Essay by Eric Worrall
Given climate champion President Biden recently begged Saudi and Venezuela to produce more oil, and Europeans are restarting coal generators, why are activists angry at companies extracting African oil?
An African Oil Pipeline Exposes the West’s Climate Change Hypocrisy
In March, four environmentalist groups—Greenpeace France, Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire a Tous and Client Earth—launched an unprecedented legal case, charging the French oil giant TotalEnergies with what amounts to “criminal greenwashing.” Their 76-page summons claimed that the company had misled consumers by broadcasting its supposed ambitions of reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, even as it ramped up overseas oil and gas activities.
Just one month before the suit was filed in Paris, TotalEnergies had reached a $10 billion final investment decision to back an infamous oil project: the behemoth East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, which is set to be the longest heated oil pipeline in the world. Once completed, the pipeline will run 900 miles, connecting the Lake Albert region in Uganda’s west to the Port of Tanga in Tanzania’s east, ripping through farmlands and displacing thousands of families along the way. The project also involves developing Lake Albert’s Tilenga oilfield with hundreds of new wells that will spread from residential areas into protected animal habitats in Uganda’s famed Murchison Falls National Park.
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More than 70 countries around the world—including major polluters such as the United States, China and members of the European Union—have pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. A key aspect of these agreements is to cut off all new fossil fuel development projects after 2030. In light of those pledges, EACOP and its associated drilling projects have come to symbolize how Western companies and governments promote green practices within their own borders while continuing to support dangerous extractive projects abroad.
…Read more (requires registration): https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/oil-africa-climate-change/
Activists have also targeted London based Lloyds Insurance, seeking to “educate” Lloyds employees about climate change, over their involvement in the pipeline.
In my opinion the real hypocrites are the climate activists. Most of them live lifestyles which are only possible because they live in fossil fuel rich economies. Activists enjoy the benefits of oil produced in the own and other countries, yet they seem wildly opposed to Africans developing their own oil resources, and any attempt to build the infrastructure Africa requires to modernise.
via Watts Up With That?
August 17, 2022
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