Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough by Holly Jean Buck

Author:Holly Jean Buck [Buck, Holly Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: political science, Public Policy, Environmental Policy, Commentary & Opinion, science, Global Warming & Climate Change
ISBN: 9781839762345
Google: JS9GEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 2021-10-19T23:26:10.829109+00:00

They ask: Are Russia’s oil companies underestimating the potential of climate policy and overestimating the future demand for their products? It’s hard to say—there are two conflicting visions of reality here.

Russia has a large nonhydrocarbon sector, which should make it more capable of pivoting. But much of the nonhydrocarbon sector is uncompetitive on global markets and is dependent on domestic demand, which in turn is driven by the total value of oil and gas revenues.26 There was a program of modernization and diversification, promoted by Dmitry Medvedev, but the urgency around it dissipated during around 2010, when oil prices were at $100/barrel. Those revenues were instead put toward social welfare and rearmament. This made the collapse of oil prices a few years later even more difficult. The economic outlook grew grimmer with Western sanctions in response to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the involvement in eastern Ukraine. Plans to diversify the economy are contingent on a thriving hydrocarbons sector, argue Michael Bradshaw and colleagues. “In stark contrast to official rhetoric, Russia’s current policy course is that of a country doubling down on its bet that hydrocarbons will support economic (as well as social and political) development well into the future.”27 They explain:

There is a simple explanation for the apparent reluctance of Russian policy-makers to prepare for a world in which demand for hydrocarbons either plateaus or declines: they simply do not believe that there is a significant chance of this taking place, at least not in the next few decades.28

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