We must leave fossil fuels unburned, Gore says, adding the transition to clean energy will be ‘unstoppable’
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It’s not possible to listen to petroleum industry executives defending their reckless extraction of oil without feeling that we are living in an age of madness.
In a recent private conversation under the Chatham House rule, one of the world’s most senior industry leaders, who is considered to be at the more moderate end of the spectrum, insisted that we are going to burn all the world’s hydrocarbons despite the consequences.
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It is wishful thinking on the part of the oil company executive you are quoting that it will all be burnt. It cannot all be burnt. Even if there is no government action, the constraints of mother nature will show it is a non-sustainable pathway.”
There are many people in the hydrocarbon industry, in oil and gas and coal, who would like to believe they will be the driving force in energy for the next century,” Stern said. “But what they are proposing would be mad and reckless, so the question will be how fast will the pressures be to do something different.
This has been quite a painful journey for me personally,” he concluded. “I so badly wanted to believe that the combination of reason, rigorous science and good people would enable elegant transition strategies to emerge in those companies. But we learn as we go. And go those companies surely will, if not in the near future.”
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