A Caribbean leader, conscious of the historical domination of developing countries of the south by the industrial world, recently took on the responsibility of defending his country and the Southern Hemisphere against a BBC journalist with an agenda.
Guyana’s President Irfaan Ali did so with capacity, determined intention and distinction, when BBC Hard Talk host Stephen Sackur attempted to make Guyana feel guilty of advancing world environmental pollution through the production and use of its offshore hydrocarbon resources.
None should be persuaded to think that the interview, circulated on a number of internet platforms, was mere journalistic pursuit of a story by an aggressive interviewer. It amounted to no less than Sackur’s effort to transfer responsibility for the overheating of the world’s atmosphere to a developing country.
In a very no-nonsense manner, President Ali asserted himself on the interviewer and reminded Sackur that it is the civilisation of the north, starting during the 18th century Industrial Revolution, and spanning the world thereafter, which has brought the predicted environmental disaster on the world of today.
Already, a number of low-lying islands and countries are being inundated by rising tides; wildfires are burning up millions of hectares of land, and placing in serious danger the attempt to limit the heating of the world environment to no higher than the 1.5-degree level since the Industrial Revolution.
In rebuffing the attempt, President Ali showed his understanding of the threats and the responsibility of all nations to keep their expulsion of dangerous gasses into the atmosphere within limits. To do so, he let Sackur’s audience know that his country has left thousands of miles of its vast interior free from intrusion, thus contributing significantly to the production of oxygen, and assisting in the expansion of biodiversity. For his part, Sackur had no response, and in any case, the Guyanese President made it known that his country is a net producer of clean air and oxygen to the world.
What was displayed in the interview, which must have a worldwide circulation on the famous BBC, is a major problem facing the development of countries of the South: why should these countries not pursue their people’s modernisation and advance through the same methods used by the industrial world? More so, those making objections should consider that dispersion of the hazardous materials is being done mainly by the multinational corporations of the north.
Those from the north should also consider, before seeking to indict countries such as Guyana, now utilising their resources for human advancement, that the United Kingdom is digging deep in its North Sea hydrocarbons exploration at jet speed, while the United States extracted a record-breaking 13.3 million barrels of crude per day during 2023, and is now the producer of the largest quantity of natural gas in the world.
To compound the development bias against the countries of the south, the major polluters have been seeking to institute a system that the greatest offenders will be judged not on the basis of the quantity of noxious gas projected into the atmosphere, but by the size of the population, so that countries such as Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago will be deemed, with their small populations, the major polluters.
