By Robert Bradley Jr. — December 7, 2021
“Cutting funding to our Country and our gas projects will condemn us to energy poverty for the next decades. Yes, I understand that climate change is a life or death issue, but so is improving the wellbeing … of Mozambicans…. We need energy and we need it fast.” (Jocelyne Machevo, November 16, 2021)
Accessible, affordable, reliable, sustainable energy is a necessity, not a luxury as in centuries past. And nowhere is this more true than in the developing world. But will the needy get first-class or second-class energy? For the political/intellectual elite wed to climate alarmism/forced energy transformation, wind and solar and batteries are second-class all the way.
This mentality needs to be exposed, challenged, and reversed.
Paul Driessen titled his 2003 book, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power Black Death. Margit Wade’s recent Wall Street Journal piece, “The COP26 Plan to Keep Africa Poor,” began:
As a Senegalese entrepreneur, I can tell you what’s holding Africa back: lack of affordable energy. We live on a continent where the average annual income is less than $2,000, and the majority of people rely on fossil fuels for survival. The climate goals wealthy nations demanded at the recent COP26 summit aren’t only absurd, they are a death sentence for Africans.
Enter Jocelyne Machevo, described at LinkedIn as
“Energy Industry Expert | Leadership Development | Diversity, Equity & Inclusion | Local Content | Multi-Awards Winner |Talks about #energy, #youthleadership, #womenempowerment, and #leadershipdevelopment . With 5,628 followers
She raises key questions that haunt today’s international movement to phase out fossil fuels. While not questioning this goal (an intellectual and strategic mistake, in my view), she raises the issue of ‘why us, why now?’
Here is Ms. Machevo’s post:
When I first saw [the Stop Funding Gas in Mozambique protest] I was failing to understand how could someone raise such a strong message that could negatively compromise the lives of ~30 million people and the development of a whole nation. I chose to believe that these people were talking from a place of unawareness and misinformation. So I will just choose to inform you reading this message so you can understand what is Mozambique, where are we standing and where are we going.
Mozambique is a sub-Saharan developing Country and just like many other sub-Saharan countries, it is still battling to provide access to basic rights. Despite the significant improvements registered in past years we still have a long path to walk. Mozambique is also a resourceful country, besides many things we have discovered a huge amount of gas that placed us amongst the most prospective regions in the world.
As one can certainly understand, the gas industry also acts as a catalyst for further developments and industrialization, so we (Mozambicans) see in these discoveries an opportunity to boost our socio-economic development.
In Mozambique, less than 50% of its population has access to modern and reliable electricity. So we also see in these discoveries an opportunity to leverage on our own resources, using this gas, which happens to be relatively cleaner, to improve access to energy to the Mozambican households and serve as the base load required to boost industrialization. In simple terms, this is our plan as Mozambicans.
On climate change, we must understand that it’s not responding to our annual emissions, it is responding to our cumulative emissions. Data has shown that Africa’s CO2 contribution is minimal while the developed world was busy maximizing the benefits of their own resources and focused on their own development, which is nothing but fair and understandable.
It is now our turn to do the same, to exercise our fairness right.
We have decided to not romanticize and entertain solutions that will not solve our core problems. Renewables at this moment, cannot solve our energy poverty issues, we do not have yet the money, matured technology, infrastructure, policies, just to mention few.
The goal is net zero, the goal is carbon neutrality, let us focus on that. We are focusing on that! We are not saying we are not working towards the goal, we are saying we are working towards the goal adopting a strategy that works for us and it does not harm you.
Cutting funding to our Country and our gas projects will condemn us to energy poverty for the next decades. Yes, I understand that climate change is a life or death issue, but so is improving the wellbeing of our people. And improving the wellbeing of Mozambicans it’s an aspect I believe we are not willing to compromise. We need energy and we need it fast.
I once read or heard this “there is only one story for energy, climate change and development,” I couldn’t agree more.
—————-
For other posts on this issue, see:
African Energy Chamber: Fossil Fuels, Please (November 8, 2021)
Vietnam at the Energy Crossroads: Will it Choose the Best Way Forward? (June 30, 2021)
Nigeria Places Its Bet on Oil, Gas, and Coal to Secure Its Energy Future (April 26, 2021)
Renewable Energy vs. Africa’s Renaissance (July 1, 2019)
Don’t go looking for empathy from your local eco-fascist….you won’t find any.
Or a logical reasoned approach.
Nor will you find any from the eco-colonialists
One of the big problems for Mozambique’s gas development has been the murderous attacks by Islamic extremists, some from across the border in Tanzania, on the development projects. They are the local eco-fascists. You might ask who funds and arms them.
The green blob wants most people to be peasants in mud huts, so they oppose any development schemes raising people from mud huts.
the green blob want those that polluted the world during the industrial revolution to help pay for sustainable energy for the “peasants”. The world ecosystem cannot afford the same dirty industrial revolution to be used by the “peasants”.
These impoverished humans require energy they can afford. They cannot afford the 13 cents / kWh as per US the cost of cheapest electricity in the wilds of Africa will NOT be that cheap anyway – there is infrastructure to pay for, there is policing to pay for etc. Even the small modular reactors so often touted here will not provide localised power – where are they going to get the steam=water to drive the turbines and the cool water to condense the steam?
It really is fascinating how trolls have decided that CO2 is the ultimate evil in the world.
Despite the evidence that CO2 is necessary for life itself.
Despite the evidence that for most of this planets history, CO2 levels were at a minimum 10 to 20 times higher than they are right now.
Despite the evidence that for at least 95% of the last 20,000 years temperatures were much warmer than they are today, and life flourished.
Despite the utter lack of evidence to support the belief that weather is getting worse.
Despite the fact that reality shows that rich countries pollute far less than poor countries.
As always, the trolls have their preferred agendas and will continue to believe them regardless of what happens in the real world.
“….trolls have decided that CO2 is the ultimate evil in the world…”
Every religion needs a Satan.
ghalfrunt is a Myrmidon, and proud of it. Thanks, MarkW.
It’s called “Magical Thinking”
There is a one very simple reason (and 2 or 3 compounding factors) why it has come about and is endemic – on both sides of the debate.
C6H12O6
Many people have been successfully brainwashed by the ‘green blob’ by the constant use of pejoratives such as ‘pollution’ and ‘dirty’ in relation to CO2.
“… if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought …” George Orwell, Politics and the English Language.
Chris Hanley, that is an extremely important – and minimally recognized – statement.
Good for you to post that.
Don’t forget “images”.
My family makes fun of me because every time I see a Facebook post from a “green” activist or commercial organization of dark clouds being emitted by a stack I point out “that is back lit water vapor, and you shouldn’t pay attention to an organization that is trying to deceive you.”
Of course the only reason I am on FB is because they insist on using that vehicle to post pictures of our grandchildren 😉
You said “ Despite the evidence that for at least 95% of the last 20,000 years temperatures were much warmer than they are today” Can you provide a link to that data?
Closer to 10K years.
https://holoceneclimate.com/
David S, perhaps this will help you. This is a large white spruce in NW Canada at Tuktuyaktuk dated at 5000yrs old. It is still rooted. The modern treeline is 100km to the south, but you have to go several hundreds of km further south to find living white spruce of this size where it averages 4 to 5°C warmer than at Tuk.
You don’t have to be a climate or any other kind of scientist to understand what this tells you about climate 5000years ago. From this you yourself already can argue against today’s climate being unprecedented in its warmth or that 2 or 3 degrees warmer than today doesnt kill the planet. Oh I have many such examples including a wave formed beach, complete with driftwood of this size, on the now ice locked north coast of Greenland!
Gary, that’s a great image. I used it only yesterday to try and educate our local area council. Also had images of Otzi, 3000 and 1200 year old stumps in Canada and Alaska as well as 1000 year old artifacts from Norway. Such a simple concept that most should be able to understand, but alas, not our politicians!
Do you have a link to the Greenland beach and driftwood? It would be good to add that to my PowerPoint talks.
Said trolls don’t know a carbon in their bodies once came of CO2. CO2 is life without it they is nothing but a cold dead planet, no ecosystem.
pst, https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/11/28/small-modular-reactors-are-needed-in-african-countries
Mr. Soros will finance it gladly.
If they can’t afford 13 cents.kWh they certainly won’t be able to afford unsubsidised unreliable power
Exporting some of the gas would make it affordable. Just the same way as South African coal fired electricity made possible considerable export earnings from the Mozal aluminium smelter, and provided supply in the South of the country around Maputo where it is located. The main gas fields are in the much less developed North, offshore.
Maybe but the eco-colonists won’t allow that
and it still doesn’t make wind and solar reliable
I guess you have never looked at a map of Mozambique. It is on the coast of Africa. Part of it sits on the shore of Lake Malawi. It is crisscrossed by numerous rivers, including the Zambezi (on which sits the Cahora Basso hydro electric dam) and the Limpopo and the Elephant (which combined to inspire Kipling to write How the Elephant got its Trunk in his Just So stories).
Perhaps look at China, India and South East Asian countries climbing out of being 3rd world and consider the stupidity you have just posted.
The gnawing fear of Greens are healthy, happy , dark skinned people.
I have said this for years.
But why are the (globalist) elites so vigorously funding this climate change scam?
Because they want to stop progress, stop development, stop change.
Because stopping change is the way that they can indefinitely keep their place at the top of the pyramid.
The west spends billions of dollars on African health by providing “medicine”. If the funds were instead applied to providing clean water, sanitation and the base for an energy infrastructure African problems would decline substantially.
+1000
Something I’ve banged on about for well over a decade now
I submitted something to WUWT but alas, my writing is not very engaging
What they need are some smaller (50 -100 MW) natural gas power plants put together. The waste heat from the combusted exhaust can be captured and used to cool or heat greenhouse spaces where food crops can be produced, and jobs created. The cooled exhaust (CO2) can be pumped into the greenhouse growing areas, providing the food bearing plants with CO2 enrichment. There is a lot of distilled water that will be created due to the cooling of the natural gas exhaust. nutrients can be added to this irrigation water, and the balance of the water can be used in the power plant.
No Waste & No Emissions.
Sid,
What you have just desctibed is actually in the nascent stage of development in the western African region centering upon Equatorial Guinea using Wartsilla’s reciprocal engines.
Exceptionally nimble, adaptable hardware that will see significantly increased use in the coming years.
I saw a video tonight that talked about how Thomas Edison built a coal-fired powerplant in New York City and used the steam as a means to heat homes and buildings throughout New York City by piping it everywhere, and his steam pipe system is still in operation today.
The video said there was a “Great White Hurricane” that hit New York City on March 11, 1888, that dropped three feet of snow on New York City and did so much destruction to the infrastructure that much of it had to be rebuilt and because of this, Edison was able to afford to lay his steam pipes underground, whereas before the storm hit, the costs would have been prohibitive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Blizzard_of_1888
Tom, this is what happens in Ulaanbaatar, capital of Mongolia. They have a coal-fired power station on the out skirts of the city and the hot water is pumped via underground pipes.
You have to be very careful walking, especially after dark as the ‘street-kids’ remove the man-hole covers and live underground near the pipes.
I wonder why London and other UK cities don’t heat with steam?
Wouldn’t that be better than piping hydrogen gas to people?
Well said. Basic services are so obvious, so boring, and absolutely critical. Same here in West Virginia. Becoming functional is as simple, and as hard, as providing reliable water, sewer and electricity. They are the foundation for education and entrepreneurs
There is no better example to demonstrate what you just stated than the brand new, world class Procter and Gamble facility at Martinsburg right in your state.
This operation will continue to attract a wide array of supporting, ancillary companies/industries that – in self propagating fashion – prompts an ever widening ripple effect of economic growth.
The inverse, sadly, is true when idiotic, self destructive policies drive entrepenurial talent elsewhere.
I have had a conversation with someone I know, on the more left side of politics, who surprised me by suggesting that most of Africa’s problems since independence are the direct consequence of Marxism and the IMF.
Just imagine if the trillions of dollars p1ssed up the wall by the West on “Renewable” energy had been invested in electrifying Sub-Saharan Africa instead.
Don’t forget Mao killed millions in a vain attempt to make a better and more equititable world. He is still admired by many.
Notice how Xi Jinping looks quite a bit like Mao
Not only that. He was a child of the cultural revolution. And, he praises Mao.
Not quite, Xi was a victim of the Cultural Revolution, his family hailing from the upper class of Xi’an, the ancient capital of China. His father was deemed a bourgeois reactionary and jailed for 17 years, his sister literally harassed to death, pushed to suicide by the Red Guards, and Xi himself was deported to the countryside as a teenager.
Xi is from the nationalist wing of the CCP, he outflanked both the neoliberal globalist branch, close to Soros et al (aka the “Shanghai Clique” led by Bo Xilai and Jiang Zemin) as well as the hardcore Communist Youth branch to seize power in 2012. Xi is enormously popular with the average Chinese, having pulled China up from third place to the top economic power in the world today. The disposable income of the average worker in eastern urban cities has risen tenfold since the 00s.
Xi looks more like “winnie the pooh” which is why the pooh bear is banned in China.
‘Mao killed millions ‘Please stop personalising the death of these people ; it was a civil war and as such it was chinese people killing chinese people. That’s what civil war is . . Show me a Nation that has not experieced civil war. Why blame the leaders unless for politica gain ?
And as for making a ‘vain attempt to make a better and more equitable world’ what rubbish !
Mao wanted a to change China, not the whole bloody world . .
Those tens of millions of deaths occurred during the Great Leap Forward, after Mao was firmly in control. And, it is plain history that Mao wanted to become the leader of the world’s international communist movement. One reason for the millions of deaths in China was Mao’s insistence of trading food for Russian machine tools AND sending food and other aid to struggling Communist countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, to get them into his camp, not in the Russian camp. Stalin advised against the Korean war, which Mao backed. The massacre of thousands in Indonesia was directly due to Mao’s formenting a communist revolution there. The historical record is pretty clear on these points.
And perhaps Mao had nothing to do with the Cultural Revolution, nor the Great Leap Forward.
Just like Hitler was unaware that anyone might be nasty to Jews.
And of course Joe Stalin was shocked, shocked I say, when he found out there were hungry people in Ukraine and millions in the Gulags.
You are presumably having a laugh.
But this crap is the opposite of funny.
More likely you are paid by the CCP.
Getting very aggressive there as well as silly Martin ( paid by the CCP ?).
And quoting all that history from Russia and Germany, are you an historian ?
I did not bring up Hitler nor Stalin. There are leaders in the West who have been just as ruthless. You should understand that the world is a very big place and it’s history is full of violence and graveyards filled with corpses. Blaming Mao Zedong and China for the worlds woes won’t help, nor will abusing me . .
WUWT is clearly making waves these days since it is now attracting Wu Mao trolls from the CCP like “Geoffrey Williams”.
It isn’t the first time we’ve had a commenter trying to burnish the CCP’s reputation for rembini.
But perhaps you are ultra-woke or just thick.
I note that isn’t just history you struggle with, but geography. Hitler was Austrian, Stalin was Georgian. Both European, so from the ‘West’. So perhaps the fact that Mao was Chinese excuses him from just criticism?
Any way you slice it Geoff, the Cultural Revolution is a very dark chapter of world and Chinese history, resulting in the death of tens of millions of Chinese through the implementation of communism in its purest, most dogmatic form (second only to the Khmer Rouge reign of terror).
Thankfully Deng Xiaoping was able to set China on a much saner course rooted in its confucian cultural heritage.
Australia has not experienced civil war. That is but one nation. Geoff S
One could argue that the very settlement of Australia was civil war . .
You reckon the British were the insurgents then, Geoffrey?
This was years after the civil war was over.
It really is amazing how little actual histories these apologists for mass murderers know.
Dear Leader = Der Fuhrer
Mao certainly changed China by starving millions of his fellow Chinese to death.
What good is a modern energy infrastructure (as South Africa once had) if graft, corruption and socialism remains?
A glimpse into the mind of a climate “believer”.
Here is Ms. Machevo’s post:
“Cutting funding to our Country and our gas projects will condemn us to energy poverty for the next decades.”
And this:
“The goal is net zero, the goal is carbon neutrality, let us focus on that.”
Absolutely incoherent. It is like “Alice on Wonderland”, believing in so many impossible things before breakfast.
These people need to make up their minds. Sitting on the fence, attempting to appease both sides simply does not work.
They need to make up their minds what they are trying to do, take their stand, and fight for it. Attempts at appeasement just gives ammunition to your opponents, and guarantees that your project will go nowhere.
The world needs a demonstration that CO2 and temperature in the atmosphere are related in known ways, that is, by the emergence of an accepted mathematical measure like Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity.
Do readers not find it incomprehensible that a global movement based on scientific models has taken off, before the most fundamental hypothesis part of it is resolved?
Geoff S
“Do readers not find it incomprehensible that a global movement based on scientific models has taken off, before the most fundamental hypothesis part of it is resolved?”
I certainly find it astonishing. I would never have thought assumptions and assertions could go so far in a scientific context.
Human-caused Climate Change is not based on anything concrete. It’s all speculation. And our leaders are planning on spending Trillions of dollars to fix a problem they can’t prove even exists, or will exist in the future.
Human-caused Climate Change is a mass delusion of unprecedented proportions.
“Human-caused Climate Change is a mass delusion of unprecedented proportions.” & ” . I would never have thought assumptions and assertions could go so far in a scientific context.”
Nah; Been there before with the Evolution dogma.
Same techniques over many years being used to push both lies onto the population.
A recent jest may be germane, Tom.
Originally it seems to have been constructed for our very own Boris Johnson.
But by all means substitute the Beloved Leader you are lumbered with.
It goes:-
“How many Boris admirers does it take to change a light bulb?”
“None. Boris just says he has changed the bulb.
And the admirers clap and cheer, sitting in the dark.”
The world would be a much nicer and safer place if everyone had abundant energy. Keeping people in poverty while decrying their misery is shameful.
The Green Blob policies are an attack on the poor and working poor everywhere.
Energy Poverty the One Economic Activity Growing in Developed Countries
Another example of systemic racism. A policy that looks neutral on it surface, but which damages PoC.
Nailed that point.
They also just made a big attack on Mozambique, with the bogus Omicron variant, supposedly coming from there. This gas discovery may be the reason for this attack. And, on top of it all, Omicron has yet to even kill as many people as Alec Baldwin.
And, on top of it all, Omicron has yet to even kill as many people as Alec Baldwin.
Thank you for making my day!
It’s amazing how often that happens with left wing proposals.
Climatistas are racists.
Pretty much every leftist I have ever known is a racist.
They are the ones who have spent decades pushing the nonsense that minorities aren’t able to survive without the “guidance” of white liberals.
Deafening silence at WUWT on this :
China-Mozambique cooperation yields numerous benefits
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1206694.shtml
Never mind the neo-cons, neo-liberals, Obama-cons, Biden’s bluster, and all the rest of the transatlantic swindlers – pursue development!
The BRI is the way forward – and is actually exactly what FDR’s TVA did in the 1930’s. Sooner or later the USA will get on-board, if London does not nuke the planet.
CCP shill.
Yes we get it. West evil, communists good.
No silence from me on that topic. Abandoning countries like Mozambique to the Chinese is utter folly. They get access to the resources, while enslaving the local population with debt and buying off the ruling class with bribes and arms to suppress the citizenry. Who do you think has been arming and funding the Islamist extremists who have been attacking the gas developments in Northern Mozambique? 20 years ago the West built Mozal and the power supply for it. The lives of local citizens were improved beyond recognition, not least through less violence including from their government. Now we abandon them to fester, and let the Chinese take the spoils.
ROFL yeah because becoming a puppet country or territory to China works out so well … just ask Hong Kong.
Time and again, China lends to countries in order for them to build infrastructure. When the country can’t afford to pay back the loan, China seizes the assets the country put up as collateral. However since this colonialism isn’t being done by the British, you support it.
That’s a pretty short-sighted view of China’s plans in Africa. Their ultimate goal is to turn Africa into a developed 2 billion people market for its goods, as well as a large labor pool for them to outsource their lower-end manufacturing, the same way the West outsourced its lower-end manufacturing to China in the late 20th century.
China wants to turn Africa into 2 billion consumers for its Xiaomi and Huawei phones, its Haier aircons and washing machines, its $4,000 electric cars and $600 motorcycles, on top of a modern infrastructure with high speed rail, housing, highways and airports. And you know what? Africans want smart phones, cars and air conditioning, as opposed to having western NGOs come in to dig wells and put small solar panels on their mud huts. They want modern cities with modern infrastructures, new airports, highways, railways, powerplants, not mud huts and shantytowns, which is all they got with 100 years of western “development”.
Africa will lead the world in economic growth later this decade and into the 30s, along with SE Asia, and China will be the engine of that growth.
I spent 2007 in Mozambique looking for gas in the wrong place. Commonly charcoal was used as a main cooking fuel, it was imported into the city on bicycles. The forests round the city were denuded to scrubland. Cheap natural gas will be life saving for the people, who lived in severe poverty. Lack of decent lighting is a terrible handicap when it gets dark at 6:30 pm and stays that way till 5am. I’m glad the government is helping to fund the LNG plants in Mozambique even if does help the frogs.
cheers
As happens next door in Tanzania. Every vehicle heading toward Dar es Salaam is pilled high with bags of charcoal, and where does the charcoal come from, they have to cut down their forests
And also in Kenya to the north. The Greenies just don’t realise how harmful to the environment their idealistic policies really are.
Climate change is a life and death situation? From a coming glacial period perhaps, but not from CO2 or fossil fuel use.
If I can convince you of a false premise, I can lead you anywhere.
“I understand that climate change is a life or death issue…”
If that is your understanding you have been misled.
Show us the observed data, or a study based on that data, that indicates the climate is doing anything other than it has always done. (Models are neither data nor studies.)
People died in floods, droughts, hurricanes, heat waves, cold snaps – whatever, well before the start of the industrial age (and the dreaded CO2 increase).
A 1C rise in temp (over 100 years) is trivial compared to daily fluctuations where you live and of course compared to 200 miles N or S of your location.
But until an alternative is affordable for your country, fossil fuels are necessary to get the citizens of Mozambique to anywhere near the standards of “developed” countries.
From the article: “Yes, I understand that climate change is a life or death issue,”
No, it’s not. You have been duped by unscrupulous people using climate change for political purposes.
The Developing World should not be restricted in how they produce electricity. There is no evidence CO2 is a problem, so they should be governed accordingly.
Michael Mann has led you down the garden path. Wake up and smell the coffee. The future is bright, don’t let the naysayers tell you different, because they don’t know what they are talking about, they just pretend they do.
I want to make greenie’s read this.
They already know all that it is part of their plan … you seem to think it is collateral damage.
¨In 1995, Bradley left Transwestern to become director of public policy analysis at Enron, a corporate staff position. A primary job was preparing speeches for chairman and CEO Ken Lay, but Bradley also was involved in legislative and regulatory issues.¨
So the piece here from a so-called free market energy source has Enron connections?
¨His criticism of climate alarmism and Enron’s “political capitalism” is evidenced by memos posted on the website, http://www.politicalcapitalism.org.¨
First hand knowledge then of the Ranch at the Crooked E.