The Kingdom has not had an easy press on its attitude to global warming. It has been portrayed abroad as being as much in a state of denial about it as American neocons. The accusation is that it does not support alternative energy because oil revenue would be hit and so it stubbornly refuses to accept the existence of climate change.
This is unfair and untrue. Individual Saudi businessmen, like businessmen elsewhere, may carp at having to pay more to safeguard the environment, but it is not the government’s view. Saudi Arabia signed and ratified the Kyoto Protocol — more than can be said of the US, the world’s biggest polluter. It has contributed to solar power research. The possibility of developing greenhouse-gas-free nuclear energy in collaboration with the Russians is currently under discussion.
The fact that, despite being heavily dependent on the production and processing of oil and gas, the government is genuinely concerned about the issue — and not merely because of the likelihood that when the Kyoto Protocol runs out in five years’ time, its successor will oblige the Kingdom, as a major industrializing nation, to significantly cut emissions. It is looking to minimize damage done to the environment from hydrocarbons and energy consumption now. Thus Saudi Aramco, for example, has an environment protection department to ensure that the company operates in an environmentally responsible way. That covers not just preventing pollution to air, sea and land, but also educating Saudis about pollution. Three years ago, Aramco won the GGC award for best environmental work. Aramco also has an industrial-waste minimization program to enable gases to be recovered.
Clearly much more can be done — and has to be done. Global warming is as much a threat to Saudi Arabia as anywhere else. A warning this week from the WHO that millions on the subcontinent face increased risk of malaria, cholera, hunger, heatstroke and asthma because of global warming should not be seen as someone else’s problem. The same bleak picture can be painted for the Arabian Peninsula where temperatures are projected to rise an average of between 3 and 4.5 degrees (compared to half that for India). That cannot but have disastrous effects on the country’s development and its health. Malaria already exists in some provinces. It must not be allowed to grow — or spread. Places like Jeddah are thankfully malaria-free at present, but with such a temperature rise, who can say that will be the case here in a few year’s time? Dengue has already made its appearance in the city. Will people want to live or work in such an adversely changed environment?
That there appears to be a change of heart about it in the White House is encouraging. But this cannot be left solely to the US or Europeans or China, now the world’s most polluted country and expected to be replace the US as the leading source of greenhouse gases soon. We all have a role to play.
