Marc De Ver­teuil

A few weeks ago, on April 10, No­bel Peace Prize win­ner Arch­bish­op Desmond Tu­tu, writ­ing in the UK Guardian, called for an an­ti-apartheid-style cam­paign against fos­sil fu­el com­pa­nies."It is clear that those coun­tries and com­pa­nies pri­mar­i­ly re­spon­si­ble for emit­ting car­bon and ac­cel­er­at­ing cli­mate change are not sim­ply go­ing to give up; they stand to make too much mon­ey".

He was re­spond­ing to a re­port from the In­ter­na­tion­al Pan­el on Cli­mate Change (IPCC) that warns the world is on the verge of cli­mate cat­a­stro­phe and that it is "un­equiv­o­cal­ly" proven hu­mans are to blame. To avert dis­as­ter, the re­port states, in­vest­ment in fos­sil fu­els must start falling by tens of bil­lions of dol­lars a year.The Arch­bish­op un­der­stood that rather than do the right thing, and in­vest in re­new­able en­er­gy tech­nol­o­gy, oil com­pa­nies will con­tin­ue to pur­sue the fos­sil fu­els they know best.

Faced with dwin­dling oil re­serves oil com­pa­nies are in­vest­ing their fu­tures in hard-to-reach, dif­fi­cult-to-ex­ploit and dirty fu­els.I'm sure the good Arch­bish­op had no idea that two days be­fore, an ex­cel­lent ex­am­ple of fos­sil-fu­el lob­bing ap­peared in the Trinidad Ex­press in a col­umn ti­tled Fu­ture in­vest­ment op­por­tu­ni­ty that can't be ig­nored...tar sands. The writer "strong­ly" urges the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy Af­fairs, Kevin Ram­nar­ine, to take a stand on ex­ploit­ing tar sands in the south of Trinidad.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers