Trinidad & Tobago cannot develop any new oil or gas fields. All onshore and offshore exploration must be halted immediately. To extract more fossil fuels and pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is immoral, illogical and delays the transition to the post hydrocarbon economy.
Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels crossed 400 parts per million (ppm) in September, in a year that is set to be the hottest on record. This is significant because September is usually the month when carbon dioxide is at its lowest level, due to plants absorbing it during the northern hemisphere's summer.
Scientists say that 350 ppm is the highest safe level but humans burn too much fossil fuel and have deforested the planet to the point that plants can no longer absorb the excess carbon dioxide. Anything over 350 ppm means monster storms, rising sea levels, droughts and extreme weather of all kinds.
As a small island developing state T&T endangers its future by refusing to adapt to the climatic and economic needs of the world. A culture seeped in oil money finds itself psychologically challenged to change. Leading individuals may obstruct change because their degree is in oil and gas and they don't know what else to do. This is not unreasonable as abrupt career change is a traumatic experience for individuals- the same goes for a societies.
Change is scary and hopeless, yet individuals who have been laid off develop new careers. Countries do this too. T&T went from sugar and cocoa to oil and gas and now it will have to transition to renewable energy and something else that the free market will decide. The only guarantee is that inertia will result in a climate catastrophe and economic collapse.
T&T should follow the example of Cuba. Having lost its Venezuelan oil lifeline, Cuba has built a solar panel factory with Chinese assistance. The plant produces 60,000 solar panels per year and Cuban workers are sent to China for training. The goal is to produce 24 per cent renewable energy by 2030.
T&T is still the energy giant of the Caribbean. Failure to adapt endangers this status. Renewable energy is the energy of the future and it will be difficult to dislodge countries that establish themselves early on.
T&T signed the COP 21 agreement that limits climate change to 1.5�C. Caribbean countries championed this cause under the slogan "one point five to stay alive." If all global oil and gas fields and all the coal in the mines that are currently in production are burnt, then global temperature rise will shoot past 2�C. In fact, if countries follow the pledges made at COP 21 then global warming will top 3.8�C. It will be a world that is hostile to human beings.
Simply put: developing new oil and gas fields is destructive and immoral. In the long run it will cost T&T a lot more to adapt to climate change that it will be to speed up the inevitable economic transition that the post fossil fuel economy requires.
As usual the poor will suffer the most. They are always the first victims of any environmental catastrophe. The rich can buy a new house or emigrate with their useful degrees. The poor have hardly benefitted from T&T's oil and gas wealth. They still live in the same underserviced, neglected neighbourhoods that they were in 50 years ago, and 100 years ago.
They will be there 50 years from now as well, except in 2066 T&T will be a much hotter, dryer place, with significant sea water intrusion, quite possibly as far as Valsayn and other areas that seem far from the coastline, but are in fact well within possible sea level rise.
It is to these people that policy makers owe allegiance and conscience, not to the foreign energy companies that will take the lion's share of future oil and gas field revenue, and disappear. The policy makers decide if the poor stay disenfranchised in the oil and gas economy or if a more suitable model is adapted.
T&T has three options: one is to continue with business as usual and hope the rest of the world fixes the problem. The second option is to use the few years of oil and gas that is in already developed fields and do a somewhat controlled transition to a clean economy; the third is to stop oil and gas production today.
The first option is a continuation of the dependency syndrome. The third option is the environmentalist's option, but it would be extremely disruptive and politically unachievable.
The second option is the way to go: a gentle landing and the natural phasing out of what is an obsolete, destructive industry, while developing renewable energy, and unleashing our people's innovation to create the new, green economy.
