B1 · Intermediate
12 min
climateenergygeopoliticsscienceenvironment
El Campo en Llamas: Gas, Guerra y el Clima
The Field on Fire: Gas, War, and the Climate
Fletcher breaks down this story in English. Octavio reacts and expands in Spanish. Follow along with the live transcript, tap any word for its translation. Intermediate level — perfect for intermediate learners expanding their range.
So there's a story from this week that I think most people completely missed, because it got buried under all the missile counts and ceasefire talks.
Explosions at the South Pars gas field, in southern Iran.
Bueno, mira, South Pars no es un campo de gas normal.
Well, look, South Pars is not a normal gas field.
Es el campo de gas natural más grande del mundo.
It is the largest natural gas field in the world.
Irán y Catar comparten este campo enorme bajo el mar.
Iran and Qatar share this enormous field under the sea.
Right, and I want to make sure people understand the scale here.
We're not talking about a regional energy supply.
The South Pars field, combined with the Qatari side, which they call the North Dome, holds roughly forty percent of the world's proven natural gas reserves.
Es que es un número increíble.
It is an incredible number.
Cuarenta por ciento de las reservas de gas del planeta están en ese lugar, debajo del Golfo Pérsico.
Forty percent of the planet's gas reserves are in that place, under the Persian Gulf.
And here's what gets me: the climate conversation almost never touches on what happens to emissions when this kind of infrastructure gets hit in a war.
We talk about carbon targets, we talk about the energy transition, but we don't talk about this.
A ver, cuando un campo de gas arde, el problema más importante para el clima no es el dióxido de carbono.
Well, when a gas field burns, the most important problem for the climate is not carbon dioxide.
Es el metano.
It is methane.
El metano es mucho más peligroso para el clima a corto plazo.
Methane is much more dangerous for the climate in the short term.
For listeners who want the numbers: methane is about eighty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2 over a twenty-year period.
So when gas infrastructure burns or leaks, the climate impact is immediate and severe.
Mira, el gas que no se quema en una planta, que simplemente escapa al aire, ese gas es el peor escenario para el clima.
Look, the gas that does not burn in a plant, that simply escapes into the air, that gas is the worst scenario for the climate.
Los científicos lo llaman una fuga o una emisión fugitiva.
Scientists call it a leak or a fugitive emission.
I covered the Kuwait oil fires after the Gulf War in 1991.
Saddam Hussein's forces set over six hundred oil wells ablaze when they retreated.
The smoke was visible from space.
And that was a climate event that nobody really planned for.
La verdad es que los incendios de Kuwait en 1991 fueron un desastre ambiental enorme.
The truth is that the Kuwait fires in 1991 were a huge environmental disaster.
Emitieron más de dos millones de toneladas de dióxido de azufre y muchos millones de toneladas de carbono.
They emitted more than two million tons of sulfur dioxide and many millions of tons of carbon.
Fue una catástrofe.
It was a catastrophe.
And South Pars is a different kind of infrastructure.
It's not just extraction.
It has refineries, processing plants, pipelines.
When that kind of complex burns, the emissions profile is extremely difficult to calculate.
Bueno, y también hay otro problema.
Well, and there is also another problem.
South Pars es muy importante para la economía de Irán.
South Pars is very important for Iran's economy.
El país exporta mucho gas a través de este campo.
The country exports a lot of gas through this field.
Si el campo está dañado, Irán pierde mucho dinero.
If the field is damaged, Iran loses a lot of money.
Look, let's talk about the historical context here, because South Pars wasn't always this central to global energy.
Iran only really developed it seriously in the nineties, partly because Qatar was developing their side, the North Dome, at a furious pace.
Es que Catar transformó su economía completamente gracias a ese gas.
The thing is, Qatar completely transformed its economy thanks to that gas.
En los años noventa, Catar era un país pequeño y relativamente pobre.
In the nineties, Qatar was a small and relatively poor country.
Ahora es uno de los países más ricos del mundo.
Now it is one of the richest countries in the world.
The extraordinary thing is that Iran and Qatar share this massive field and they've had, let's say, a complicated relationship with it.
Qatar put a moratorium on new development for twelve years because they were worried about depleting the reservoir.
Sí, y Irán siempre pensó que Catar tomaba demasiado gas del campo compartido.
Yes, and Iran always thought that Qatar was taking too much gas from the shared field.
Fue una fuente de tensión política durante muchos años entre los dos países.
It was a source of political tension between the two countries for many years.
Right, so now you have strikes on this field in the middle of a war, and I keep thinking: what does this mean for the climate commitments that countries made just a few years ago?
The Paris Agreement, the COP pledges, all of that.
Mira, la verdad es que los acuerdos climáticos no tienen ningún mecanismo para la guerra.
Look, the truth is that climate agreements have no mechanism for war.
Cuando hay un conflicto armado, las emisiones del conflicto no aparecen en las estadísticas oficiales de los países.
When there is an armed conflict, the emissions from the conflict do not appear in the official statistics of countries.
Wait, say that again, because I don't think most people know this.
Military emissions, war emissions, they are specifically excluded from climate accounting frameworks.
They have been since Kyoto in 1997.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Los aviones militares, los barcos de guerra, las explosiones, los incendios de infraestructura, todo eso no entra en los cálculos de carbono de los países.
Military aircraft, warships, explosions, infrastructure fires, all of that does not enter into countries' carbon calculations.
Es una laguna enorme en el sistema.
It is a huge gap in the system.
I mean, some researchers have tried to estimate war emissions.
One study on the first year of the war in Ukraine concluded it produced more greenhouse gases than the entire annual emissions of Belgium.
And that's a relatively contained conflict compared to what's happening now.
A ver, es un problema muy difícil de medir.
Well, it is a very difficult problem to measure.
Pero la guerra en Irán es mucho más grande que la guerra en Ucrania en términos de infraestructura energética.
But the war in Iran is much larger than the war in Ukraine in terms of energy infrastructure.
Estamos hablando de campos de petróleo, plantas petroquímicas, refinerías.
We are talking about oil fields, petrochemical plants, refineries.
And here's the paradox that I find genuinely strange: destroying fossil fuel infrastructure could, in theory, reduce future emissions because that gas will never be burned.
But the destruction itself releases enormous amounts of emissions right now.
Es que es un argumento muy frío.
The thing is, it is a very cold argument.
Nadie puede decir que destruir infraestructura y matar personas es bueno para el clima.
Nobody can say that destroying infrastructure and killing people is good for the climate.
Eso es absurdo.
That is absurd.
El problema es mucho más complicado.
The problem is much more complicated.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And there's another layer here.
Natural gas has been positioned for the last two decades as a so-called bridge fuel, the thing you burn while you build up renewables.
Iran's gas was central to that argument in Asia.
Bueno, sí.
Well, yes.
Países como India, China y varios países del sur de Asia usaban gas iraní o planeaban usarlo como alternativa al carbón.
Countries like India, China, and several countries in South Asia were using Iranian gas or planned to use it as an alternative to coal.
El carbón es mucho más sucio que el gas para el clima.
Coal is much dirtier than gas for the climate.
So the disruption of South Pars could actually push some of those countries back toward coal.
Which is the worst possible outcome from a climate perspective.
La verdad es que ya estamos viendo esto.
The truth is we are already seeing this.
Cuando hay una crisis de gas, los países no esperan energías renovables.
When there is a gas crisis, countries do not wait for renewable energy.
Abren viejas plantas de carbón o construyen plantas nuevas.
They open old coal plants or build new ones.
Es una reacción muy rápida y muy mala para el planeta.
It is a very quick reaction and a very bad one for the planet.
We saw exactly this in Europe after Russia cut gas supplies following the invasion of Ukraine.
Germany, famously, reopened coal plants.
Countries that had spent years moving away from coal just...
reversed course.
Alemania reactivó plantas de carbón que ya estaban cerradas.
Germany reactivated coal plants that were already closed.
Fue muy simbólico porque Alemania tenía planes muy ambiciosos para la transición energética.
It was very symbolic because Germany had very ambitious plans for the energy transition.
La guerra de Ucrania cambió esos planes rápidamente.
The Ukraine war changed those plans quickly.
The thing is, there's a longer historical pattern here.
Wars in the Middle East have been reshaping global energy and, therefore, climate trajectories for fifty years.
The 1973 oil embargo, the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Gulf War.
Mira, cada crisis del petróleo o del gas en el Medio Oriente terminó con los países ricos buscando más combustibles fósiles en otros lugares.
Look, every oil or gas crisis in the Middle East ended with rich countries looking for more fossil fuels elsewhere.
No con más energías limpias.
Not with more clean energy.
La historia no es optimista.
History is not optimistic.
Though, to be fair, the energy landscape is genuinely different now than it was in 1973.
Solar and wind are cheap.
Batteries are better.
There's at least a credible alternative in a way there wasn't fifty years ago.
Es verdad.
That is true.
La energía solar es mucho más barata ahora.
Solar energy is much cheaper now.
Hace diez años era muy cara.
Ten years ago it was very expensive.
Pero construir la infraestructura para la energía solar tarda tiempo.
But building the infrastructure for solar energy takes time.
Una crisis de gas necesita una solución inmediata.
A gas crisis needs an immediate solution.
Right, and coal is always there.
It's old infrastructure, it still exists, you can turn it back on.
That's the terrible convenience of a dirty fuel.
A ver, hay también una pregunta más profunda.
Well, there is also a deeper question.
¿Podemos tomar el clima en serio cuando hay guerras?
Can we take climate seriously when there are wars?
Cuando un país está en guerra, su primera prioridad es la seguridad, no el clima.
When a country is at war, its first priority is security, not the climate.
El clima espera.
The climate waits.
And that's a genuinely uncomfortable question, because the climate doesn't wait.
The physics don't care about geopolitics.
Methane that escapes into the atmosphere today will be warming the planet for the next decade regardless of what happens at the negotiating table.
Bueno, y aquí está el problema más grande.
Well, and here is the biggest problem.
Las personas que sufren más el cambio climático no son las personas que causan las guerras.
The people who suffer most from climate change are not the people who cause the wars.
Son las comunidades más pobres, los pequeños agricultores, las personas que viven cerca del mar.
They are the poorest communities, small farmers, people who live near the sea.
I've reported from places where those two crises, conflict and climate, have completely overlapped.
The Sahel in Africa is a good example.
Drought made farming impossible, which created competition over land, which fed into armed conflict.
It becomes a loop.
La verdad es que el cambio climático ya es una causa de conflictos en muchas regiones del mundo.
The truth is that climate change is already a cause of conflicts in many regions of the world.
Y ahora los conflictos son también una causa del cambio climático.
And now conflicts are also a cause of climate change.
Es un círculo muy peligroso.
It is a very dangerous circle.
So where does that leave us?
Because I want to end on something more than pure pessimism.
South Pars is burning, military emissions don't count, coal is making a comeback.
Is there any version of this that ends well for the planet?
Mira, para mí la respuesta es sí, pero solo si los países más ricos usan esta crisis como una razón para invertir más en energías renovables, no para volver al carbón.
Look, for me the answer is yes, but only if the richer countries use this crisis as a reason to invest more in renewable energy, not to return to coal.
La tecnología existe.
The technology exists.
La voluntad política es el problema.
Political will is the problem.
I mean, that's the story of climate action in a single sentence, isn't it.
The technology exists.
The political will is the problem.
We've been saying that for thirty years and here we are, watching a gas field burn in southern Iran while nobody updates the emissions spreadsheet.
Es que soy optimista sobre la tecnología y pesimista sobre los políticos.
The thing is, I am optimistic about technology and pessimistic about politicians.
Siempre fue así.
It was always like that.
Pero bueno, el planeta no tiene tiempo para esperar.
But well, the planet does not have time to wait.
Ese es el problema real.
That is the real problem.