杏吧原创

鈥淭HEIR objective was to make it more difficult for decision-makers to connect actions with risks. Because they want to sell oil? Probably.鈥�

That鈥檚 how Gary Yohe of Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, describes Saudi Arabia鈥檚 tactics at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change negotiations earlier this month (New 杏吧原创, 14 April, p 11). The upshot? Oil heavyweights influenced the report鈥檚 summary for policy-makers so that it does not show as clearly as it might how reducing fossil fuel burning could limit the impacts of climate change on human society.

Yohe, a coordinating lead author for the IPCC, acknowledges that nations have a right to staff their delegations as they want. Most countries sent delegates only from their environment ministries, but of the seven delegates representing Saudi Arabia at the negotiations, four were dispatched by the Ministry of Petroleum and Mineral Resources. The ministry has close links to four oil companies, including Saudi Aramco, the world鈥檚 largest oil producer.

鈥淥f seven Saudi delegates, four were dispatched by the Ministry of Petroleum鈥�

One particularly contentious figure in the summary for policy-makers described the impacts that varying amounts of warming, from none to 5 掳C, would have on ecosystems, water, food, coastlines and human health. In its initial version, which remains in the full text of the report, the figure included a graph showing how the impacts could be limited by capping greenhouse gas emissions, according to the different scenarios that modellers use to predict future climate.

Saudi Arabia, which owns 25 per cent of the world鈥檚 known petroleum reserves and is the world鈥檚 largest exporter of petroleum, opposed including the emissions scenarios graph. After five meetings to discuss it and eight versions, it was dropped from the summary.