Robinson criticises Biden for licencing more fossil fuel permits than Trump
Former president turned climate justice activist Mary Robinson has criticised Joe Biden for issuing 'more licensing permits than Donald Trump'.
Former president turned climate justice activist Mary Robinson has criticised Joe Biden for issuing "more licensing permits than Donald Trump", and called for heavy taxation on the "disgusting amount of profit" generated by fossil fuel companies.
Speaking at the Sustainable Futures Forum in University College Cork (UCC), the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and Chair of The Elders global public figure group criticised the €4tn a year profits generated by fossil fuel firms.
"What I like about The Elders is that we are very independent, we speak on reliable evidence, a science-based approach. I will be doing that at Cop28".
She said she would be "calling out" countries that don't take seriously the global stocktake, or phasing out fossil fuels, at the UN climate change summit, which begins in Dubai on Thursday.
The global stocktake is when countries will review progress towards the Paris Agreement goals of 2015, including the goal of keeping global warming to well below 2C, while pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5C.
Mrs Robinson praised the Biden administration for heavily backing clean energy in its Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, but said this is taking place alongside licensing for oil and gas when countries should be committed to phasing out fossil fuel.
Data from the US Government show that the Biden administration approved 6,430 permits for oil and gas drilling on public lands in its first two years, compared to the Trump administration's 6,172 in the same period.
"The fossil fuel industry makes €4tn a year, that's a disgusting amount of profit. It really is," she said as she criticised €7tn a year in fossil fuel subsidies that she said should be switched to a "concentration of clean energy".
Mrs Robinson said she was worried that the Cop28 event would be overshadowed by the current crisis in Gaza, which is happening while the climate crisis is hitting a "worrying tipping point" for humanity.
Climate science should be elevated to the same importance as health science was during the Covid-19 pandemic, she said.
"We need chief scientific officers to have the same insight in government that the health officers had during Covid," she said.
