Gov’t climate change stand ‘hypocritical’

BAGUIO CITY—Hypocrisy is defining the Philippine government’s policy on climate change, according to an economic activist and former ally of the Aquino administration.

Walden Bello, who is also running for senator as an independent candidate, said he does not see the country ending its dependence on highly polluting fossil fuels because of government policies.

“President Aquino made a hypocritical statement in Paris [during the recent climate change summit] by declaring,  ‘I am all for fighting climate change.’ But against the clean energy program of the Philippines, he is pushing coal which is the dirtiest fuel,” said Bello, a member of the party-list group Akbayan, who gave up his House seat in March 2015 in protest of “double standards in good governance policy and his (Mr. Aquino’s) refusal to accept command responsibility for the Mamasapano massacre.”

“I do not see the Philippines moving away from the fossil-fuel grid” because of the Aquino administration’s actions, said Bello.

“How can you say in the end you are developing solar power plants when you are laying the infrastructure for coal, including the development of a coal mine?” he said.

Declining prices of gasoline, he said, is also serving as a stumbling block to the development of renewable energy sources.

Since countries that are heavy consumers of petroleum products are enjoying the record plunge in oil prices, they are not likely to prioritize the development of green energy sources, said Bello.

One effect of low oil prices, he said, is it erodes the “drive toward solar, wind and hydroelectric power generation.”

Bello, a Sociology professor of the University of the Philippines and senior analyst of the think tank Focus on the Global South, which he cofounded in 1995, said cheap oil would eat into potential profits from renewable energy projects, which is currently generating expensive electricity.

But he warned against complacency in the wake of low gasoline prices.

“We cannot rely on oil prices remaining low because to some extent these prices have been politically determined because competing oil producers have been drawing more oil from the ground to lower oil prices,” said Bello. Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon