B1 · Intermediate
12 min
climateenergygeopoliticseconomicsenvironment
La Semana de Dos Días: Nepal, el Petróleo y el Planeta
The Two-Day Week: Nepal, Oil, and the Planet
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 I want to start with something that caught me completely off guard when I read it this week.
Nepal, a landlocked country in the Himalayas with basically no oil of its own, just announced that government offices and schools are going to a two-day weekend.
Not because of labor reform.
Because they are running out of fuel.
Bueno, mira, esto me parece muy importante.
Nepal produces no oil.
Nepal no produce petróleo.
It imports almost all its fuel.
Importa casi todo su combustible.
When there is a crisis in the Persian Gulf, Nepal suffers enormously.
Cuando hay una crisis en el Golfo Pérsico, Nepal sufre mucho.
Right, and here's what gets me about that.
The Iran war is thousands of miles away from Kathmandu.
But it has shut down part of the Strait of Hormuz, tangled up shipping routes, and now schoolchildren in Nepal are getting an extra day off because their government can't guarantee enough diesel to keep the lights on.
Es que el mundo está muy conectado.
The world is deeply interconnected.
Una guerra en el Golfo cambia la vida en el Himalaya.
A war in the Gulf changes life in the Himalayas.
Y Nepal es uno de los países más pobres de Asia.
And Nepal is one of the poorest countries in Asia.
Now, I want to bring climate into this, because I think that's where the really interesting tension lives.
Nepal is not just poor and landlocked.
It is one of the most climate-vulnerable countries on Earth.
The glaciers feeding the Himalayas are melting at a rate that most scientists describe as alarming.
Sí, los glaciares del Himalaya son muy importantes.
Yes, the Himalayan glaciers are crucial.
Muchos ríos de Asia empiezan allí.
Many of Asia's great rivers begin there: the Ganges, the Indus, the Mekong.
El Ganges, el Indo, el Mekong.
When the glaciers disappear, the water disappears too.
Cuando los glaciares desaparecen, el agua desaparece también.
So here is the strange, almost cruel irony.
Nepal is being forced to burn less fuel this week, not because it decided to act on climate, but because a war it had nothing to do with has cut off its supply.
Involuntary climate action, you could say.
A ver, eso es interesante.
That is interesting.
Pero hay una diferencia muy grande.
But there is a very important difference.
Cuando reduces el combustible porque no tienes dinero, eso no es política climática.
When you cut fuel because you cannot afford it, that is not climate policy.
Eso es crisis.
That is a crisis.
La gente sufre.
People suffer.
No, you're absolutely right about that.
The distinction matters enormously.
A European country deciding to use less fuel as a deliberate climate choice is a completely different thing from a Nepali family who cannot heat their home because imports have dried up.
La verdad es que los países pobres siempre pagan más por los problemas de los países ricos.
The truth is that poor countries always pay the highest price for the problems of rich countries.
La guerra es un problema de los grandes.
War is a problem created by the powerful.
El clima también es un problema que hicieron los grandes.
So is climate change.
That is a line worth sitting with for a moment.
Nepal emits something like 0.1 percent of global CO2 emissions.
It has contributed almost nothing to climate change.
And yet it is losing its glaciers, it is now losing its fuel supply, and nobody is compensating it for either.
Bueno, esto es el problema central del debate climático.
This is the central problem of the climate debate.
Los países que más contaminaron son los países que hoy tienen más dinero para protegerse.
The countries that polluted the most are the ones with the most money to protect themselves today.
Y los países que no contaminaron casi nada son los más vulnerables.
And the countries that barely polluted are the most vulnerable.
I spent time in Kathmandu back in, I want to say 2009, reporting on a piece about Maoist politics after the civil war.
And even then, the fuel situation was precarious.
Rolling blackouts, load-shedding, this whole vocabulary of managed scarcity that I hadn't encountered before.
Nepal tiene mucha agua, muchos ríos.
Nepal has abundant water and rivers.
Puede producir electricidad con agua, energía hidroeléctrica.
It could produce hydroelectric power.
Pero necesita inversión, necesita tiempo.
But that requires investment and time.
Y ahora tiene una crisis inmediata.
And right now it faces an immediate crisis.
The hydroelectric potential is real.
Some estimates put it among the highest in the world per capita.
But the infrastructure is not there yet, and in the meantime, the country runs on imported diesel and petrol.
Which brings me to the other story I want us to talk about this week.
La OPEP+.
OPEC+.
Decidieron aumentar la producción de petróleo por segundo mes consecutivo.
They decided to increase oil production for a second consecutive month.
Más petróleo, más oferta, más emisiones.
More oil, more supply, more emissions.
206,000 barrels per day more.
That is the number.
Now, in the context of global oil markets, that is not enormous.
But the symbolism, and actually the practical implication for climate, is significant.
Mira, la situación es complicada.
The situation is complicated.
El petróleo del Golfo Pérsico no llega bien porque el Estrecho de Ormuz tiene problemas.
Gulf oil is not flowing normally because of the Strait of Hormuz problems.
Entonces la OPEP+ intenta compensar con más producción de otros países.
So OPEC+ is trying to compensate with higher production from other member countries.
Right.
So the logic is basically: the war has disrupted supply, prices are high, everyone is hurting, so let's pump more from places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the UAE to fill the gap.
Economically rational.
But from a climate perspective, deeply counterproductive.
Es que el clima siempre pierde cuando hay una crisis económica o militar.
The climate always loses when there is an economic or military crisis.
Los gobiernos piensan primero en los precios, en la economía, en la energía.
Governments think first about prices, the economy, energy.
El clima viene después.
The climate comes second.
The extraordinary thing is that this is almost exactly what happened in 2022.
Russia invades Ukraine, gas prices explode in Europe, Germany reopens coal plants it had closed, countries scramble for LNG from the United States, and suddenly every climate commitment is quietly set aside for the duration of the emergency.
La verdad es que sí.
That is true, and it is very frustrating.
Y es muy frustrante.
Because scientists say we do not have time to waste.
Porque los científicos dicen que no tenemos tiempo.
Every year we lose matters enormously for the climate.
Cada año que perdemos es muy importante para el clima.
Look, I understand the counterargument.
People are cold, people need fuel for hospitals and water pumps and food supply chains.
You cannot ask a government facing an energy shortage to hold the line on climate policy while its citizens are suffering.
I get that.
No, no, espera.
Wait.
Ese argumento es correcto para Nepal.
That argument is fair for Nepal.
Pero la OPEP+ no está pensando en Nepal.
But OPEC+ is not thinking about Nepal.
Está pensando en los precios del petróleo y en los ingresos de sus países.
It is thinking about oil prices and the revenues of its member countries.
Eso es diferente.
That is a different calculation.
That is a fair point, and I think it cuts to the heart of something.
The countries making the decisions about global oil supply are not the countries suffering the consequences of the climate crisis.
There is a fundamental mismatch between who decides and who pays.
Bueno, y esto es un problema muy viejo.
This is a very old problem.
En las conferencias climáticas, los países pobres siempre piden dinero a los países ricos para adaptarse al cambio climático.
At climate conferences, poor countries always ask rich countries for money to adapt to climate change.
Y los países ricos siempre prometen, pero no siempre pagan.
And rich countries always promise, but do not always pay.
The Loss and Damage fund.
That was the headline out of COP27, which was in Egypt in 2022.
For the first time, rich countries agreed in principle that they owed compensation to vulnerable nations for climate damage they had already caused.
Nepal was one of the countries pushing hardest for that.
A ver, sí.
Yes.
Pero cuatro años después, el fondo existe, pero el dinero no llega bien.
But four years later, the fund exists on paper, but the money is not arriving properly.
Los países ricos no pagan lo que prometieron.
Rich countries are not paying what they promised.
Esto pasa mucho en la política internacional.
This happens a lot in international politics.
I spent enough time covering international summits to know that a promise made in a conference hall and a promise that actually gets funded are two very different animals.
The gap between the two is where a lot of the world's problems live.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y mientras los políticos hablan, los glaciares se derriten.
And while politicians talk, the glaciers melt.
En Nepal, en los últimos treinta años, los glaciares perdieron mucha superficie.
In Nepal, glaciers have lost enormous surface area in the last thirty years.
Hay estudios que dicen que en 2100, muchos glaciares del Himalaya pueden desaparecer.
Studies suggest many Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2100.
And here is what that means practically.
In the short term, melting glaciers actually produce more water.
Rivers flood.
But then, later, once the glacial mass is depleted, the rivers start to shrink.
Communities that depended on glacial meltwater for farming and drinking are left with nothing.
It is a cruel two-phase problem.
Mira, yo leí un informe sobre esto.
I read a report about this.
En Nepal, hay lagos glaciares que crecen mucho.
In Nepal, glacial lakes are growing rapidly.
Cuando estos lagos son muy grandes, pueden romperse y causar inundaciones enormes.
When these lakes become too large, they can burst and cause massive floods.
Se llaman GLOFs, en inglés.
In English, these are called GLOFs: Glacial Lake Outburst Floods.
Glacial Lake Outburst Floods, right.
These are catastrophic events.
A glacial lake builds up behind a moraine dam, which is essentially a wall of old glacial debris, and then the pressure gets too great and the whole thing breaks in minutes.
Communities downstream can be wiped out with almost no warning.
Es que Nepal ya tuvo inundaciones así en los últimos años.
Nepal has already experienced floods like this in recent years.
Y cada año el riesgo es mayor.
And every year the risk grows.
Mientras el mundo discute si aumentar o no la producción de petróleo, Nepal vive con ese riesgo todos los días.
While the world debates oil production, Nepal lives with that risk every single day.
So let me try to pull these threads together, because I think the picture that emerges from this week is actually quite coherent.
You have a war disrupting oil supply.
You have poor countries like Nepal bearing immediate economic pain.
You have OPEC+ responding by pumping more oil, which helps the economy short term but accelerates the climate damage long term.
And Nepal is caught in the middle of all of it.
La verdad es que es una situación muy difícil.
It is a very difficult situation.
Pero yo creo que la solución para Nepal no es más petróleo barato.
But I believe the solution for Nepal is not cheaper oil.
La solución es la energía hidroeléctrica, la energía solar.
The solution is hydroelectric and solar energy.
Nepal tiene mucho sol en las montañas.
Nepal has enormous solar potential in its mountains.
The irony is that Nepal actually has a surplus of hydroelectric power at certain times of year, during the monsoon season, and then a deficit in winter when glacier-fed rivers run low.
So the renewable potential is real, but it is uneven.
And the infrastructure to store and distribute it properly is not there.
Bueno, eso necesita inversión.
That requires investment.
Y la inversión necesita estabilidad política y económica.
And investment requires political and economic stability.
Nepal tuvo muchos gobiernos diferentes en los últimos veinte años.
Nepal has had many different governments in the last twenty years.
Eso hace la inversión más difícil.
That makes attracting investment much harder.
This week's news, on the surface, is about a two-day weekend.
But what it really is, is a kind of x-ray image of how the global energy system works, who it serves, and who it leaves behind.
Nepal did not cause the Iran war.
Nepal did not cause climate change.
And Nepal is being hit by both simultaneously.
A ver, yo creo que esta historia tiene un mensaje importante.
I think this story carries an important message.
El mundo habla mucho de justicia climática.
The world talks a lot about climate justice.
Pero la justicia climática no es solo un concepto.
But climate justice is not just a concept.
Es Nepal.
It is Nepal.
Es un país que paga por los errores de otros.
It is a country paying for the mistakes of others.
Climate justice as a country, not as a concept.
I like that.
And I think that is exactly where we should leave it.
Nepal is not an abstraction.
There are teachers and students and government workers this week who have an extra day off not because anyone did them a favor, but because a system they had no hand in building has failed them.
That is the real story.