Project Syndicate: The Case for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty

The northern summer of 2021 has brought a series of record-breaking natural disasters. The list – which includes intense flooding in China and Western Europe, heatwaves and drought in North America, extreme drought in Africa, and wildfires in the sub-Arctic and Southern Europe – is long, growing, and global.

This is the beginning of climate chaos, and it delivers a stark message: we can no longer rely on historical patterns to inform predictions of future natural disasters. Notably, the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) more clearly attributes extreme weather events to humans’ influence on the climate, pointing out that fossil fuels have caused 86% of carbon-dioxide emissions in the past decade.

For decades, a small number of extremely rich and powerful private and state-owned firms have profited greatly from selling these fuels while deceiving the public and influencing governments to forestall political action to tackle climate change. Big Oil’s strategies to preserve its business model for as long as possible are well documented. Facebook ads promoting their “climate friendliness” and “green gas” were viewed 431 million times in 2020 alone.

Such corporate deceit is especially problematic for countries in the Global South, which are striving to improve their economic security and risk locking themselves into dirty infrastructure assets that will become stranded. In fact, every region has high renewable energy potential. International collaboration and support, particularly finance from the Global North, is essential to realizing it.

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