The government did not have access to Kate Aronoff’s article

Nov 13, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Kaieteur News – Last week, Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo held a press conference in which he echoed a theme he has been on recently. His articulation is if Guyana does away with its oil industry, the world will still need dozens of millions of barrels daily and there are countries that are going to produce it.
What is shocking is that those barrels are going to come from super-rich countries that have bullet trains that connect cities thousands of miles apart in minutes while poor countries suffer daily road fatalities because donkeys and vehicles fight for the same road space.
Those extraordinarily rich countries are not going to take the money they earn from the fossil fuel industry and pass it on to poor countries so there can be some dent in poverty. The brutal fact about the fossil fuel industry is secretly clothed in deadly hypocrisy of the world’s wealthiest countries.
Fossil fuel is a definite danger that the world must confront. But look who is talking – countries that have used fossil fuel to get rich and continue to do so. Enter Barack Obama. He went to the COP26 meeting in Scotland and addressed the conference. Now read what a hypocrite Obama has been while he was president of the US.
In a devastating exposure of Obama as President, Kate Aronoff using statistics showed where Obama was a gigantic fossil fuel expansionist. Mr. Jagdeo did not have the benefit of quoting Aronoff since her article came out one week after Mr. Jagdeo’s press conference. But one wonders what he would have made of it if he had access to it at the time.
In a column titled, “Barack Obama has a nerve preaching about climate crisis,” in the Guardian of the UK for Wednesday, November 10, 2021, Ms. Aronoff has made incisive dents into the credibility of Obama. I think after her article, Mr. Obama’s so-called legacy will be severely tarnished.
Aronoff informs us that under Obama, there was a 750 percent expansion of crude oil exports. What was horrible to know was that this increase occurred days after the Paris Accord came into being in 2015. Ms. Aronoff reminds us that Obama boasted about fossil fuel expansion under his presidency at a gala event in the oil capital of the US – Texas.
Speaking to his audience in Houston, Mr. Obama said: “Suddenly, America is the largest oil producer. That was me people.” Ms. Aronoff stated that under Obama the US Import-Export Bank spent $35 billion on 70 fossil fuel projects around the world. Ms. Aronoff informs us that of the 92 percent excess carbon dioxide emission since the industrial age began, the United States has 40 percent of that figure.
Now here is what President Obama’s emissary to the Paris talks exclaimed when the issue came up of compensation for poor countries for damage from rising temperature caused by countries like the US, “The notion that there should be liability and compensation for loss and damage, that’s a line that we can’t cross.”
The more Obama appears on the world stage, the more his presidential failure will be on show. But more importantly, Mr. Obama’s star is fast fading. He campaigned for Biden strenuously yet Biden did not win a landslide, the Democrats did not win a Senate majority and lost several seats in the House of Representatives. It was déjà vu for Obama. In his re-election, he lost both chambers to the Republicans.
Obama is becoming the Midas Touch in reverse. He campaigned for the Democratic candidate in the governorship race in Virginia last week. The gentleman lost to a pro-Trump candidate in a state that voted for Biden in the last presidential election.
Could Obama hurt Harris’ chances if Biden does not seek re-election and Harris gets the nomination? I don’t think she will win the primaries but let’s say she does, she will lose especially if Obama campaigns for her. Obama symbolizes the failure of a colossal promise. He reminds the American people that a candidate from non-White America was given an opportunity yet American was not transformed.
They are going to feel the same way if Harris runs for the presidency. Non-White Americans including Blacks are going to ask if they are not voting for another Obama only to be disappointed as they did with Obama. He has been described as all gloss but no substance and a celebrity president. If America is going to avoid the return of Trump or defeat from a sickening pro-Trump presidential candidate, the best route is to avoid a Harris candidacy and for Obama and his friends, the Clintons, to keep away from the campaign.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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