Argentina Is Torn Between Its Shale Dream and Climate Goals
Here’s an article that describes how natural gas fracking could be Argentina’s ticket out of a years-long economic crisis, but it jeopardizes a promise to wipe out emissions by 2050. It begins:
President Alberto Fernandez took to a makeshift stage in Argentina’s Vaca Muerta shale deposit in October to announce the nation was doubling down on fossil fuels. “Today we are relaunching the oil and gas economy,” he declared, starting with $5 billion of government subsidies.
Two months later, he had a different message for global leaders at the United Nations’ Climate Ambition Summit. Argentina had “true conviction” about wiping out its net emissions of greenhouse gases by mid-century, he said. To get there, it will have to get a fifth of its energy from renewables by 2025, up from about 10% now.
It’s hard to imagine a country with robust fossil fuel resources in which this dilemma isn’t playing out at some level. Yes, initiatives like the Green New Deal will bring along jobs in great numbers and thus economic revival, but:
a) Some people don’t believe this, and
b) Many of the stakeholders in oil and gas want to make their fortunes, regardless of the horrendous effect they’re having on the environment.
One can’t expect this civilization to save itself from ruin simply because people are basically good. While it may, in fact, be true that people generally are good, what matters is the will of the rich and powerful, who get everything they want, and control virtually everything that happens on this planet.
There happens to be a few Tom Steyers of the world, i.e., billionaires deeply committed to environmental causes, but they’re rare. Legendary eco-biologist Paul Hawken nailed it when he said, “Environmentalism is a way to get rich it’s a way to be rich.”
The best we can hope for is that the forces of pure market capitalism eventually drive down the cost of low-carbon energy, and that the human diet morphs over into synthetic or plant-based meat. It’s happening as we speak, as I cover in my book, Bullish on Renewable Energy.
