Individuals who need to finish oil and gasoline business have ‘no clue’, says fossil gas CEO
Patrick Greenfield
Fossil gas CEO Vicki Hollub has mentioned individuals who name for the tip of the oil and gasoline business “haven’t any clue what that may imply” and refused to say whether or not she accepted her firm’s position in local weather disasters.
Talking on decarbonisation day at Cop27, Hollub, who heads Occidental Petroleum, mentioned mounting excessive local weather occasions, comparable to this yr’s lethal flooding in Pakistan and drought within the horn of Africa, had been the duty of people, not simply the oil and gasoline business.
When requested by a Guardian reporter if she felt any private duty for pure disasters made worse by local weather change, she mentioned:
This isn’t an issue that simply the oil and gasoline business has. All people that makes use of a product that was generated from oil and gasoline has a component on this and can also be accountable. Your iPhone, you’re accountable for that. In the event you flew over right here, you’re accountable for what you used right here. The good garments you’re carrying proper now, you’re accountable. If we don’t all step up and take accountability, this doesn’t occur. You might be nonetheless there considering ‘oil and gasoline firms must go away, they should shut down their manufacturing’. You don’t perceive what would occur to you if we did that. Your tv goes away, … driving goes away. That’s why the transition must be higher designed. We’ve acquired to be rather more considerate.
She added:
Individuals who run spherical saying ‘oil and gasoline must go away’ haven’t any clue what that may imply. I’m saying the world is accountable … Don’t ask me about oil and gasoline with out taking some duty your self and serving to others perceive. You’ve got a approach to assist others perceive that when you don’t step up.
Hollub was talking at a CEO armchair occasion on company management and internet zero, the place she mentioned Occidental Petroleum’s fossil gas belongings within the Permian basin within the southwest US and the Center East, and the corporate’s funding in carbon seize know-how.
Hollub was at Cop27 as a part of the UAE delegation, which is able to host subsequent yr’s Cop28 in Dubai. In 2017, Occidental Petroleum was listed as fifty fifth in a Carbon Majors Report report itemizing the highest 100 firms accountable for 71% of worldwide emissions between 1988 and 2015.
“We’re shifting ahead. Lots of people on the earth are telling us to not. Al Gore, each time he sees me, tells me to not construct direct air seize. Why would he say that to me? Why would he inform me to not construct know-how that the world completely has to have? There are too many agendas on the earth.
“I’m sorry when you don’t know that however you’ve acquired to do the analysis to search out out,” she mentioned.
Critics of carbon seize know-how – sucking emissions out of the air – say it can’t be prioritised over ending fossil gas use.
Al Gore’s crew has been contacted for remark.
When requested about private duty, she mentioned: “You’re on the lookout for a headline and I’m on the lookout for an answer. That’s the distinction between me and also you.”
Key occasions
Listed below are a few of the greatest pictures from Cop27 at present:
(Nicely achieved to the photographer who was on the pre-dawn shift!)
Nina Lakhani
Svitlana Romanko is a Ukrainian lawyer, local weather campaigner and founding father of Razom We Stand, a grassroots group calling for a everlasting embargo on Russian fossil fuels and a right away finish to all funding into Russian oil and gasoline firms.
To date, she’s considerably disenchanted by Cop27:
I believed there can be more room to speak in regards to the ongoing horrific fossil gas battle and the chance this could signify for a worldwide inexperienced transformation, nevertheless it seems like these conversations are restricted to the Ukrainian pavilion and never taking place on the highest ranges.
In current weeks, Russian bombs have focused the power infrastructure in Ukraine, underscoring her personal nation’s unsustainable dependence on fossil fuels. However earlier than the battle, the nation had began taking small steps in direction of power transition, partly because of Russia’s occupation of the Donbas area the place the coal mines are concentrated, and partly because of inexperienced tariffs boosting manufacturing. In 2021, 13.4% of Ukraine’s power got here from renewable sources, however has now misplaced over 80% of its wind energy and 50% of photo voltaic manufacturing because of bombing within the southeast.
Romanko appreciated the European leaders who earlier this week used their quick allotted speeches to say the continuing battle, however added:
EU exports of Russian LNG has risen 46% year-year-on yr within the first 9 months of 2022, based on European Fee figures, the EU must step-up, act extra globally and ban all fossil fuels and insurance coverage. We additionally demand that US establishments divest the billions they’ve invested in Russia’s carbon bombs.
Individuals who need to finish oil and gasoline business have ‘no clue’, says fossil gas CEO
Patrick Greenfield
Fossil gas CEO Vicki Hollub has mentioned individuals who name for the tip of the oil and gasoline business “haven’t any clue what that may imply” and refused to say whether or not she accepted her firm’s position in local weather disasters.
Talking on decarbonisation day at Cop27, Hollub, who heads Occidental Petroleum, mentioned mounting excessive local weather occasions, comparable to this yr’s lethal flooding in Pakistan and drought within the horn of Africa, had been the duty of people, not simply the oil and gasoline business.
When requested by a Guardian reporter if she felt any private duty for pure disasters made worse by local weather change, she mentioned:
This isn’t an issue that simply the oil and gasoline business has. All people that makes use of a product that was generated from oil and gasoline has a component on this and can also be accountable. Your iPhone, you’re accountable for that. In the event you flew over right here, you’re accountable for what you used right here. The good garments you’re carrying proper now, you’re accountable. If we don’t all step up and take accountability, this doesn’t occur. You might be nonetheless there considering ‘oil and gasoline firms must go away, they should shut down their manufacturing’. You don’t perceive what would occur to you if we did that. Your tv goes away, … driving goes away. That’s why the transition must be higher designed. We’ve acquired to be rather more considerate.
She added:
Individuals who run spherical saying ‘oil and gasoline must go away’ haven’t any clue what that may imply. I’m saying the world is accountable … Don’t ask me about oil and gasoline with out taking some duty your self and serving to others perceive. You’ve got a approach to assist others perceive that when you don’t step up.
Hollub was talking at a CEO armchair occasion on company management and internet zero, the place she mentioned Occidental Petroleum’s fossil gas belongings within the Permian basin within the southwest US and the Center East, and the corporate’s funding in carbon seize know-how.
Hollub was at Cop27 as a part of the UAE delegation, which is able to host subsequent yr’s Cop28 in Dubai. In 2017, Occidental Petroleum was listed as fifty fifth in a Carbon Majors Report report itemizing the highest 100 firms accountable for 71% of worldwide emissions between 1988 and 2015.
“We’re shifting ahead. Lots of people on the earth are telling us to not. Al Gore, each time he sees me, tells me to not construct direct air seize. Why would he say that to me? Why would he inform me to not construct know-how that the world completely has to have? There are too many agendas on the earth.
“I’m sorry when you don’t know that however you’ve acquired to do the analysis to search out out,” she mentioned.
Critics of carbon seize know-how – sucking emissions out of the air – say it can’t be prioritised over ending fossil gas use.
Al Gore’s crew has been contacted for remark.
When requested about private duty, she mentioned: “You’re on the lookout for a headline and I’m on the lookout for an answer. That’s the distinction between me and also you.”
‘1.5C to remain alive’: Medical employees says world wants CPR
Nikhita Chulani
Docs, nurses, pharmacists, scientists and medical college students from internationally have simply staged a protest to focus on how local weather carnage is killing their sufferers.
One physician carried out CPR on an inflatable globe as different healthcare employees – from China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Uganda, Switzerland, Poland, Morocco, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, America, the Netherlands and the UK – made speeches on their private experiences after which collapsed on the ground of the convention centre in Sharm el-Sheikh.
They attributed an increase in deaths globally to the local weather disaster, which is in flip inflicting deadly air air pollution, malnutrition and an absence of entry to healthcare.
They mentioned their prescription is to local weather justice, finish fossil gas subsidies and for “1.5C to remain alive”.
Fuel producers utilizing Cop27 to rebrand gasoline as transitional gas, specialists warn
Ruth Michaelson
Fuel producers and their monetary backers see Cop27 as a possibility for discussions about rebranding pure gasoline as a transition gas slightly than a fossil gas, specialists have mentioned.
The push is coming from the host Egypt and its gas-producing allies amid a worldwide power disaster compounded by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“The chance for this Cop is to have the dialogue brazenly that pure gasoline, and specifically when mixed with carbon seize, is a scalable power resolution permitting us to satisfy the wants of 8 billion individuals whereas nonetheless assembly our local weather objectives,” mentioned Craig Golinowsky, of Carbon Infrastructure Companions, a Canadian personal fairness fund backing tasks associated to fossil fuels in addition to carbon seize.
Environmental specialists warning that burning gasoline, a fossil gas, dangers growing heating far past the goal restriction of 1.5C required to forestall main environmental disruption.
Fuel is much less polluting to the local weather than coal, however its manufacturing entails dangerous methane, and leaks from infrastructure could cause large-scale air pollution.
Nina Lakhani
The Guardian has reported on protests at Cop27, the place activists have referred to as on Egyptian authorities to launch hundreds of political prisoners.
Somebody who has spotlighted the regime’s repression in opposition to its personal residents is Italian nationwide Giorgio Caracciolo, the Center East and North Africa supervisor of Dignity, an anti-torture advocacy group. On Wednesday, Caracciolo was denied entry at Cairo airport regardless of having the right immigration paperwork and Cop accreditation.
Authorities didn’t present causes for his deportation.
Caracciolo mentioned on Twitter:
“Personally talking I ponder why me… Is it as a result of the organisation I signify [focuses] on essentially the most intimate instruments utilized by the regime, that’s torture and violence?”
Human rights Watch and different organisations condemned the choice. “Past the fast impression on Caracciolo, who has now been blocked from attending Cop27 and addressing the human rights state of affairs in Egypt, these ways are creating an surroundings of concern for all activists talking out on human rights at Cop27.”
Ruth Michaelson
In case anybody was considering of protesting Egypt’s deep financial disaster at present within the capital Cairo and elsewhere, the singer Sayed Emam is right here with an upbeat reminder to not trouble going into the streets. The tune, entitled “We gained’t go down,” thoughtfully accompanied by a picture of a pro-government protest on YouTube, is designed to encourage Egyptians to remain of their houses.
So as to add to the irony, it’s set to a backing tune harking back to mahraganat, a type of standard music related to the Egyptian streets and weddings and designed to make you rise up and dance – or perhaps even protest. Mahraganat singers are additionally now primarily banned from performing in Egypt, after the top of the nation’s Musicians Syndicate issued a decree two years in the past that bans them from performing in any festivals, golf equipment cafes, concert events or different public areas.
There have been requires residents to protest Egypt’s deepening price of residing disaster at present on social media. In response, the nation’s safety forces preemptively arrested over 150 individuals in current weeks based on Amnesty Worldwide.
A Dutch artist is spending 11 days of Cop27 turning a 3068-page report on the horrors that await humanity into confetti, in an effort to point out how we refuse to take local weather science significantly.
Johannes-Hurt Hovinga’s blistering efficiency – titled ‘There’s an elephant within the room’ – has him sitting in a chair with a hole-puncher for 10 hours a day.
“Persons are invited to hitch in silence or to speak in regards to the local weather … whereas punching it paper by paper by paper understanding the significance of the phrases on paper they’re destroying,” Hovinga mentioned.
The most recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC), the world’s main authority on local weather science, was its starkest warning but of main inevitable and irreversible local weather heating.
Hovinga mentioned the efficiency reveals a “lack of sense of necessity” with regards to the local weather disaster.
What to anticipate at present
Patrick Greenfield
Here’s what to look out for on decarbonisation day:
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Joe Biden’s speech might be at 5.15pm native time (3.15pm GMT). He moved to rejoin the Paris settlement simply hours after taking workplace in January 2020 and has since handed a $369bn package deal of local weather investments that might reduce US greenhouse gasoline emissions by 40%.
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US Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a handful of US lawmakers might be holding a press convention later this afternoon.
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Though it’s decarbonisation day, at the very least two fossil gas CEOs are scheduled to talk at Cop27 on Friday. It comes after evaluation of delegates discovered that there had been an “explosion” in fossil gas lobbyists attending the local weather summit this yr, with 636 in attendance, an increase of greater than 25% since Cop26 in Glasgow.
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Extra protests are on the Cop27 website on Friday, together with these highlighting the case of the starvation striker Alaa Abd el-Fattah.
Nina Lakhani
As Cop27 waits for the arrival of Joe Biden, who’s feeling mightily happy with himself after the Democrats weren’t obliterated within the midterm elections as forecast, local weather justice activists won’t be congratulating the US president, slightly criticising him for local weather failures.
“President Biden should declare a local weather emergency. Persons are sick, they’re dying as a result of earnings are valued greater than our lives,” mentioned Sharon Lavigne, the 2021 Goldman prize winner from Louisiana, who led a profitable grassroots marketing campaign to cease the development of a poisonous plastics plant in America’s “most cancers alley”. “We put him in workplace. He must take heed to frontline leaders. President Biden please meet with me at present at Cop27; take heed to us.”
This morning’s first protest referred to as on world leaders to declare a local weather emergency, hold fossil fuels within the floor, and pay reparations for the irreversible loss and injury already suffered – principally by communities and nations which might be least accountable for world heating.
Thousands and thousands of persons are nonetheless struggling in Pakistan after unprecedented rainfall and floods left a 3rd of the nation beneath water earlier this yr. “We’re paying for the crimes of companies and the worldwide north, who’ve made Pakistan a hub for local weather disasters,” mentioned one protester, Farooq Tariq. “We don’t need any extra phrases, we wish debt suspension, we wish reparations, we wish local weather justice.”
Joe Biden to talk at Cop27
Good morning, and welcome to the Guardian’s dwell protection of the Cop27 local weather convention in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, the place the theme of the day is decarbonisation.
US president Joe Biden is visiting the convention buoyed by higher than anticipated leads to the US midterms earlier this week, and is because of communicate this afternoon. The total UN schedule will be discovered right here, and we’ll carry you essentially the most fascinating and necessary developments because the day unfolds.
Thursday noticed anger on the variety of fossil gas lobbyists attending the convention, protesters carrying white in solidarity with environmental defenders and political prisoners, and Achim Steiner, head of the UN improvement programme, warning that greater than 50 growing nations are vulnerable to going bankrupt with out assist from the wealthy world. Atone for the day’s occasions right here.
I’m Oliver Holmes, and you may ship me ideas, feedback, questions and complaints at oliver.holmes@theguardian.com or on Twitter at @olireports.