El petróleo a 113 dólares: ¿el enemigo del clima o su mejor argumento?

So let's apply that lens to today.

Oil at a hundred and thirteen dollars.

Chinese airlines are raising fuel surcharges.

Pakistan has raised petrol prices by forty-two percent.

The economic pain is very real and it's falling hardest on countries that are already struggling.

What does that do to climate commitments?

Bueno, aquí es donde se complica la historia, porque no todos los países están en el mismo punto de la curva de transición energética.

Well, this is where the story gets complicated, because not all countries are at the same point on the energy transition curve.

Para un país como Alemania o España, un precio alto del petróleo duele pero también refuerza la lógica de las renovables, que ya son más baratas en condiciones normales.

For a country like Germany or Spain, a high oil price hurts but also reinforces the logic of renewables, which are already cheaper under normal conditions.

Para Pakistán o Indonesia, que aún construyen su infraestructura energética, el dilema es muchísimo más cruel.

For Pakistan or Indonesia, which are still building their energy infrastructure, the dilemma is far more brutal.

Because the cheapest thing available to them, in terms of upfront capital costs, is often still coal.

Or gas.

And when you're trying to electrify a country of two hundred million people who don't have reliable power, the abstract argument about long-term climate costs runs straight into the very concrete argument about feeding your family tonight.

Y eso es algo que los países ricos a veces olvidan con una comodidad que resulta irritante.

And that's something rich countries sometimes forget with an ease that is genuinely irritating.

España tardó décadas en llegar al nivel de bienestar que tiene ahora, y lo hizo quemando petróleo, gas y carbón.

Spain took decades to reach the level of prosperity it has now, and it did so by burning oil, gas, and coal.

La hipocresía de exigirle a Pakistán que haga en veinte años lo que nosotros tardamos cien en hacer, pero sin las mismas herramientas económicas, es un argumento que no se puede ignorar.

The hypocrisy of demanding that Pakistan do in twenty years what we took a hundred to do, but without the same economic tools, is an argument you cannot ignore.

Look, I've spent enough time in the developing world to know that argument has real force.

But I also think it can become a kind of trap.

Because the climate doesn't negotiate on the basis of historical fairness.

The atmosphere doesn't know whose emissions are historically justified.

No, no, espera.

No, no, wait.

Estoy de acuerdo contigo en el fondo.

I agree with you in substance.

El CO2 no tiene pasaporte.

CO2 doesn't have a passport.

Pero el punto no es justificar las emisiones futuras, sino entender que si no ayudamos a esos países a financiar la transición, van a quemar lo que tengan disponible.

But the point isn't to justify future emissions, it's to understand that if we don't help those countries finance the transition, they're going to burn whatever is available to them.

Y lo disponible, hoy, sigue siendo en muchos casos el carbón.

And what's available, today, is still in many cases coal.

Entonces el problema no es moral, es logístico y financiero.

So the problem isn't moral, it's logistical and financial.

No, you're absolutely right about that.

And this is where the hundred-and-thirteen-dollar barrel becomes a genuinely useful pressure.

Because it makes the financial case for clean energy in a way that no amount of conference diplomacy has managed to do.

In the last two years, solar installations in Southeast Asia have gone up faster than at any point in history.

Claro, porque la energía solar ya no requiere el mismo argumento idealista de hace quince años.

Of course, because solar energy no longer requires the same idealistic argument it did fifteen years ago.

Ahora simplemente es la opción más barata en la mayor parte del mundo, y cada vez que el precio del barril sube, esa ventaja se amplía todavía más.

Now it's simply the cheapest option in most of the world, and every time the price of a barrel rises, that advantage widens even further.

Es casi irónico: la guerra en el Golfo Pérsico podría estar acelerando la caída del petróleo como fuente dominante de energía.

It's almost ironic: the war in the Persian Gulf could be accelerating the fall of oil as the dominant energy source.

The extraordinary thing is that the International Energy Agency said last year that the peak of global oil demand was probably already behind us.

Not because of climate policy.

Because of the economics of solar and electric vehicles.

And a shock like this one doesn't necessarily reverse that trajectory.

It might actually steepen it.

A ver, eso es el escenario optimista.

Well, that's the optimistic scenario.

Y tiene fundamento real.

And it has real grounding.

Pero también hay un escenario alternativo que me preocupa bastante más: que los gobiernos, en lugar de aprovechar el momento para acelerar la transición, lo usen como excusa para abrir nuevas áreas de exploración de hidrocarburos que llevan años bloqueadas por motivos ambientales.

But there's also an alternative scenario that worries me quite a bit more: that governments, instead of seizing the moment to accelerate the transition, use it as an excuse to open new hydrocarbon exploration areas that have been blocked for years on environmental grounds.

And that has happened before, too.

After the 2008 oil spike, there was a huge rush to develop shale in the United States.

The fracking revolution.

Which did bring prices down eventually, but also extended the fossil fuel era by probably another generation.

Exacto.

Exactly.

Y el fracking es el ejemplo perfecto de cómo un shock energético puede producir soluciones que resuelven el problema inmediato pero crean problemas a largo plazo mucho más graves.

And fracking is the perfect example of how an energy shock can produce solutions that resolve the immediate problem but create much more serious long-term problems.

El alivio a corto plazo congela la transformación estructural que el mercado, de otro modo, habría exigido.

Short-term relief freezes the structural transformation that the market would otherwise have demanded.

I mean, this is the central problem of climate politics, isn't it?

The costs of action are immediate and visible.

The benefits are diffuse and decades away.

So every time there's a crisis, the political incentive is to solve the crisis, not to solve the longer crisis behind it.

Y los ciclos electorales son la tumba de la política climática.

And electoral cycles are the graveyard of climate policy.

Cuatro años.

Four years.

Cinco años.

Five years.

Ningún político democrático se presenta a las elecciones prometiendo sacrificios ahora para beneficios en 2060.

No democratic politician runs for election promising sacrifices now for benefits in 2060.

La trampa temporal del cambio climático es, en realidad, una trampa institucional.

The temporal trap of climate change is, in reality, an institutional trap.

Right.

And the countries that have done best on climate, historically, tend to be either small and rich enough that the economic pain is manageable, or authoritarian enough that they can impose costs without electoral consequences.

Which is a deeply uncomfortable observation.

Es incómodo pero no es del todo exacto.

It's uncomfortable but it's not entirely accurate.

China es el ejemplo que todo el mundo pone ahí, como si demostrase que el autoritarismo es más eficiente en la transición verde.

China is the example everyone puts forward there, as if it proved that authoritarianism is more efficient at the green transition.

Pero China también es el mayor emisor del mundo en términos absolutos y sigue construyendo centrales de carbón a un ritmo que ningún otro país iguala.

But China is also the world's largest emitter in absolute terms and continues building coal plants at a rate no other country matches.

La capacidad de imponer políticas no equivale a imponer las políticas correctas.

The ability to impose policies doesn't equal imposing the right policies.

That's a fair correction.

China is also, simultaneously, the world's largest installer of solar panels and the world's largest producer of electric vehicles.

It's both things at once, and I think the West tends to pick whichever half supports the argument it's already making.

Bueno, y el vehículo eléctrico es otro ejemplo fascinante de cómo un shock de precios puede cambiar conductas de manera irreversible.

Well, and the electric vehicle is another fascinating example of how a price shock can change behavior in an irreversible way.

Cuando la gasolina supera cierto umbral, la gente empieza a hacer los cálculos de verdad.

When petrol exceeds a certain threshold, people start doing the real math.

Y en ese momento, el coche eléctrico deja de ser un símbolo de compromiso ambiental y se convierte simplemente en la elección racional.

And at that point, the electric car stops being a symbol of environmental commitment and becomes simply the rational choice.

The thing is, that shift in Spain and much of Western Europe has already happened.

You see it in the sales figures.

But there's a huge chunk of the world where the electric vehicle is still a luxury item.

And when oil hits a hundred and thirteen dollars, those people don't buy an electric car.

They take the bus, or they stop going places.

Y eso plantea una pregunta que me parece central en este debate: ¿quién paga el coste de la transición energética?

And that raises a question I consider central to this debate: who pays the cost of the energy transition?

Porque hasta ahora, la respuesta implícita ha sido que lo pagan los países que ya tienen acceso a capital barato, a tecnología avanzada y a instituciones estables.

Because until now, the implicit answer has been that it's paid by the countries that already have access to cheap capital, advanced technology, and stable institutions.

Los demás, que esperen.

The rest, they wait.

Y eso es una receta para el fracaso global.

And that is a recipe for global failure.

And this is where I keep coming back to the Paris Agreement architecture.

The idea of climate finance, of rich countries transferring a hundred billion dollars a year to developing nations to help them transition.

That number was supposed to have been met by 2020.

It wasn't.

And in a year like this one, with war and inflation and oil shocks, those pledges get even harder to honor.

La verdad es que el número de los cien mil millones siempre fue más un gesto político que una solución real.

Honestly, the hundred billion dollar figure was always more of a political gesture than a real solution.

Los cálculos más serios hablan de billones, no de miles de millones, para financiar la transición en los países en desarrollo.

The more serious calculations talk about trillions, not billions, to finance the transition in developing countries.

Y la diferencia entre lo prometido y lo necesario es tan grande que casi resulta cómica, si no fuera tan grave.

And the gap between what's been promised and what's needed is so large it's almost comic, if it weren't so serious.

Here's the argument I find myself circling back to.

Every major geopolitical disruption since the 1970s has, eventually, accelerated some part of the energy transition.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 triggered efficiency standards in the U.S.

that are still in place.

The Gulf War of 1991 renewed interest in energy independence.

Even the Iraq War of 2003 eventually contributed to the push for domestic shale.

This war may be doing something similar, faster.

Es que la diferencia crucial esta vez es que la tecnología alternativa ya existe, ya es competitiva y ya está desplegada a escala.

The crucial difference this time is that the alternative technology already exists, is already competitive, and is already deployed at scale.

En el 73, la energía solar era una curiosidad de laboratorio.

In 1973, solar energy was a laboratory curiosity.

En el 91, los coches eléctricos eran ciencia ficción para la mayoría de la gente.

In 1991, electric cars were science fiction for most people.

Hoy no.

Not today.

Hoy la infraestructura de sustitución está disponible.

Today the replacement infrastructure is available.

Lo que falta es la voluntad política y el capital para desplegarla donde más hace falta.

What's missing is the political will and the capital to deploy it where it's most needed.

So the optimistic reading is: we're at a moment where the economic signals, the technological readiness, and the geopolitical pressure are all pointing in the same direction.

And all we need is for politicians not to blow it by drilling their way out of the crisis instead.

A ver, «todo lo que necesitamos es que los políticos no lo estropeen» es quizás el estándar más bajo posible para el optimismo.

Well, 'all we need is for politicians not to blow it' is perhaps the lowest possible bar for optimism.

Pero en este contexto, es también un estándar que vale la pena defender.

But in this context, it's also a standard worth defending.

Porque la historia demuestra que los políticos, cuando el incentivo económico y el incentivo político apuntan en la misma dirección, a veces, no siempre, hacen lo correcto.

Because history shows that politicians, when the economic incentive and the political incentive point in the same direction, sometimes, not always, do the right thing.

The fossil fuel subsidy question is where I think the real battle is going to be fought.

Globally, governments spent something like seven trillion dollars subsidizing fossil fuels last year, counting direct and indirect subsidies.

That's a number so large it's almost impossible to process.

Siete billones de dólares.

Seven trillion dollars.

Para que tengamos perspectiva: eso es más que el producto interior bruto de Alemania y Francia juntos.

For perspective: that's more than the combined GDP of Germany and France.

Y la mayor parte de esos subsidios no van a las empresas petroleras, que es lo que la gente suele imaginar, sino a mantener artificialmente bajo el precio de la energía para los consumidores finales, especialmente en los países en desarrollo y en los Estados productores de petróleo.

And the majority of those subsidies don't go to oil companies, which is what people usually imagine, but to keeping energy prices artificially low for end consumers, especially in developing countries and in oil-producing states.

And there's the bind.

Because if you remove those subsidies in countries where people are already spending forty or fifty percent of their income on energy, you're not making a climate argument.

You're making a poverty argument, and you're on the wrong side of it.

Y sin embargo, hay ejemplos de que se puede hacer bien.

And yet, there are examples of it being done well.

Indonesia lo hizo en 2014 con Jokowi.

Indonesia did it in 2014 under Jokowi.

Irán lo intentó antes de la guerra.

Iran tried it before the war.

El truco es redirigir el dinero de los subsidios directamente a las familias más vulnerables, en lugar de simplemente quitarlos.

The trick is to redirect the subsidy money directly to the most vulnerable families, rather than simply removing them.

Así la reforma es políticamente sostenible.

That way the reform is politically sustainable.

Pero requiere una capacidad administrativa que muchos Estados simplemente no tienen.

But it requires an administrative capacity that many states simply don't have.

So we come back, finally, to the barrel at a hundred and thirteen dollars.

When this war ends, and it will end, the price will probably fall again.

And that's the moment I'm most worried about.

Because that's when the political pressure to act disappears, and the window that the crisis opened starts to close.

Eso es lo que pasó después de cada crisis anterior.

That's what happened after every previous crisis.

El precio baja, la urgencia se disipa, los lobbies del sector fósil recuperan su influencia, y los proyectos de transición que parecían inevitables de repente se aplazan sine die.

The price falls, the urgency dissipates, the fossil fuel lobbies regain their influence, and the transition projects that seemed inevitable are suddenly postponed indefinitely.

Es un patrón que se ha repetido tantas veces que casi resulta predecible.

It's a pattern that has repeated itself so many times it's almost predictable.

Casi.

Almost.

I say almost, because there are a few reasons to think this time might be different.

Solar and wind are now cheaper than fossil fuels in most of the world without subsidies.

Electric vehicle sales are growing in a curve that looks more like smartphones than like any previous technology adoption.

These things don't reverse just because oil prices fall.

La verdad es que hay algo diferente esta vez, y es que el cambio climático ya no es abstracto para la mayoría de la gente.

Honestly, something is different this time, and it's that climate change is no longer abstract for most people.

Las olas de calor, las inundaciones, los incendios forestales.

The heat waves, the floods, the wildfires.

España tiene veranos que hace treinta años habrían sido noticias de otro planeta.

Spain has summers that thirty years ago would have been news from another planet.

Cuando el fenómeno se hace visible y personal, la política cambia más despacio de lo que debería, pero cambia.

When the phenomenon becomes visible and personal, politics change more slowly than they should, but they do change.

So here's where I land.

A hundred and thirteen dollars a barrel is not a climate policy.

It's a crisis.

But crises have historically been the moments when the deepest structural changes become possible.

The question isn't whether the crisis creates an opportunity.

It does.

The question is whether anybody is positioned to seize it.

Y yo añadiría que «estar posicionado» no es solo una cuestión de tecnología o de dinero.

And I would add that 'being positioned' isn't just a matter of technology or money.

Es una cuestión de narrativa.

It's a matter of narrative.

La energía limpia tiene que ganar no solo en los mercados y en los laboratorios, sino también en los bares, en las conversaciones de familia, en la imaginación de la gente.

Clean energy has to win not only in markets and laboratories, but also in bars, in family conversations, in people's imaginations.

Y en ese terreno, el precio del barril, por paradójico que parezca, puede ser el mejor argumento que el clima ha tenido en años.

And on that terrain, the price of the barrel, paradoxical as it may seem, may be the best argument the climate has had in years.