Climate Change and the Middle East
New Zealand Vice President, B’nai B’rith Australia/New Zealand
Deputy Editor, Climatic Change Journal
On Dec. 12, 2015, 196 nations signed the Paris Climate Accord—which limits the rise of global temperatures, by cutting down on climate change emissions from fossil fuels, and rapidly adopting green energy sources. This requires reducing emissions of heat trapping greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal and oil combustion. The switch to transitional and renewable energy sources such as natural gas and solar energy is likely to change the political landscape of the Middle East.
The impacts of global warming are now becoming very apparent—the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center shows that Hurricane Harvey was a 1-in-1,000-year flood event and unprecedented in U.S. history. Climate change has made extreme rainfall events more intense in recent decades, and more frequent. Therefore limiting global warming must be a top priority. The impacts of global warming are now becoming very apparent—the University of Wisconsin’s Space Science and Engineering Center shows that Hurricane Harvey was a 1-in-1,000-year flood event and unprecedented in U.S. history. Climate change has made extreme rainfall events more intense in recent decades, and more frequent. Therefore limiting global warming must be a top priority. |
Scaled-up action in energy efficiency and renewable energy is vital to deliver the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and these measures will also be the largest contributors in moving beyond the NDCs and limiting warming to 2°C.
Natural gas is very much a transition fuel. It dramatically reduces carbon emissions and air pollution, switching power generation from coal to gas and use as a transport fuel. The State of Israel is correct to speed up plans with Greece and Cyprus to develop a pipeline channeling gas to Europe from newly discovered east Mediterranean reserves. This also gives Israel some independence from imported coal and oil.
Recently there has been strong growth of solar energy with photovoltaics (PV) –an area where there is great Israeli expertise. The scientific journal Nature published findings, in its August 2017 issue, showing that PV deployment has been consistently underestimated. PV has had the greatest growth rate of any renewable energy resource, being 40 percent per year over the past decade. Updated climate change mitigation scenarios show that PV could be the dominant electricity generation technology, supplying 30-50 percent of the energy by 2050. This allows for the energy system becoming more electricity intensive, especially with the growth of electric vehicles.
The geopolitical consequences of such changes will be momentous. Firstly the international politics has demonstrated the influence of a product (oil) dependency on relations among nations. During the 20th century the dependence of developed countries on oil has been an element of power in the hands of the Gulf States. However the longer years of dependency of the Gulf States on developed countries such as the U.S., and lack of knowledge as well as expertise, even relating to oil are neutralizing this element of power. This will take pre-eminence over the reliance on oil. The current rapid shift away from oil to natural gas as a transition fuel will take power away from the Gulf States and shift it partly toward Russia with the development of gas infrastructure. Further out the development of PV will diminish oil politics even further.
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