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Rishi Sunak’s government will grant 100 new licenses in the North Sea, two years after his country hosted the biggest climate summit. And while London increases its commitment to fossil fuels, Bolivia and Uruguay see part of the consequences of climate change.
The first 100 licenses will arrive in the fall. Rishi Sunak’s British government defends the decision by stating that oil and gas exploration in the North Sea will allow the United Kingdom to reduce its independence from suppliers such as Russia. He adds that protects 200,000 jobs.
However, new exploitations could take it away from its climate purpose. The UK has pledged to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
One of the reasons why many countries and companies are happy talking about net zero by 2050 is because it is a long time away, but we must be very clear: you cannot be a climate leader and look for more oil and gas. And that’s what the UK is trying to do now. Hypocrisy on a grand scale, said Friends of the Planet spokesperson Jamie Peters to France 24.
Furthermore, this goes against the repeated calls of the UN climate change expert panel, the IPCC. They urge that all carbon emissions be reduced by almost half by 2030. And the fossil fuel industries are the ones that emit the highest percentage of CO2 of the global total.
The reason for the urgent call is that the impacts of global warming are increasingly evident. In Bolivia, for example, drought and pollution are increasingly affecting Lake Titicaca, which the country shares with Peru.
Due to the lack of significant rain, the river that passes by the town of Cohana, and that flowed into the lake, dried up. Titicaca also suffers from garbage pollution, which is why a group of Aymara volunteers cry out for help to save the water sources that give it life.
Further south, in Uruguay, the effects of various environmental situations are affecting animals. This winter, more than 5,000 penguins died and were found on the coast of Uruguay. These seabirds were in their migration process from southern Argentina to Brazil.
In addition, they found hundreds of other dead animals such as turtles, sea lions and dolphins. “In the necropsy, what I see is that they were animals that were very skinny. Obviously the lack of food, overfishing and climate change are affecting them on the coast,” Richard Tesore, Marine Fauna Rescue activist, told France 24.
While this is happening, the production of fossil fuels does not cease, in the constant dichotomy between economic development, based on oil, and environmental protection.
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