Unless the West Gives up Its Fossil Fuel Addiction, 2024 Promises a Conflict-Ridden Global South

By Dr. Michael Shank and Farwah Gulamali Khataw

The United States is at war again. In yet another bid to secure oil supply in the Middle East, U.S. bombs are falling on beleaguered, war-torn Yemenis. The West and its allies have long perpetuated a cycle of war and environmental destruction to quench their ever-increasing demand for fossil fuels. This vicious cycle of exploitation and violence in the Global South is only going to get worse.

With 2023 as the hottest year on record and 2024 estimated to be even hotter, expect more resource-related wars as water and lands dry up, burn up, or flood over. And while wars are often framed publicly by the West as related to democracy and freedom, it’s more likely about water, land, and the energy resources beneath it, and an invading force that wants to control, access, and plunder it.

For example, a 2021 Greenpeace report noted that a shocking two-thirds of all EU military missions are focused on ensuring oil and gas supplies to Europe. The Global South has long been subjected to this treatment. U.S. President Joe Biden is now the fourth American president to bomb Yemen to maintain grip over the region – bearing in mind that approximately 12% of the world’s oil passes through the Bab Al-Mandab strait. For Yemenis and Palestinians, and millions across the world, this storyline is all too familiar.

Israel’s occupation and bombardment of Palestine is testament to the intensifying, brutal extractive subjugation of the South. Israel’s presence in Palestine is very much about controlling these resources for Israel’s increasing population and settlements, and decreasing available natural resources.

And there are plenty for the taking. The United Nations has confirmed that “occupied Palestinian territory lies above sizeable reservoirs of oil and natural gas wealth, in Area C of the West Bank and the Mediterranean coast off the Gaza Strip”.

‘Sizeable’ is an understatement. These 122 trillion cubic feet of recoverable oil, at 1.7 billion barrels, could bring Palestine $524 billion worth in economic development. However, like many in the Global South, the Palestinians have had little to no say in how their resources are used. Or who can lay claim to them.

These half trillion dollars of energy resources and development have long been a significant point of interest for Israel. As others have reported, “the siege of Gaza and ensuing military pressure was designed to eliminate Hamas as a viable political entity in Gaza to generate a political climate conducive to a gas deal”. Keen to maintain a firm grip on Palestinian resources, Israel is now taking them, and the West is aiding and abetting the effort by supplying weapons and military aid.

A few months prior to Hamas’s attack on Israel in early October, Israel greenlit Gaza Marine gas development, eager to begin exploring and exploiting oil and gas. And since then, Israel has wasted no time in prepping for the great resource grab, awarding licenses to six fossil fuel companies recently – including, British Petroleum, Italy’s Eni and four others – and illustrating just how keen they are to move along exploration. Israel’s proposed plan to relocate Palestinians out of Gaza, and develop Gaza as its own, was merely the latest move in the fossil-fueled development that Israel’s been itching to initiate.

All of this is happening amid multiple violations of human rights and international law, a ferocious assault on civilians, and a death toll now over 25,000, including 12,000 children. And that is not even accounting for the environmental catastrophe. In the first two months, Israel’s bombs have generated approximately 281,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide (equivalent to burning at least 150,000 tonnes of coal). And it appears as if oil companies are fully onboard this bloodletting and treasure looting, with or without a ceasefire, a move criticized as an ecocidal plunder by Israel.

This is what Western war-waged oil grabs look like across the Global South. Beyond the more obvious example of Iraq and the oil plundering that happened during multiple wars there, fossil fuel industries like BP have been complicit in overthrowing countries long before that. After Iran’s leadership nationalized their oil supplies in the 1950s, BP alongside the US and the UK were very involved in removing the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh to enable Western control of Iran’s oil. Israel, then, is merely taking a page out of the West’s playbook.

It's time to rewrite the West’s playbook and transition off the fossil fuel dependency that drives these resource wars. It’s doable. The European Union and the U.S. moved with haste, for example, in transitioning off Russia’s oil and gas dependency after it invaded Ukraine. Companies like BP and Eni – and the shareholders that control them – could say no to the resource plundering off the Gaza coast, or the bombardment of Yemen for shipping routes, rather than be complicit like they have been in Iran, Iraq and beyond.

That’s also why a phaseout of fossil fuels was such a critical ask at the UN climate talks in Dubai last December – especially for countries that have long suffered through war and plunder to satisfy never-ending Western entitlement.

Phasing out fossil fuels isn’t just about keeping the planet inhabitable for humans. It is also about keeping the planet humane. The work of climate justice is now challenging centuries of racial, colonial injustice, from Iran and Iraq to Palestine and Yemen and beyond. And though an international commitment to eventually transition away from fossil fuels gives us hope, keeping fossil fuels in the ground keeps us alive. Allowing for a cooler planet and cooler heads to prevail. That’s the playbook we need the West and its allies to adopt.

Farwah Gulamali Khataw is the Global Program Coordinator for Faith For Our Planet, a faith-inspired climate action NGO, and an international consultant for Unitas Communications, facilitating intercultural dialogue and strategic communications for Muslim-led organizations and government agencies. Shank is adjunct faculty at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and George Mason University’s Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. Opinions are the authors’ own and they write in their personal capacity.