Saudi Minister of Energy: OPEC is historically responsible for only 4% of carbon emissions, compared to 24% for America, 22% for China

By Fahd Talal

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, Minister of Energy, said: OPEC countries “are historically responsible for only 4% of carbon dioxide emissions, compared to 24% for the United States of America and 22% for China, according to recent statistics.”

The Minister of Energy continued, “How do we accept, assume, or have equal or similar responsibility when we contribute 4% of the total percentage of carbon dioxide emissions? This is the crux of the problem and the difficulty of dealing with climate change is the sense of inequality.”

He added in a dialogue session entitled “Security, the Future of Energy and Sustainable Development,” however, we must acknowledge that in the Sharm El-Sheikh summit and the Dubai summit, this structure was clarified and realism was extinguished, and as a result of this realism, the discussion and dialogue that was achieved was reshaped, and now it has become politically correct to speak frankly. We will move from the land of imagination to the land of reality.

Regarding the suffering of some countries from the transition to the renewable and clean energy model when they do not have electricity or cooking fuel, he said, “How can we ask an Indonesian to abandon its economy and the responsibility for economic growth when there is still a large amount of energy poverty and clean cooking energy in Indonesia?”

The minister continued, “How can we ask Ghana, Nigeria, or Madagascar to switch to renewable energy? They are in a daily struggle to obtain their livelihood by cutting down trees and setting fire to trees to turn them into charcoal. How can we ask the people of Madagascar to switch to renewable energy when they have no means of obtaining electricity? “How can we equate these people and burden them with this bill that robs them of many resources that they could have used for realistic development goals?”

The Minister of Energy concluded his speech, “We will continue to fight to deal with climate change with justice and equality among all, stressing that the problem does not lie in the Paris Agreement, but rather in the strange interpretation of the content of the Paris Agreement, and the problem is not in approving the issue of climate change, but rather in how to deal with it with justice and fairness and in accordance with national conditions.” Taking into account the countries and trying to return the discussion to a completely different structure, instead of top to bottom, to completely reverse it and be bottom to top.”