Amsterdam, Netherlands – The International Energy Agency has stated in their new Net Zero Roadmap released today that there is “no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net-zero pathway.” In addition, the agency has ruled out new oil and gas fields, after 2021, as well as new coal mines and mine extensions.
Responding to the IEA’s new 1.5°C-aligned net zero scenario, Jennifer Morgan, Executive Director of Greenpeace International said:
“Finally the IEA is starting to get it: If we’re to have a fighting chance of meeting the objectives of the Paris Agreement, the world needs to phase out fossil fuels. We can’t even burn – or afford to burn – all the reserves we’ve currently got.
“To avert climate catastrophe and biodiversity devastation, and to maintain an ‘unwavering policy focus on climate change in the net zero pathway,’ governments and regulators have to act and that means an end to licensing for new oil and gas now. The IEA has spelled it out once and for all: if you’re in a hole, stop digging.”
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Contact:
Greenpeace International Press Desk: [email protected], +31 (0) 20 718 2470 (available 24 hours)
Philippa Duchastel de Montrouge, Communications Officer, Greenpeace Canada, [email protected], +1 (514) 929-8227
Discussion
It must still be convenient for the fossil fuel industry to have such a large portion of global society too tired and worried about feeding, housing and even guarding their families against COVID-19 while on a substandard income to criticize it for the global environmental damage it causes, particularly when not immediately observable. (And who needs ‘carbon sinks’ when Earth’s natural environment can be used for our carbon dumps?!) Mass addiction to fossil-fuel-powered single occupant vehicles surely helps keep the average addict's mouth shut about the planet’s greatest and still very profitable polluter, lest they feel like and/or be publicly deemed hypocrites. In Canada, not only do consecutive Conservative and (neo)Liberal federal governments heavily promote and subsidize our fossil fuel industry; our mainstream print news-media have also come on board. Except for the Toronto Star, the conglomerate Postmedia owns all of Canada’s major print publications. Postmedia is on record as being formally allied with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of “energy” (i.e. fossil fuel), but also the most polluting of crude oils — bitumen. [Source: “Mair on Media’s ‘Unholiest of Alliances’ With Energy Industry”, Rafe Mair, Nov.14 2017, TheTyee.ca] For me, most pressing is: should the promotion of massive fossil fuel extraction, even Canada’s own, be a partisan position for any newspaper giant to take, especially considering its immense role in global warming thus climate change? And, at least in this case, whatever happened to the journalistic role of ‘afflicting the comfortable’ (which went along with ‘comforting the afflicted’), especially one of such environmental monstrosity?