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.”
The pledge by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to “work, work, work, work and work” for her country has been named the catchphrase of the year, recognizing the effort Japan’s first female leader had to make to reach the top. Takaichi uttered the phrase in October when she was elected as head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Many were initially as worried about her work ethic as supportive of her enthusiasm. In a country notorious for long working hours, especially for working women who are also burdened with homemaking and caregiving, overwork is a sensitive topic. The recognition triggered a
‘HEART IS ACHING’: Lee appeared to baffle many when he said he had never heard of six South Koreans being held in North Korea, drawing criticism from the families South Korean President Lee Jae-myung yesterday said he was weighing a possible apology to North Korea over suspicions that his ousted conservative predecessor intentionally sought to raise military tensions between the war-divided rivals in the buildup to his brief martial law declaration in December last year. Speaking to reporters on the first anniversary of imprisoned former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol’s ill-fated power grab, Lee — a liberal who won a snap presidential election following Yoon’s removal from office in April — stressed his desire to repair ties with Pyongyang. A special prosecutor last month indicted Yoon and two of his top
The Philippines deferred the awarding of a project that is part of a plan to build one of the world’s longest marine bridges after local opposition over the potential involvement of a Chinese company due to national security fears. The proposals are “undergoing thorough review” by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which acts as a lender and an overseer of the project to ensure it meets international environmental and governance standards, the Philippine Department of Public Works and Highways said in a statement on Monday in response to queries from Bloomberg. The agency said it would announce the winning bidder once ADB
IN ABSENTIA: The MP for Hampstead and Highgate in London, a niece of deposed Bangladesh prime minister Sheik Hasina, condemned the ‘flawed and farcical’ trial A court in Bangladesh yesterday sentenced British Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq to two years in jail after a judge ruled she was complicit in corrupt land deals with her aunt, the country’s deposed prime minister Sheikh Hasina. A judge found Siddiq, the Labour MP for Hampstead and Highgate, guilty of misusing her “special influence” as a British politician to coerce Hasina into giving valuable pieces of land to her mother, brother and sister. Siddiq’s mother, Sheikh Rehana, was given seven years in prison and considered the prime participant in the case. The trial had been carried out in absentia: Neither Hasina, Siddiq,
RSS