Fossil of the Day 10 November 2021 – Australia and Brazil
Meet some of the countries burning the planet with more fossil fuel investments
Australia finally wins the first Fossil of the Day.
The day has finally come. After bagging four fossil awards so far at COP26 Australia has now won its first GOLD (applause, please). All that hard work and effort has paid off after:
No new policies to reduce emissions or phase out fossil fuels;
Failing to deliver ambitious NDCs;
Approving three new coal projects in the last months;
Ruling out signing the Global Methane Pledge;
An ‘inaction plan’ for EVs in favour of gas guzzling cars;
Rolling out the red carpet for gas-giant Santos in their COP pavilion;
Inviting consultation on ten new areas for offshore petroleum exploration;
Not updating the 2030 target.
Now safely back in Oz, the PM has outdone himself by announcing another truly brilliant #ScottyFromMarketing plan. To keep the fossil fuel ball rolling he’s going to invest a whopping $740 million in fossil fuel tech, such as Carbon Capture Storage, which Australia’s public green bank is going to be forced to swallow.
All eyes are on Glasgow and draft texts at the moment but Scott John Morrison, you’re still catching our eye by flying the carbon emissions flag down under – whatever next.
Brazil wins second place for transporting an entire country back in time
A report released, this week, by the Brazilian NGO Instituto de Estudos Socioeconômicos (Inesc) showed that Brazil has increased the volume of direct and indirect subsidies granted to fossil fuel companies by 25% from 2019-20 – an astronomical $22bn. This eclipses, by some way, the country’s education budget, which the nation’s Chamber of Deputies has reported fell by 56% between 2014 and 2018, from about $2.3bn to just over $1bn.
Decisions that lead to such breathtaking disparity are very difficult for us to comprehend. We started to understand the mindset that can lead to such inequality after hearing comments from the Brazilian Minister of the Environment, Joaquim Leite, during the COP26 plenary, on Wednesday:
“We have to recognise that where there is a lot of forest, there is a lot of poverty.”
On first reading, we mistakenly assumed the statement actually came from the travel journal of an opium-addled 18th century missionary coloniser. But no, those words were actually spoken in Glasgow, in 2021. Unfortunately, they only go to confirm the Brazilian Government’s illogical, and very dangerous, rationale. These are sobering figures and comments that make us wish we had a time machine to send Bolsanaro’s government back to the prehistoric age, where their ideas and policies belong.
ENDS