Fossil fuels – a dangerous dependency

The last week has been one in which the various negative impacts of fossil fuels has been emphasised. Two reports have been issued noting the critical vulnerability of our earth to climate change arising from the use of carbon-based fuels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its Sixth Assessment Report which highlights a series of challenges we will be facing. It is a long and detailed report that does not make for easy reading both in terms of content and message.

Almost simultaneously the UN Environmental Program issued “Spreading like Wildfire: The Rising Threat of Extraordinary Landscape Fires.” As noted with the release of the report: “Recent years have seen record-breaking wildfire seasons across the world from Australia to the Arctic to North and South America.” They go on to note that “(u)ncontrollable and extreme wildfires can be devastating to people, biodiversity and ecosystems.”

But we also see the impact of our reliance on fossil fuels in the Putin invasion of the Ukraine – also leading to flames as reported by the BBC among others. It appears that an element behind Putin’s attempt to extinguish the sovereignty and freedom of the Ukraine people was a belief that the dependence of Europe, and especially Germany, on Russian gas would deter any meaningful response to this violation of civilized norms as well as the 1994 agreement between the Russian Federation, Ukraine, Britain, and the US to “respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.”

Whilst the invasion of Ukraine is an egregious example of how the use of fossil fuels creates geopolitical challenges, it is not the only time that these challenges have been seen. With solid reporting again by the BBC we learn of the murder and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi for his critical reporting on Saudi Arabia. Again there was very little effective response from a world that was and is dependent on the flow of fossil fuels from Saudi Arabia.

The poison of a dependency on carbon-based fuels leads not only to global warming that threatens our future but also to geopolitical actions that threaten a civilized society today.