West's Historical Emissions — What Guyana's President Didn't Tell The 'BBC' In His Viral Takedown Of It's Climate Hypocrisies

Last month, Guyana’s President Irfan Ali showed the United Kingdom’s (UK) mouthpiece BBC the mirror on the hypocritical positions taken on climate change by the West.

The Indian-origin President Ali was giving an interview to a BBC journalist who asked a veiled question about how carbon emissions released due to the extraction of crude oil from the recently discovered oil deposits in Guyana will impact the environment.

Notably, in 2015, ExxonMobil discovered large deposits of crude oil and gas just 190 kilometres off the Guyana coast, which could slingshot Guyana as the world’s fourth-largest offshore oil producer, putting it ahead of Qatar, the United States, Mexico, Norway.

According to studies, by the 2040s, Guyanese oil reserves can potentially generate revenue worth more than $150 billion.

The BBC journalist asked President Ali about the impact of the 2 billion tonnes of carbon emissions that will be released into the atmosphere when the oil is extracted from the seabed.

This is where Ali took down the interviewer, pointing out the hypocrisy of the West. He stated that Guyana has forest reserves the size of the UK and Scotland combined and even after the extraction, Guyana will still be net zero in terms of carbon emissions.

However, what he didn't talk about is the historical carbon emissions that Western countries have released into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began.

To put it simply, historical emissions primarily consist of carbon emissions generated by Western countries — mainly the United States and Europe — since the 1700s whose negative impacts are now being seen today and which has led to the Earth being 1.2°C warmer than the pre-industrial revolution times.

Carbon emissions or more specifically carbon dioxide (CO2) gas released hundreds of years ago still persists in the atmosphere, still contributing to global warming and the rise of average temperatures of Earth.

Since 1851, the US and Europe account for 25 per cent and 22 per cent of the total CO2 emissions respectively.

That’s close to half the emissions of the world done by just 29 countries.

The US alone has released 400 billion tonnes of CO2 since 1751, which is twice the CO2 emissions of 200 billion tonnes released by China (the world’s second-largest polluter.)

Moreover, a large part of the American population does not even believe in global warming. In fact, former US president Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Paris climate change pact, a wrong which was reversed by the current US President Joe Biden.

India, the world’s most populous country, which is currently the third-largest polluter in the world, behind the US and China (13 per cent), has contributed less than 4 per cent to the historical emissions between 1850 to 2019. Its per capita emissions are about one-third of the global average.

To add insult to injury, continents, yes, you read it right, continents and not individual countries — Africa and South America — have only contributed 3 per cent each to historical carbon emissions.

This comes down to a tiny 0.01 per cent of historical emissions when counted across individual countries of Africa over a span of 266 years.

Contrast this with the UK, which contributed to half of the world’s emissions until 1882. Europe, until 1950, remained the largest emitter, the majority of which was done by the UK.

This starkly highlights the contribution of Western countries to the rise in average temperatures and its resulting consequences, compared to developing and less developed countries.

In essence, the West used cheap energy to industrialise but wants to deny the rest of the world the same opportunity. When other countries try to improve the standard of living of their citizens, the West tries to guilt-trip them to impede and pull them down, just like how the BBC journalist tried with Guyanese President Irfan Ali.

However, this hasn't worked. Both India and China have rightly pushed back against such behaviour of the West over the last two decades.

It's time that Europe and the US recognise that they are responsible for the global warming the world has seen thus far and therefore must shoulder the majority of the burden of tackling it.

The first thing the West needs to do towards this is drop its condescension and high moral perch on the issue of climate change to countries which are still developing.

But given that the world needs to act quickly to reverse course, the West must provide these countries access to viable technologies and energy alternatives that can help them reduce emissions without adversely impacting their development trajectories. It must put no-strings-attached climate financing on the table before making demands of the countries that are industrialising only now.

It's high time the West wakes up to the fact that mere virtue signaling on climate change isn't just ineffective but dangerously counterproductive. Such hollow gestures only fuel pushback and embolden factions like the Republicans in the US who staunchly deny the very existence of this pressing global crisis.