Environmental Policies: Barking Up the Wrong Tree

(Photo : Markus Spiske on Unsplash)

While a few eyebrows may have been raised at the choice of the United Arab Emirates—a country whose economy is almost entirely dependent on fossil fuel revenues and which plans to increase its oil output in the coming years—as the location for this year's COP28 climate talks, the choice of Sultan Al Jaber as the event's president has set off alarm bells in the heads of activists and politicians alike.

As chief executive of the UAE's Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), many commenters are pointing out Al Jaber's potential conflict of interest. "You wouldn't invite arms dealers to lead peace talks. So why let oil executives lead climate talks?" said Alice Harrison, fossil fuel campaign leader at Global Witness.

A group of United States senators, congresspeople, and members of the European Parliament have penned a joint letter to the President of the European Commission, Ursula Van der Leyen, and US President Joe Biden—as well as the Secretary General of the United Nations and the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change—warning against the "undue influence" that an oil industry executive may have on discussions, calling for him to be replaced, and citing the potential it would have to undermine negotiations and interfere in the UNFCCC's decision-making process.

Questionable Policies

Behind the lofty stated ambitions and pretty speeches of earnest politicians, there often remain insurmountable paradoxes that leave the public scratching their heads as to what their elected officials really are doing to combat climate change, especially when their declared goals are in opposition to their national economic interests.

For example, one of the key objectives laid out in the UAE's Environmental Policy is to reduce the use of plastics, and yet in April 2023, the UAE announced that it would be launching a new Dh1,000 polymer banknote. The front of the banknote features a model of a NASA space shuttle while a nuclear power station adorns the back, indicating that the UAE, like many other countries that have taken this course of action, sees the switch to polymer banknotes as a progressive move; "The new banknotes feature symbols and images that reflect the UAE's history and heritage, as well as embody the new start to keep pace with the development and modernization aspiration," said the Governor of the Central Bank of the UAE, Khalid Mohammed Balama, at the time of the launch. However, these new plastic banknotes are, of course, made from oil, and recent studies show that they are not as beneficial as first stated.

Indeed, not only is the carbon footprint of polymer banknotes three times that of cotton-based banknotes, but although polymer banknotes can be recycled, this just means that they will end up in another plastic product which has an 89% chance of being incinerated, ending up in a landfill, or soiling our oceans and countrysides. At a time when plastic consumption and littering have gone through the roof—in part due to the increased demand for masks and single-use plastic bags and trays for home deliveries during the pandemic—we should be looking to reduce our dependency on plastic, not introduce a potential new source of plastic pollution.

This is just the latest in a long line of questionable environmental policy decisions, and it is this type of contradictory strategy that ends up making the general public skeptical about the need for or utility of an ecological transition at all.

The motor industry takes a wrong turn.

A famous case of wrongheaded energy policy was the push for biofuels in the early 2000s. The transition to biofuels, which are fuels derived from organic matter, was initially portrayed as a solution to reduce reliance on fossil fuels. However, the production of crops for biofuels has led to extensive deforestation, particularly in Southeast Asia. This not only contributes to biodiversity loss but also releases significant amounts of stored carbon dioxide when forests are cleared. Although biofuels emit less CO2 than standard fuels, and biofuel crops also absorb atmospheric C02 as they grow, they are not a clean energy source per se, and the biofuel craze may have slowed the transition to actual clean transportation solutions.

More recently, the American government has made a massive push to "green" the American transportation sector with the Inflation Reduction Act, which promotes the acquisition of electric vehicles (EVs) as a central part of the government's plans to reduce carbon emissions. However, nearly 80% of the electricity used to charge these vehicles in the USA comes from fossil fuels, so the overall carbon footprint of EVs on US roads is still high. Similar to the European Union's support of the diesel industry in the 1990s, in many respects, the Inflation Reduction Act is little more than the type of economic protectionism that Donald Trump was roundly criticized for.

The Risk of Public Skepticism

The fight against global warming cannot be a success if we continue to support inefficacious or counter-productive policies. Not only do the above examples, and countless more like them, waste time and resources when the pressure is on to make wise, informed decisions—ineffective policy decisions negatively affect public opinion about the usefulness of environmental action; policies that prove futile can diminish the public's trust in environmental governance.

According to a 2022 Ipsos study, although 70% of people claim to be concerned about the impacts of climate change, only 39% believe that their government has a clear idea of how to work with civil society to tackle climate change; according to the study, there is a lack of faith that the authorities have the necessary plans in place and can make significant progress in tackling climate change in the coming years.

The politicization of certain climate-related issues—due in part to the polarisation of American politics, which has infected some circles of European politics—means that ill-considered environmental policies may end up doing more harm than good in the long term. If the public loses confidence in the effectiveness of government action, they are less likely to elect politicians who make climate policy a priority, which could in itself have a profound impact on the fight against climate change.