Most governments remain hooked on oil instead of making the vital changes humans and the planet need for global energy transformation.

The self-destructive urge of humans to bring down our civilisation and destroy our children’s future grows stronger by the minute. Never has our addiction to oil looked more like the agonal ravings of a demented junkie.

With a perfectly straight face, world ’leaders’ talk about freeing up world trade in oil for the sake of the economy, when that is the primary pathway to human destruction. Almost none of them has mentioned the obvious solution: quit oil altogether and substitute renewable energy, as fast as possible. Their focus is on how to delay the inevitable.

In his address to the London Climate Action Week, UN chief Antonio Guterres stated the world is now in a double crisis of our own making:

Our world is facing first, a climate crisis pushing us toward higher temperatures and closer to catastrophic tipping points and second, an energy crisis exposing the folly of a world hooked on hydrocarbons.

Our world is facing first, a climate crisis pushing us toward higher temperatures and closer to catastrophic tipping points and second, an energy crisis exposing the folly of a world hooked on hydrocarbons.

Without oil, the future of civilisation would not be at risk. Without oil, there would be no world economic depression menacing us.

In a rational world, the crisis in the Arabian Gulf would have sent an unambiguous message to every nation: ‘Get off oil, before it bankrupts you’.

In a rational world, the blazing temperatures across the northern hemisphere would have sent an explicit message: ‘Save your children, before it’s too late’.

Alas, ours is not a rational world. Our governments consist mostly of ill-informed politicians lining their........

© Pearls and Irritations