B1 · Intermediate
14 min
climateenergygeopoliticseconomics
El petróleo a 116 dólares: ¿amigo o enemigo del clima?
Oil at $116: Friend or Enemy of 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, yesterday, Brent crude oil crossed $116 a barrel.
US crude settled above $100 for the first time in four years.
And I keep thinking, look, this is a climate story, not just an economics story.
Bueno, mira, tienes razón.
Well, look, you're right.
Cuando el precio del petróleo sube mucho, el mundo habla de economía, de guerra, de energía.
When oil prices rise sharply, the world talks about the economy, about war, about energy.
Pero casi nadie habla del clima.
But almost nobody talks about the climate.
Right.
And the Iran war is driving this, obviously.
Strikes on Iranian oil infrastructure, the Strait of Hormuz situation, the whole region on edge.
But here's what gets me: oil shocks have this complicated relationship with climate.
They don't always push things in the direction you'd expect.
A ver, es complicado.
Right, it's complicated.
A veces, cuando el petróleo es muy caro, la gente busca energías alternativas.
Sometimes, when oil is very expensive, people look for alternative energies.
Pero otras veces, los países producen más petróleo para protegerse.
But other times, countries produce more oil to protect themselves.
Las dos cosas son posibles.
Both things are possible.
Exactly.
And that tension is the whole story.
I mean, we've been here before.
The 1973 oil crisis.
The 2008 spike.
Each time there's a moment where you think, okay, this is the break, this is when we finally move away from fossil fuels.
And then.
Sí, y después el precio bajó y el mundo olvidó el problema.
Yes, and then the price dropped and the world forgot the problem.
Eso pasó en 1973 y también en 2008.
That happened in 1973 and also in 2008.
Es la memoria muy corta del mundo.
It's the world's very short memory.
The short memory.
That's a good way to put it.
So let's go back to 1973, because that crisis actually did produce some real change.
After the OPEC embargo, countries genuinely started investing in alternatives.
France went nuclear.
Denmark went wind.
There was a real reckoning.
La verdad es que sí, en Europa hubo cambios importantes.
The truth is yes, in Europe there were important changes.
En España, por ejemplo, la crisis de 1973 fue muy grave porque España importaba casi todo su petróleo.
In Spain, for example, the 1973 crisis was very serious because Spain imported almost all of its oil.
El país era muy dependiente.
The country was very dependent.
Very dependent.
And Spain is an interesting case here, actually.
This week, Spain closed its airspace to US military aircraft involved in operations against Iran.
Which is a significant political move, but it also connects to Spain's whole energy posture.
They've been building out renewables aggressively.
Sí, España cerró su espacio aéreo a los aviones militares americanos.
Yes, Spain closed its airspace to American military planes.
Fue una decisión muy importante.
It was a very important decision.
Pero también, mira, España produce ahora mucha electricidad con energías renovables, con el sol y el viento.
But also, look, Spain now produces a lot of electricity with renewable energies, with sun and wind.
Ya no es el mismo país de 1973.
It's no longer the same country as in 1973.
No, it's really not.
Spain gets something like 50 percent of its electricity from renewables now.
Solar especially.
The irony is that Spain has this extraordinary solar resource, all that sun, and for decades they barely used it.
Es que durante mucho tiempo la tecnología era muy cara.
The thing is, for a long time the technology was very expensive.
Los paneles solares costaban muchísimo dinero.
Solar panels cost a lot of money.
Pero ahora el precio bajó mucho y España construyó muchas instalaciones solares en los últimos años.
But now the price has dropped a lot and Spain has built many solar installations in recent years.
Right, so here's the argument that high oil prices actually help the climate.
When oil is at $116 a barrel, solar and wind suddenly look even more competitive.
The price gap closes.
Governments have political cover to accelerate the transition because voters are already angry about energy costs.
Bueno, eso es verdad en parte.
Well, that's partly true.
Cuando la gasolina es muy cara, la gente piensa más en los coches eléctricos.
When gasoline is very expensive, people think more about electric cars.
Las ventas de coches eléctricos subieron mucho durante los períodos de precios altos del petróleo.
Electric car sales increased a lot during periods of high oil prices.
But there's the other side of it.
And this is what keeps me up at night, honestly.
When oil is expensive and there's a war involved, governments also start panicking about energy security.
And energy security thinking has historically been very bad for climate.
A ver, claro.
Right, of course.
Cuando hay miedo, los gobiernos quieren producir más energía rápido.
When there's fear, governments want to produce more energy quickly.
Y producir energía rápido, muchas veces, significa más carbón, más gas, más petróleo.
And producing energy quickly, many times, means more coal, more gas, more oil.
No es bueno para el clima.
It's not good for the climate.
Look at what happened after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Germany, which had been closing coal plants, reopened some of them.
The UK started issuing new North Sea oil licenses.
Countries that had climate commitments started quietly walking them back.
Sí, y eso fue muy frustrante para muchos activistas del clima.
Yes, and that was very frustrating for many climate activists.
Alemania prometió cerrar sus centrales de carbón, pero después de la guerra en Ucrania, las necesitó otra vez.
Germany promised to close its coal plants, but after the war in Ukraine, it needed them again.
La realidad es muy complicada.
Reality is very complicated.
Very complicated.
And now we're in another war, another oil shock, and the same pressures are building.
The extraordinary thing is, we've lived through this exact movie at least three times, and we keep being surprised by it.
La verdad es que los seres humanos tienen una memoria muy corta con la energía.
The truth is that human beings have a very short memory when it comes to energy.
Cuando el petróleo es barato, nadie quiere cambiar nada.
When oil is cheap, nobody wants to change anything.
Cuando es caro, hay crisis y pánico.
When it's expensive, there's crisis and panic.
Pero después, cuando el precio baja otra vez, todo vuelve a ser igual.
But then, when the price drops again, everything goes back to the way it was.
Which brings me to the Strait of Hormuz.
Because the Iranian parliament this week approved measures to impose tolls on vessels passing through the strait.
And the strait carries something like 20 percent of the world's oil.
If Iran actually does this, or blocks it entirely, we could be looking at $150, $160 a barrel.
Mira, el estrecho de Ormuz es increíblemente importante.
Look, the Strait of Hormuz is incredibly important.
Pasa por allí mucho petróleo de Arabia Saudita, de los Emiratos, de Irak.
A lot of oil from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Iraq passes through there.
Si Irán cierra ese paso o pone peajes, los precios del petróleo suben mucho más todavía.
If Iran closes that passage or imposes tolls, oil prices will rise much more still.
I covered the Gulf in the late nineties.
The fear of a Hormuz closure was always there, this low-level anxiety running through every conversation about the region.
And I remember asking an Emirati official, what happens if it actually closes?
He just looked at me and said, the world stops.
Es que es exactamente así.
That's exactly it.
El mundo todavía depende demasiado del petróleo.
The world still depends too much on oil.
Y eso es el problema central del clima, porque los países no quieren perder el acceso al petróleo aunque saben que es malo para el planeta.
And that is the central problem for the climate, because countries don't want to lose access to oil even though they know it's bad for the planet.
So here's the question I keep circling back to.
Is this moment, oil at $116, war in the Middle East, a tipping point for the transition?
Or is it just another shock that we absorb, patch over, and then go back to business as usual?
Bueno, creo que esta vez hay algunas diferencias importantes.
Well, I think this time there are some important differences.
Primero, la tecnología renovable es mucho más barata que antes.
First, renewable technology is much cheaper than before.
Segundo, muchos países ya invirtieron mucho dinero en energías limpias.
Second, many countries have already invested a lot of money in clean energy.
Pero el problema sigue siendo la velocidad.
But the problem is still the speed.
The speed.
Right.
Because the climate doesn't wait for geopolitics to calm down.
The carbon is going into the atmosphere whether there's a war or not.
And every year we delay the transition, the problem gets harder to fix.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
El clima no tiene paciencia.
The climate has no patience.
Los científicos dicen que si el mundo no redujo las emisiones de CO2 rápidamente, las consecuencias fueron, y van a ser, muy graves.
Scientists say that if the world didn't reduce CO2 emissions quickly, the consequences were, and will be, very serious.
El tiempo es el recurso más importante.
Time is the most important resource.
Now, there's another layer to this I want to get into.
Because the countries most affected by an oil shock at $116 a barrel are not the rich industrialized nations.
They're the developing world.
Countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, Latin America, that import oil and have very little cushion.
Sí, eso es muy injusto.
Yes, that's very unfair.
Los países pobres producen muy pocas emisiones de CO2, pero pagan el precio más alto.
Poor countries produce very few CO2 emissions, but pay the highest price.
Cuando el petróleo sube, su economía sufre mucho más que la economía de Europa o de Estados Unidos.
When oil rises, their economy suffers much more than the economy of Europe or the United States.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
And it's a moral dimension that gets lost in the coverage.
We talk about oil prices in terms of what Americans pay at the pump, what European central banks do with interest rates.
We don't talk about what it means for, say, Kenya or Bangladesh.
Y esos países también necesitan energía para desarrollarse.
And those countries also need energy to develop.
No podemos decirles que no usen petróleo cuando ellos nunca tuvieron la oportunidad de crecer con energías limpias.
We can't tell them not to use oil when they never had the opportunity to grow with clean energy.
Es una conversación muy difícil.
It's a very difficult conversation.
It's the central injustice of climate politics, honestly.
The countries that built their wealth on fossil fuels are now telling everyone else to skip that step.
I spent time in Indonesia in the nineties.
Coal was their ladder out of poverty.
You can't just kick the ladder away.
La verdad es que los países ricos tienen que ayudar a los países pobres a construir infraestructura de energías limpias.
The truth is that rich countries have to help poor countries build clean energy infrastructure.
Pero en las conferencias del clima, los países ricos prometieron mucho dinero y después no lo pagaron todo.
But at climate conferences, rich countries promised a lot of money and then didn't pay it all.
That's a pattern, isn't it.
The promises made at COP meetings, the famous hundred billion dollars a year pledge.
Endlessly deferred.
I interviewed climate negotiators from small island states who had stopped believing the promises.
The exhaustion on their faces was something.
Es que eso es devastador.
That is devastating.
Las islas pequeñas del Pacífico, por ejemplo, no contaminaron casi nada, pero el nivel del mar subió porque los países ricos quemaron demasiado petróleo y carbón.
The small Pacific islands, for example, polluted almost nothing, but sea levels have risen because rich countries burned too much oil and coal.
Y ahora esas islas pueden desaparecer.
And now those islands could disappear.
So bringing it back to today.
$116 oil.
The Iran war.
Spain blocking US military flights.
Hormuz under threat.
What does a serious climate response look like in this context?
Because governing for the climate during a war is genuinely hard.
Mira, creo que los países inteligentes usan esta crisis para acelerar las renovables, no para buscar más petróleo.
Look, I think the smart countries use this crisis to accelerate renewables, not to look for more oil.
Europa aprendió eso parcialmente después de Ucrania.
Europe learned that partially after Ukraine.
Invirtió más en energía solar y eólica.
It invested more in solar and wind energy.
Pero también buscó más gas natural.
But it also looked for more natural gas.
The gas bridge.
Which is what they called it.
Natural gas as a bridge fuel to a renewable future.
The thing is, that bridge keeps getting longer.
Every crisis extends the bridge.
At some point you have to ask whether it's a bridge or just a road.
A ver, eso es muy bueno lo que dijiste.
Right, that's a very good point.
El puente siempre se hace más largo.
The bridge always gets longer.
La verdad es que el gas natural todavía produce emisiones de CO2.
The truth is that natural gas still produces CO2 emissions.
No es tan malo como el carbón, pero tampoco es limpio.
It's not as bad as coal, but it's not clean either.
So here's where I land on this.
High oil prices are a necessary condition for the energy transition, but they're not a sufficient one.
The price signal helps.
But without political will and public policy pushing in the same direction, the shock gets absorbed and then we move on.
Sí, estoy de acuerdo.
Yes, I agree.
El precio del petróleo es importante, pero los gobiernos tienen que tomar decisiones valientes también.
The oil price is important, but governments also have to make brave decisions.
Y eso es lo más difícil en política: decidir cosas difíciles cuando la gente tiene miedo y quiere soluciones rápidas.
And that's the hardest thing in politics: deciding difficult things when people are afraid and want quick solutions.
Brave decisions when people are afraid.
That's the whole problem, isn't it.
Well, we'll see what happens with the price at the end of this week, and whether the Hormuz situation escalates.
I have a feeling we'll be back to this one.
Bueno, claro que volvemos.
Well, of course we'll come back to it.
El petróleo, el clima, la guerra.
Oil, climate, war.
Estos temas no desaparecen.
These topics don't disappear.
Y mientras el mundo usa petróleo, estas crisis van a continuar.
And as long as the world uses oil, these crises will continue.
Pero, Fletcher, por lo menos tú no mezclas tu petróleo con hielo.
But, Fletcher, at least you don't mix your oil with ice.
Ha.
I put ice in my wine, Octavio, not my crude oil.
There are limits.
Thanks everyone for listening.
We'll be back next episode and, yes, I'll try to get the Spanish right this time.