BY LEOPOLD OBI
As the war against climate change intensifies in the world, food shortage, floods, prolonged droughts, heat waves, and hurricanes have left fossil fuels under heavy criticism for undermining the efforts aimed at cutting man-made greenhouse gasses.
According to the global 500 greenhouse gas report published by Thomson Reuters released in 2016 which analysed the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the operations and use of the products from only 32 energy companies, found out that 31 per cent of GHG emitted every year across the globe, comes from fossil fuel industry and also from use of their products.
Globally, climate change accounts for 300,000 deaths every year and is affecting 300m people, according to the survey conducted by Global Humanitarian Forum.
In an attempt to establish the relationship between current carbon levels and temperatures, scientists have been conducting researches for over four decades ago. The outcomes of the studies consistently pointed towards one direction; that rising greenhouse gas emissions, arising from the use of fossil fuels both at the household and the industrial level, lead to higher temperatures resulting in global warming.
Therefore in 1992, countries came together under an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), as a framework for international cooperation to combat climate change by limiting average global temperature increases.
There are other many global agreements on other issues apart from Climate Change that aim at addressing other global environmental and health problems, according to energypedia. However, since there is always no elaborate criteria for identifying those who should or should not participate in the climate change talks, fossil fuel players always find their away into the negotiations despite being the biggest polluters- in the process derailing the negotiation due to conflicting interests.
Corporate Accountability International, a corporate watchdog, reported that companies with ties to the fossil fuel industry were some of the major sponsors of COP 21 in Paris. The report also revealed that various utility companies and multinational banks heavily invested to coal-fired power plants are involved with lobbyists for promoting fossil fuels.
Involvement of these companies in the climate change negotiations remains suspect particularly because global warming crisis is mainly due to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions.
John Leo Algo, a climate change advocate, points out that the presence of the fossil fuel industry in the UNFCCC negotiations creates a conflict of interest that may adversely affect the progress of international efforts to combat climate change. The influence of these companies, whose top priority rests on maximizing profits, could change the primary concern of these negotiations from the environment to the business agenda, Algo says.
For instance Engie, a prominent sponsor of COP21, the most valuable utilities company in the world whose energy output mostly comes from natural gas and coal at more than 70 percent. Previous COPs have also been sponsored by fossil fuel companies, the report said.
“It also gives these corporations the benefit of “greenwashing”, by sponsoring the global negotiations and boosting their pro-environment image while masking their true intentions, ”the climate change advocate says.
