Saudis blocking reductions in fossil-fuel consumption
energy
- 27 April 2007
- Magazine issue 2601
"THEIR objective was to make it more difficult for decision-makers to connect actions with risks. Because they want to sell oil? Probably."
That's how Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, describes Saudi Arabia's tactics at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change negotiations earlier this month (New Scientist, 14 April, p 11). The upshot? Oil heavyweights influenced the report's summary for policy-makers so that it does not show as clearly as it might how reducing fossil fuel burning could limit the impacts of climate change on human society.
Yohe, a coordinating lead author for the IPCC, acknowledges that nations have a right to staff their delegations as they want. Most countries sent delegates only from their environment ministries, but of the seven delegates representing Saudi Arabia at the negotiations, four were dispatched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. The ministry has close links to four oil companies, including ...
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