resolve to prevent climate-enthusiast King Charles from attending the COP27 climate summit even though the king is “in a hurry to go. “
EU leaders are now calling for preferential tariff and industry situations in global fuel markets. French President Emmanuel Macron recently denounced U. S. industrial and energy policies. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen U. S. senators are calling on Biden’s management to curb exports of liquefied herbal fuels, as Americans face a spike in home heating prices this winter. Europe will involve value pressures at home. Some might call it being “pushed under the bus” or “thrown to the wolves. “
While depressed economic situations, Covid closures posed deeply demanding situations for COP26 negotiators, the proxy war between Russia and NATO’s Ukrainian sponsors led COP27 into geopolitical whirlwinds. As global costs of fuel, fertilizer and food rise to unprecedented degrees due to anti-Russian energy sanctions and decades of green energy policies, the siren song of the anti-climate crusade opposing fossil fuels will at least burn when hard times triumph around the world. It remains to be seen whether he loses control over the worried psyche of the rich West.