Elisa Morgera, the UN special rapporteur on human rights
and climate change, issued a new report in May that calls for a total ban on
fossil fuel industry lobbying and advertising. She argues that the US, UK,
Canada, Australia, and other wealthy fossil fuel nations are legally obliged
under international law to fully phase out oil, gas, and coal by 2030 and
compensate communities for harms caused. The report ridiculously calls for
banning fracking, oil sands, gas flaring, exploration, subsidies, investments,
and “false tech solutions.” She also railed against harms to biodiversity,
plastic pollution, and synthetic fertilizers. According to The Guardian:
“Morgera makes the case for the “defossilization” of our
entire economies – in other words the eradication of fossil fuels from all
sectors including politics, finance, food, media, tech and knowledge. The
transition to clean energy is not enough to tackle the widespread and mounting
harms caused by the fossil fuels, she argues.”
Yeah, well, good luck with
that. It’s another tired tirade against fossil fuels. Yes, we know they cause
harm, but they also have massive benefits, and there are no feasible
alternatives. Massive rises in electricity costs would certainly negatively
affect human rights, too, as well as make the systems far less reliable. It is
a tired old argument that should be defanged. While there is a need to
decarbonize our energy systems, we can only do so within our financial means and
within our means to keep our systems reliable. Morgera writes:
“Paradoxically what may seem radical or unrealistic – a
transition to a renewable energy-based economy – is now cheaper and safer for
our economics and a healthier option for our societies,” Morgera told the
Guardian.
“The transition can also lead to significant savings of
taxpayers’ money that is currently going into responding to climate change
impacts, saving health costs, and also recouping lost tax revenue from fossil
fuel companies. This could be the single most impactful health contribution we
could ever make. The transition seems radical and unrealistic because fossil
fuel companies have been so good at making it seem so.”
In reality, if developed
countries agreed to such a scenario, it would just be a drop in the bucket, as
China, India, and other countries would not participate in such a global
punitive action against fossil fuel interests. As a reminder, globally, 80% of
primary energy comes from fossil fuels, and 60% of global electricity comes
from fossil fuels.
Unfortunately, in her report,
Morgera is calling for developing countries in Africa to “leapfrog” by
bypassing fossil fuels and instead deploying much more costly, less reliable,
and intermittent renewables. That won’t be enough to run industries that could
really help African economies. It is another tired argument. I have always been
a fan of the carrot-only approach to decarbonization, which simply means
incentivizing low-carbon energy but not penalizing fossil energy. The reality
is that we need both in abundance now, as new technologies like AI threaten to
increase energy demand in developed countries, where it has stabilized in
recent years. We are still at a point where total energy demand is outpacing
the deployment of renewables, so that fossil fuel use continues to grow. That
could change in the years ahead as renewables are close to covering total
annual demand growth, which would keep fossil fuel use at current levels
instead of seeing it grow. The demands in the report include the following:
• Most of the world’s proven fossil fuel reserves
must be left unburned: at least 60 per cent of oil and gas reserves and 90 per
cent of coal reserves must remain unextracted;
• Fossil fuel supply must decline by 55 per cent by 2035 on
2023 levels;
• Fossil fuel usage must decrease rapidly, with coal usage
dropping by up to 100 per cent from 2019 levels by 2050, oil usage dropping by
up to 90 per cent and gas usage dropping by up to 85 per cent;
• No new fossil fuel-burning power plants should be built;
• All non-emergency flaring and venting should be
eliminated globally by 2030;
• Fossil fuel infrastructure, and oil and gas fields,
should be retired before the end of their technical life.
These things are simply not
going to happen, no matter how loudly they are demanded. The report goes on to
condemn plastics and petrochemicals production and rail against climate
obstructionism and misinformation. The formula of loudly demonizing fossil
fuels has not worked in the past, and it won’t work now. The UN would better
spend its time on bettering those “false tech solutions” and on climate
adaptation. It should also support poor undeveloped countries in Africa and
other places in responsibly developing their fossil fuel resources and their
mineral resources that are required for many of the renewables solutions that
can partially replace fossil fuels. The world needs more energy realism and
less of this shouting into the void kind of demonization and rallying cries.
The first graph below shows the
progress made over the last 38 years in decarbonizing primary energy
consumption in the world’s richest countries. The second graph shows the global
growth of fossil fuel use. Coal use has leveled out, and oil use is
stabilizing. Both can be said to be approaching demand plateaus. The use of
natural gas, as the lightest hydrocarbon, is expected to increase, at least
modestly, in most decarbonization scenarios. The facts are more important than
aspirational demands. We are making efforts to decarbonize energy, and we
should continue apace, but demands to speed up the process are simply not
practical.
References:
UN
expert urges criminalizing fossil fuel disinformation, banning lobbying. Nina
Lakhani. The Guardian. June 30, 2025. UN
expert urges criminalizing fossil fuel disinformation, banning lobbying
The
imperative of defossilizing our economies. Report of the Special Rapporteur on
the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change,
Elisa Morgera. UN General Assembly. May 15, 2025. g2507022.pdf
Fossil
fuels: Fossil fuels were key to industrialization and rising prosperity, but
their impact on health and the climate means that we should transition away
from them.Hannah Ritchie and Pablo Rosado. This page was first published in
October 2022. We made minor changes to the text in January 2024. Our World in Data.
Fossil fuels - Our World in
Data
No comments:
Post a Comment