Hotter or Poorer? Is it actually in the interest of oil producing states to fight climate change?
We deep dive on: the role of Arab Countries in fighting climate change and the psychological and game theory considerations that affect Gulfi leaders stances on the issue
To commemorate 9 full months of the Disorder pod and more than 850,000 downloads, I celebrated with a live show with two of my newest and most impressive super-ordering friends: Olivia Azadegan and Hassan Damluji. Listen here.
Hassan Damluji is a British-Iraqi development expert and author The Responsible Globalist: What Citizens of the World Can Learn from Nationalism.
Olivia Azadegan is a British-Iranian climate policy expert, a Fellow at the Women Leaders in Energy and Climate Change at the Atlantic Council and a winner of a Forbes 30 under 30 Award.
For any who may doubt their chops: just watch Hassan Order the Disorder by cleverly pushing back against my analytical framework, proposing genuine solutions and doing it all with such an adorable accent and hipster sweater. Then after you watch him, tell me with a straight face that you are not impressed:
Similarly, anyone who can watch Olivia’s innate mega-ordering energy and not swoon, may not be truly human:
And if you found that AI generated crown a little bit too silly and think brilliant and attractive women who are world leaders in their fields shouldn’t be cut off when they are speaking and should have AI-algorithms place too much of a focus on their appearance due to the clickbait nature of social media promotion which LLMs have learned, and you very rightly want to hear her full answer :-)…that is here:
Ok… Now that we have had those celebratory 9 month anniversary teaser videos out of the way and I have your full attention, let me lay the groundwork on the episode a bit more:
Many of today’s problems are global and even well-intentioned actors acting alone cannot solve them. Climate change is the perfect example of what happens when no one leads/takes responsibility for a collective action problem – no action is taken, the problem builds, and it becomes seemingly unmanageable/unfixable. Without strong collective action and tough compromises, climate change will continue to devastate lives and livelihoods. In this episode, we look at why various MENA countries are pursuing their current mix of seemingly conflicting policy choices, and whether there is a path towards genuine multilateral collective action that addresses the crisis. One of the key features of our era of Global Enduring Disorder is that this coordination is not currently happening and we are suffering the consequences of suboptimal outcomes … Nowhere is this more true than over climate change. Climate then is the domain that we should investigate individual actors decision matrices, incentive structures, and game theory calculations:
Is it actually in the long term interest of most major states, citizens, and major multinational corporations to work together to fight climate change and to create global governance institutions which penalize carbon emissions and incentivize the green transition… or is it rational for certain states or corporations say oil producing states and major IOCs to fight the creation of global coordination mechanisms and delay the energy transition… seeking to profit from the current high demand for the fossil fuels that they either export or produce…
That is the question understudy in this episode: I am of the belief that it is genuinely in everyone’s long term interests to work hand in glove and facilitate the energy transition… However, I invited Hassan who challenges that view and asserts that it is not necessarily in the interest of certain oil producing countries to see a speedy energy transition and coherent global governance of carbon emissions come into effect.
The backstory for how this panel came about is that I was very honoured to be invited a few months ago to a Middle East expert’s writer’s retreat at Ewen in the Cotswolds. I want to give a shout out to Nick Pelham and Andrea Malouf our hosts for that lovely event… It was an experience and event that has genuinely changed my life.
One evening there were two guest speakers who had done advisory work for sovereign clients in the Gulf and attended prestigious climate summits like COP… they spoke on Gulf countries’ policies towards climate change and problematized for the audience the question ‘do OPEC members have an actual incentive in halting climate change or due to the era of enduring disorder’s perverse incentive structures and our current disordered global governance… might these countries actually have a genuine desire to do nothing and possibly even actively seek to halt international efforts to decrease carbon emissions, so as to help their economies stay afloat and maintain their positions of power in global affairs.’ Hearing this discussion… I had the idea for this novel ‘live show’ style panel episode…
That seems like enough background on the episode.
Here is some intellectual think tank context on Climate Collective Action Diplomacy
We have already done an episode on COP: Episode 13 IT’S GETTING HOT IN HERE WITH FIONA HARVEY AND ARTHUR SNELL: https://pod.link/1706818264/episode/57a09a9714313530fa16475c09396f7b
For more on COP and collective action:
How MENA countries face achieving climate resilience: https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/04/assessing-climate-adaptation-plans-in-the-middle-east-and-north-africa?lang=en
Exploring the Energy Transition and Net-Zero Strategies of Gulf Oil Producers: https://www.bakerinstitute.org/research/exploring-energy-transition-and-net-zero-strategies-gulf-oil-producers
A profile of our Queen for an episode: https://www.forbes.com/profile/olivia-azadegan/
And now for a subscriber only full Video of Hassan, Olivia, and I shooting the breeze about incumbency thinking among IOC CEOs and Gulfi leaders, gas flaring, and how to Order the Disorder by incentivizing action on climate change via reputational punishments!
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ordering the Disorder to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.