The very source of the Middle East’s riches threatens to ruin it. Climate change will bring even hotter temperatures, rising sea-levels inundating low-lying Arabian Gulf countries, food shortages and droughts destabilising volatile, populous neighbours.
But the counters to global warming considered so far, promising as they are, have two fatal flaws, detailed below. A solution is on the horizon - if the wealthy oil exporters have the imagination to seize it.
The region has become rich on the back of oil and gas. But burning these fuels contributes to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that threatens disastrous climate change. As the continuing battle over the Keystone XL pipeline in the United States shows, some of the key consumers of the Middle East’s exports are trying to move away from oil.
Click here to read the full story.
