New, large oil-fields, LATAM, CARICOM
Businesses and wealthy people in Guyana are profiting from a
big
increase in oil extraction, though it does not "trickle down" to the rest of the
population. Meanwhile this big local increase in oil extraction will increase the world's
global heating.
Similar things are happening in other countries of the
Caribbean region and South America.
We have known since 2011 that the known fossil fuel resources were
too
much to fit in the world's carbon budget. Extracting all that fossil fuel, without some
surprise development, would doom civilization. The discovery of additional fossil resources in
Guyana makes that excess even bigger; it stimulates the pressure from short-sighted businesses
and politicians to burn too much. (We do not know precisely how much is too much, and when we
do fall over the climate cliff, it will take years to ascertain that fact.)
A big increase in the total extraction rate of fossil fuels pushes the world further into the
rush to disaster, adding to the cuts in extraction rate that the world needs to do elsewhere,
which the world is already failing to do. Whether that increase happens in Guyana, the US, or
some other country, the effect is the same.
Arguing that it is OK to extract more in Guyana because
that
country actually consumes little of the extracted oil is hiding the emissions around under
the rug. The climate defense movement is already campaigning to stop measuring the emissions
of fossil fuel companies by counting only their own consumption.