The end of oil?

The Kyoto climate agreement marked a turning point: the conference signalled the need to expand renewable energy industries and to begin to phase out fossil fuels in the face of an inescapable logic.

"The Kyoto Protocol is weak but the fossil fuel lobby has lost ground." That was the verdict on a summit which fell far short of agreeing a global reduction target for greenhouse gas emissions of 20 per cent (of 1990 levels) by 2005 - a target which Greenpeace believes is consistent with climate protection.
Nevertheless, the fact that any kind of agreement was reached at Kyoto is significant. Step by step, from the Rio Earth Summit to Kyoto and beyond, the facts of climate change have become a matter of political consensus. Actions, however, remain the true measure of success.

Backing renewables
Governments must create incentives to generate the shift to renewable energy via solar, wind and wave technologies instead of subsidising fossil fuels. In advance of the next climate conference in Argentina in November 1998, every one of the 160 nations participating at Kyoto can turn word into deed by shaping a global energy strategy which favours renewables.
Advocacy by Greenpeace of renewable energy is driven by the harsh imperatives of carbon logic. Greenpeace has calculated that burning more than one quarter of existing, known fossil fuel reserves will be enough to cause devastating climate change with impacts extending from storm, flood, drought, deserti-fication and sea level rise to species decline and the migration of disease. Why seek out and develop new hydrocarbon resources when emissions from existing gas, coal and oil reserves will be sufficient to create catastrophic climate change on their own? That is the stark question posed by carbon logic.

Acting for change
Against this background, Greenpeace will continue to press for an end to all new oil exploration and a phasing-out of fossil fuels in time to avoid dangerous climate change. Greenpeace occupied Rockall - a barren outcrop in the 'Atlantic Frontier' zone - to draw public attention to the vast resources being sunk into frontier exploration for oil that we cannot afford to burn.
That the earth's climate is changing in the face of human interference is no longer disputed. Nowhere is change more apparent than at the North and South poles where some areas are warming at two or three times the global average. Scientists on board the Greenpeace vessel Arctic Sunrise have documented the break-up of Antarctic ice shelves and major disruptions of key wildlife populations.
Greenpeace will continue to monitor at first hand these early warning signals while pursuing twin energy objectives: an end to fossil fuel exploration and an increased investment in renewable alternatives.