Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali reprimanded a BBC reporter who questioned him about the harmful environmental impacts of the South American country’s oil and gas extractions along its coast, drawing the approval of many online who admired how he shed light on an “existing hypocrisy” influencing worldviews on the climate change crisis.
In a sitdown with Stephen Sackur of BBC’s HardTalk show, President Ali was quick to criticize Sackur after the journalist questioned him about the country’s booming fossil fuel industry that would reportedly add more than 2 billion tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Sackur also mentioned Guyana’s offshore productions will garner the country roughly $150 billion over the next two decades.
Ali cut Sackur off and countered his line of questioning, asking Sackur about his knowledge of Guyana’s forests.
“Let me stop you right there. Let me stop you right there. Do you know that Guyana has a forest––forever, that is the size of England and Scotland combined? A forest that stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon? A forest that we have kept alive,” Ali told Sackur.
“Does that give you the right to release all this carbon?…” Sackur asked.
“Does that give you the right to lecture us about climate change?” Ali interrupted. “I’m going to lecture you on climate change because we have kept this forest alive that stores 19.5 gigatonnes of carbon that you enjoy, that the world enjoys, that you don’t pay us for, that you don’t value, that you don’t see a value in, that the people of Guyana has kept alive.”
“Guess what? We have the lowest deforestation rate in the world. And guess what? Even with our greatest exploration of the oil and gas resource we have now we will still be net zero, Guyana will still be net zero with all our exploration we will still be net zero,” Ali continued.
Ali continued to take Sackur to task over what he called an “existing…
Read the full article here
