From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern

The governments of the GCC are ostensibly laying plans for the diversification of their economies and reduction of their reliance on fossil fuels. Just last March the UAE announced the inauguration of a $600million solar power plant aimed at meeting some of its residential power demands. Saudi Arabia allegedly hopes to meet one-third of its electricity demand using solar energy by 2032. All the GCC governments have some version of a 2030 national envision that entails a diversification of the economy intended to maintain high standards of living while reducing reliance on oil revenue. But given the vagaries of the neo-liberal economic model and the systematic political impotence of the Gulf governments, it is hard to put a lot of stock in these visions.

For the most part, GCC governments are hoping to kick the can down the road by addressing immediate challenges rather than embarking on strategic long-term change. As evidenced by ongoing demands for government housing and jobs in Bahrain, for example, the average citizen considers economic development as a right owed to her by her government. On one hand the government cannot realistically, sustainably continue to provide for its citizens in the manner they await; on the other hand rampant corruption and resource mismanagement result in even less government responsiveness and efficiency than can be expected. Sustainability and other macro concerns of economics and ecology rarely enter the debate as far as popular political demands are concerned. There is no reflection upon the cosmos of world we inhabit – what petro dollars have done to our society and whether we want to proceed down that road. The remarkable ecological indifference with which most Gulf residents go about their daily lives is shocking.

This problem of getting anyone to care is in fact at the heart of most of the GCC’s troubles today. To use Bruno Latour’s extremely pertinent turn of phrase, the foremost challenge of the Persian Gulf in the age of the Anthropocene boils down to turning matters of fact into matters of concern. A matter of ‘concern’ does not refer to a problem merely keeping one up at night: I use it to imply a holistic understanding of a problem and an assumption of a collective responsibility to address it. Caring about carbon emissions means not just carpooling to work, but simultaneously recognizing and caring about the economic, socio-political and cultural /religious principles according to which the country runs. It requires an acknowledgment of our place in the wider scheme of things, as we relate to other countries and the planet itself. It requires that we reorient our conception of justice and progress from the idea that we also are entitled to whatever other (seemingly happier) people have to a more sophisticated one rooted in concern about our place in the world.

Some of this indifference can be pinned down to a simple lack of awareness and/ or perspective. The average citizen is concerned with providing a decent standard of living for herself and her family – immediate problems of housing and employment take precedence over the macro contexts of economic and political theory. A powerful sentiment often observed among discontented populations in Bahrain, for example, is that of perceived inequity: why do other citizens of the Gulf have so much while we have so little? Why can our government not provide for us as much as other Gulf governments provide for their citizens? The same sentiment reigns in Saudi, where class and income inequality have reached alarming levels.

The future of the region depends not on a certain model of democracy or a certain energy technology winning out, but on first of all getting both leaders and citizens of the Gulf to acknowledge the existence of a problem, assume personal responsibility for it, and then go about finding solutions and building consensus in accordance with their unique cultural, religious and contextual environment. All political or economic demands and reform agendas must be framed in a larger ecological setting for them to be of any real value. As long as the average citizen thinks of herself (or at least is only able to act) as a subject of rule rather than an agent of change, there is little incentive to assume any responsibility for the status quo. The Gulf is now an endangered homeland until its people develop the sense that they are as bound to the fate of the planet as everyone else.

Who’s afraid of the Apocalypse?

We Gulfies have it good. We enjoy a standard of living on par with most industrialized nations, something that manifests itself in more than just a voracious appetite for luxury products. The unfortunate combination of a naturally arid environment, abundant fossil fuels, and lax energy policy have meant that we consume far more electricity and fossil fuels than elsewhere in the world. We have used oil revenues to transform swathes of uninhabitable desert into dense, comfortable cities where we have become used to a lifestyle completely removed from the physical realities of our environment. We have come to rely on cheap and abundant electricity, systemic air conditioning, desalinated water, food imported from all corners of the globe, and cars that cost next to nothing to run.

So how do we compare to other nations? Let us start with the Gulf’s carbon footprint. A carbon footprint measures the overall carbon dioxide and methane emissions for which we are responsible on a national level. According to World Bank data presented by sustainability advocacy group Carboun, “the Arab world, which constitutes 5% of the world’s population, emits just under 5% of global carbon emissions, … and except for Saudi Arabia, no single Arab country is responsible for more than 1% of global emissions. The energy use of an average Arab person is still below the world average and less than half that of an average European.”[1] The news seems at first reassuring, but it belies the individual consumption habits it represents. Viewed on a per capita emissions basis, it emerges that four of the GCC countries are ranked among the top 5 carbon emitters in the world, “with Qatar topping the global list at a staggering rate of 12 times the global average” (El Gendy).

Carbon emissions represent only the big picture. A Deloitte whitepaper citing the latest available data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) reveals that “in 2008, each person in the GCC countries consumed on average 9.650 TWh [terawatt hour] of electricity against a global average of 2.782 TWh and a Middle East average of 3.384 Twh.”[2] By comparison, Americans consumed 13.985 TWh, the Japanese 8.063 Twh and Europeans 6.285 TWh. Tellingly, 47% of the GCC states’ energy use was residential, compared to a global average of 25% and an American one of 33%. “In fact, head-to-head when absolute numbers are compared, each GCC resident is almost at par with the average consumer in the USA: both using more or less 4.5 TWh of electric energy in their respective homes in 2008” (Deloitte).

The obvious question that now presents itself, as far as residents of the Gulf are concerned, is ‘so what?’ Presented with these facts, why should the average citizen of the Gulf care if her electricity consumption is on par with that of the United States, or if her family drives more cars than 3 European families do? After all, she is entitled to her fair share of her country’s natural resources, resources that if she didn’t use someone else would swoop in to exploit. Does not the Gulf have as much right to development as the rest of the world? In the name of what principle should it be asked to lag behind?

For now, it would appear that very few people in government or civil society place the looming ecological crisis high on their priority list. Driving the excessive patterns of consumption is a combination of environmental and socio-political factors. The unavoidable need for air-conditioning, water desalination and private transport represents part of the equation. The other part of the equation is socio-political: GCC governments have subsidized petrol and electricity prices for so long that it has become a political impossibility for them to now suggest a reduction or reversal of these subsidies. Citizens are completely removed from the real cost of these services and have come to regard the cheap exploitation of their one valuable natural resource as an unquestionable right. Electricity rates are so cheap and bill payments so little enforced that there is virtually no incentive on the consumer end to reduce consumption. Governments are in fact already struggling to keep up with their domestic demand, as can be evidenced by the increasing frequency of blackouts and brownouts during the summer months in some countries.

In my last post I talked about the Anthropocene, and the fact that collective human activity has now become a force of geological change on our planet. Our levels of energy consumption render us extremely comfortable, but they are outrageous, unsustainable, and downright irresponsible. And energy consumption is but the tip of the iceberg. Unless we adhere to planetary boundaries — measures of a ‘safe’ operating space for the planet — we are almost certainly driving our species down the path of extinction. The infographic below shows the nine boundaries and the extent to which we’ve exceeded them in  yellow.

The trouble with such apocalyptic talk, though, is that it’s actually rather easy to file away in the back of our minds and not give  another thought. The idea of human extinction is so large, so unreal, that we cannot identify with it in the same way we identify with something more personal: an illness or a death in the family. One must, ironically enough, be taught to care about the apocalypse (which, on a side note, explains why religious teaching dwells so much on the end of times, and incessantly tries to relate the afterlife to the present). In trying to rekindle our sensitivity to the state of the planet, we have to start with our expectations for ourselves. We have to consider that rather than expecting to work hard to trade up (cars, homes, vacations), we have to work hard to trade down if we expect ourselves, much less our children, to survive at all.

Not that I meant to end on such a downer. Tune in next week for more thoughts on the Gulf, the Anthropocene, and where we fit in it all.

---

[1] El Gendy, Karim. “Two trends of energy and carbon emissions in the Arab World.” September 2011. http://www.carboun.com/energy/two-trends-of-energy-and-emissions-in-the-arab-world/

[2] “Energy on Demand: The Future of GCC Energy Efficiency.” http://www.deloitte.com/assets/Dcom-MiddleEast/Local%20Assets/Documents/Industries/Energy%20&%20resources/E&R%20whitepapers/me_er_whitepaper4_energy_efficiency.pdf.