Last summer was so hot in Kuwait that birds dropped dead from the sky. Sea horses boiled to death in the bay. Dead clams coated the rocks, their shells popped open like they had been steamed.
Kuwait reached a scorching temperature of 53.2°C, making it among the hottest places on Earth.
The extremes of climate change present existential perils all over the world, but the record heat waves that roast Kuwait each season have grown so severe that people increasingly find it unbearable.
Photo: AP
By the end of the century, scientists say that being outside in Kuwait City could be life-threatening — not only to birds.
A recent study also linked 67 percent of heat-related deaths in the capital to climate change.
However, Kuwait remains among the world’s top oil producers and exporters, and per capita is a significant polluter.
Mired in political paralysis, it stayed silent as the region’s oil states joined a chorus of nations setting goals to eliminate emissions at home — although not to curb oil exports — ahead of last fall’s UN climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
Instead, Kuwaiti Prime Minister Sabah al-Khalid Al Sabah offered a years-old promise to cut emissions by 7.4 percent by 2035.
“We are severely under threat,” environmental consultant Samia Alduaij said. “The response is so timid that it doesn’t make sense.”
Racing to burnish their climate credentials and diversify their economies, Saudi Arabia pitches futuristic vehicle-free cities, while Dubai, United Arab Emirates, plans to ban plastic and multiply the emirate’s green parks.
While the relatively small populations of oil-rich Arab states in the Persian Gulf render their pledges minor in the grand scheme of limiting global warming, they have symbolic significance.
However, the gears of government in Kuwait, with a population of 4.3 million people, seem as stuck as ever — partly because of populist pressure in parliament, and partly because the same authorities that regulate Kuwait’s emissions get nearly all of their revenue from pumping oil.
“The government has the money, the information and the personnel to make a difference,” said lawmaker Hamad al-Matar, director of parliament’s Committee on Environment and Agriculture. “It doesn’t care about environmental issues.”
The country continues to burn oil for electricity and ranks among the top global carbon emitters per capita, the World Resources Institute said.
As asphalt melts on the country’s highways, Kuwaitis bundle up for air-conditioning in malls. Renewable energy accounts for less than 1 percent of demand — far below Kuwait’s target of 15 percent by 2030.
An hour drive outside the dingy suburbs of Jahra, wind turbines and solar panels rise from clouds of sand — the fruit of Kuwait’s energy transition ambitions.
Layers of dense pollution blanket the streets. Sewage rushes into the steaming bay. Fish carcasses that wash ashore produce a lingering stench, what environmental advocates describe as a pungent manifestation of the country’s politics.
“When you walk by the bay, you sometimes want to vomit,” Kuwaiti environmental advocate Bashar al-Huneidi said. “The abusers are winning, and I get discouraged every day.”
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