Insane in the Methane
Why the environmental left can’t take “yes” for an answer.
“Don’t you know I’m loco?” – Cypress Hill
Objectively, the mission of all non-profits ought to be to work themselves into redundancy, celebrate success, and close up shop. Such organizations emerge—usually with good intentions—out of market or government failures, and once those failures are suitably addressed, time, effort, and money are best spent elsewhere. Whether it’s a rare disease that has been cured or an opposed mining project finally cancelled, the achievement of the mission should conclude with a raised glass to success, excess funds returned to donors, and the satisfaction that comes with a job well done.
This almost never happens in real life. The term “non-profit” implies that nobody is enriched financially from a charity’s existence, but the truth is a bit more nuanced. Every non-profit is composed of people who rely on its continued existence. Salaries, bonuses, and benefits all flow from donor to employee, setting up a classic principal-agent conflict. The donor wants a specific problem addressed, while employees are incentivized, at least financially and professionally, to not only maintain a sense of perpetuity around their founding crisis but to also expand its borders. Perversely, solutions morph from an honorable objective to an existential threat, and tangible progress is attacked.
The 28th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP28) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change is underway, and more than 300 environmental non-profits are absolutely fuming about a significant breakthrough in the global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. This is from an open letter they signed to President of COP28 last Friday (emphasis in the original):
“COP28 has the potential to be an historic moment in confronting the climate crisis. The COP28 Presidency has an opportunity to secure a transformational negotiated outcome, if it secures a robust negotiated energy package, including an unambiguous agreement to end all new oil and gas expansion, a clear call to equitably and rapidly phase out all fossil fuels, and a commitment to triple deployment of nature-positive and community-beneficial renewable energy and double energy efficiency.
However, instead of focusing on this historic opportunity, the COP28 Presidency appears to have been encouraging fossil fuel companies to make yet another set of hollow voluntary pledges, with no accountability mechanism or guarantee the companies will follow through. Releasing another in the long succession of voluntary industry commitments that end up being breached will not make COP28 a success. Voluntary efforts are insufficient, and are a distraction from the task at hand.”
And just what, pray tell, has worked these organizations—some as well-known as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club and others as obscure as 350 Aotearoa and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability—into such a snit? We turn to Bloomberg for the frightening details (emphasis added throughout):
“Exxon Mobil Corp. and Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, the world’s largest private and state-sector oil companies, led a pledge by 50 oil and gas producers at the COP28 climate summit to cut emissions from their own operations. The deal is controversial given none of the companies are agreeing to reduce oil and gas production. But they are planning to stem releases of methane, one of the most dangerous greenhouse gases, to near zero by 2030 and stop routine flaring of natural gas.
The initiative was spearheaded by COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber, the chief executive officer of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., who’s invested political capital bringing the oil and gas industry into the climate fight. ‘We must do all we can to decarbonize the energy system we have today,’ he told delegates.”
The obsession with methane leaks has been growing for some time, reaching a new level of intensity as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies approach commercial feasibility. With the ascent of natural gas as a cleaner-burning alternative to coal and the prospect of CCS eliminating the resulting CO2 emissions, environmentalists should be celebrating. Rather, the professional environmental class has been doing its best Lucy-with-the-football imitation, insisting that the abatement of CO2 emissions alone is insufficient to justify the commodity’s continued use. This new fear being generated over invisible and difficult-to-detect methane leaks all along the natural gas supply chain plays up methane’s outsized ability to heat our planet once released into the atmosphere. With the surprise agreement announced at COP28, the fossil fuel industry seems to be calling their bluff.
What is the layperson to make of this bruhaha? How real is the methane leak issue and how tangible are the industry’s proposed solutions? Is the COP28 breakthrough to be celebrated or panned? You know the drill—it’s Doomberg time.