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US Leaders and Big Oil Are Leading the World Toward a Climate Catastrophe [1]

['Edward Hunt', 'Edward Hunt Writes About War', 'Empire. He Has A Phd In American Studies The College Of William']

Date: 2023-08-18 12:10:02+00:00

The United States is producing record amounts of oil and natural gas, despite the fact that the ongoing use of these fossil fuels poses an existential threat to the planet.

Even today, as the planet faces catastrophic warming, leaders in both the Democratic and Republican Parties keep pushing for more oil and natural gas production, believing that most of the world will continue to rely on these fossil fuels for decades to come.

“You can write this down, you can go to every NGO, and they’ll tell me I’m nuts, but I predict this,” former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said at the Aspen Security Forum last month. “There will be more crude oil consumed 30 years from now than there is today.”

A Fossil Fuel Powerhouse For the past decade, the United States has been a fossil fuel powerhouse. Since 2011, the United States has been the world’s top producer of natural gas, and since 2018, the United States has been the world’s top producer of oil. The United States became a fossil fuel powerhouse by embracing hydraulic fracturing. The technique, also known as “fracking,” uses a high-powered spray of water and chemicals to break apart underground rock formations. It has enabled U.S. energy companies to gain access to previously inaccessible deposits of oil and natural gas. Environmental groups have criticized fracking for contaminating groundwater and triggering earthquakes, leading some states to ban it. Exuberance over energy dominance remains widespread in the Biden administration. Officials boast that the United States is continuing to break new records in oil and natural gas production. In Washington, top officials have embraced the fracking boom. During the Obama administration, officials boasted that the United States was becoming an “energy superpower” and the “energy center of the world.” Officials in the Trump administration were even more enthusiastic, saying that they were leading the world into a new era of “energy dominance.” Exuberance over energy dominance remains widespread in the Biden administration. Officials boast that the United States is continuing to break new records in oil and natural gas production. “There is actually record [oil] production from the United States,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained late last year. “We’re producing more and selling more around the world than we ever have.”

The Threat to the Planet The U.S. move to become a fossil fuel powerhouse has come with major costs to the environment. By continuing to produce oil and natural gas at record levels, the United States is leading the world into the climate crisis. There is a direct connection between the use of fossil fuels and the warming of the planet. The burning of fossil fuels creates greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, which are emitted into the atmosphere, where they have the effect of warming the planet. Climate scientists calculate that the Earth has warmed by 1.2°C (2.1°F) since the late 19th century. Unchecked global warming poses an existential threat to the planet. Already, people in many parts of the world are grappling with extreme weather events, including record-breaking heat, rain, droughts, floods, storms, and wildfires. This past July was the planet’s hottest month on record. Global average temperature rise is on track to reach 1.5°C (2.7°F) in the early 2030s, about a decade away. “Climate change is here,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said in a July 27 press conference. “It is terrifying. And it is just the beginning.” For decades, world leaders have been familiar with the problem of human-caused climate change. Repeatedly, they have created arrangements for reducing carbon emissions, including the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992), the Kyoto Protocol (1997), the Green Climate Fund (2010), and the Paris agreement (2015). Under the Paris agreement (2015), nearly every country in the world created voluntary emissions targets with the goal of limiting global average temperature rise to 1.5°C (2.7°F) and keeping it well below 2°C (3.6°F). Participants agreed to meet every five years to review their progress. Despite these steps, the world is no closer today than it was in the early 1990s to preventing catastrophic global warming. In many ways, things are much worse, despite some progress in countries such as the United States that have shifted away from coal, a fossil fuel that generates more carbon emissions than oil or natural gas. Not only is the world producing and consuming fossil fuels at or near record levels, but the world’s greenhouse gas emissions continue rising at a record pace. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international body of climate experts, global average temperature rise is on track to reach 1.5°C (2.7°F) in the early 2030s, about a decade away.

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[1] Url: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/us-leading-world-to-climate-catastrophe

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