Michael Shank, adjunct faculty at the NYU SPS Center for Global Affairs, writes in Newsweek on big oil, why the political finger-pointing must stop, and the need for the US to lead by example, show the way, and invite others to participate in decarbonization.
“ With 2023 ranking as the hottest year on record and 2024 estimated to break last year’s record, one would expect the world’s biggest economies — like the United States, which is the world’s largest producer of oil and gas — to take climate change more seriously. Especially given the record number of billion-dollar weather disasters that hit U.S. infrastructure in 2023. And yet last year was another record-breaking year for global carbon emissions from fossil fuels — the highest ever — and attendees at the United Nations climate talks in Dubai last month were unwilling to phase out fossil fuel burning completely.
With the U.S. presidential election this year, there’s a lot on the line for the planet. But it’s not self-evident, based on what went down in Dubai, that Democrats will lead at the pace necessary to help slow the climate trends above. In Dubai, there was too much U.S. finger-pointing at petrostates and too little willingness by Democratic Party surrogates to call out their own party’s lack of climate leadership.”