‘Inexcusable’: should climate hypocrites get the petrostates label?

“Drill, baby, drill!” Donald Trump’s ominous avowal to pump up the oil and gas production of the US has horrified many people around the world about the intentions of the Republican candidate, who has also declared he wants to be “dictator for a day”. Rather than the prospective leader of the free world, the election frontrunner sounds more like the tyrant of a petrostate.

That should not be entirely surprising given the country’s recent record: it has ramped up fossil fuel production to become the world’s biggest producer. As a Guardian investigation reveals, the total number of projected licences by the US for 2024 could lead to an estimated 397m tonnes of planet-heating emissions.

This comes at a time of climate emergency, when the UN secretary general has declared “code red” for humanity and the International Energy Agency has warned that new oil and gas fields are incompatible with the Paris agreement to limit global heating to 1.5C above preindustrial levels.

To deliberately increase emissions in such circumstances is so obviously contrary to the public good that it suggests a capture of politics by a powerful minority that represents fossil-fuel interests – exactly the behaviour expected in a classic petrostate.

It does not seem to matter too much which party is in power. When the Democratic president Barack Obama was in the White House, he too proudly proclaimed “drill, baby, drill!” and boasted the US was pumping more oil than at any time in eight years. The Republican Trump picked up the pace. Then the Democrat Joe Biden opened the spigot even wider.

Today, the US is producing more crude oil than at any point in its history, having doubled production from a decade ago.

Does this make it a petrostate, then, or merely a hypocrite? The question was asked after the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai last year, when the US envoy John Kerry had the gall to chide “major producers” for not signing up to a G7 pledge “to accelerate the phaseout of unabated fossil fuels so as to achieve net zero in energy systems by 2050”.

This plea came despite his country’s historic increase in production and widely criticised claim to deal with the consequences through unproven and extremely expensive carbon capture technology.

So what exactly is a petrostate? A petrostate is classically defined by the degree of a government’s or an economy’s dependence on fossil fuels. Carbon Tracker has identified 40 such countries including Iraq, which gets 89% of its fiscal revenue from the oil and gas sector, Saudi Arabia (69%), Azerbaijan (64%) and Russia (23%).

This reliance on a single source of income is also often seen as a curse because it leads to an unbalanced economy, power concentrated in very few hands, and a bellicose foreign policy. The label “petrostate” is almost always used derogatively. And it often carries racist overtones, particularly against Middle Eastern, African or Latin American states.

Such a narrow definition gets many big oil producers off the hook, particularly the predominantly white, industrial powers, such as the US, UK, Canada and Australia. Largely because of their colonial pasts, these countries have heavy historical responsibility for global heating but more diversified modern economies, and because they champion capitalism they do not have nationalised or state-run oil companies. As a result, their fiscal reliance on fossil fuels is relatively low.

But this disguises other harder-to-calculate forms of economic and political influence, through campaign financing, public relations spending and thinktank lobbying. In some ways, these are more pernicious because they create hidden dependencies and undemocratic distortions.

Studies suggest, for example, that 25% of US Congress seats are held by climate deniers, which is not representative of a country where less than 15% of the public hold similar views. Government policies are similarly unbalanced with far more subsidies for fossil fuels than renewables, despite overwhelming public support for an energy transition in all of these countries.

As a result, it is possible to discern a group of “other petrostates” in democratic, economically diversified countries that do not fit the classic definition, but often behave in a similarly reckless manner when it comes to the climate, putting the interests of the fossil fuel industry above their domestic populations and global stability.

The US is the standout example but it is not alone as production figures in the new Guardian investigation, drawing on data from the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), reveal. The analysis of industry data says that Australia is projected to award 20 new licences in 2024, which could generate an estimated 217m tonnes of carbon pollution, which would be the most since 2009 and more than the past five years combined.

Norway may have cultivated a green image, but it is forecast to hand out 80 oil and gas licences this year, which will add up to its biggest contribution to global emissions since 2009. Canada has missed every emissions target it has ever set. And unless the new Labour government acts to prevent it, the UK is projected to award an all-time record 72 oil and gas licences this year, which could result in an estimated 101m tonnes of planet-heating pollution.

This is not to lessen the culpability of the classic petrostates, which often obstruct progress at UN climate talks and, in the case of Russia, actively promote doubt, dissent and doom about the climate crisis.

These countries tend to offer fewer but bigger drilling licences, which means their overall production trends have also been extremely high. This is particularly true when coal is included. Since the Paris climate agreement, the top 10 list of fossil-fuel-producing entities has been entirely made up of Chinese, Russian, Indian and Iranian state-backed firms.

Most of these classic petrostates also plan to increase output, which will make a record hot world even hotter. Azerbaijan, which will this year become the third consecutive petrostate to host the Cop climate talks, aims to raise production by a third over the next decade. Russia will account for three-quarters of global emissions resulting from new licences awarded in June, according to the IISD data.

In fact, oil-producing countries of all stripes are planning expansions that would blow the planet’s carbon budget twice over. So what is to be done about it?

The most oil- and gas-dependent economies argue they have little choice: either they drill now or go broke and face a future of stranded assets. They also claim they are only meeting demand, which places more responsibility on consumer countries to cut emissions. Such positions quickly become entrenched, particularly when they face a barrage of global opprobrium.

To escape this deadlock, some analysts argue that instead of pointing the finger of blame at classic petrostates, it is necessary for more diversified economies to help them make an orderly transition from fossil fuels and to set an example themselves by cutting consumption and sharing green technology.

That should be where the US, Canada, Norway, UK and Australia are best placed to step up and help. They have the financial clout, the experience and the economic diversity to be frontrunners in the transition. Yet they are doing the opposite: criticising others and claiming to be environmentally friendly, even while they lift production targets for oil and gas.

Oil Change International labelled these five countries “climate hypocrites” and “planet wreckers” in a scathing report last year that showed they were responsible for the majority (51%) of planned new oil and gas extraction to 2050.

“Expansion in countries with high incomes, a high degree of ability to transition away from fossil fuels, and outsized historical responsibility for causing the climate crisis is particularly inexcusable,” it noted.

The real danger now is that instead of setting an example for the classic petrostates, these five countries are starting to emulate many of their worst characteristics – stamping down on climate dissent, moving towards extreme politics and pursuing ever more extractivist policies. That battle is not yet over. Diverse economies and democratic political systems still provide the best bulwark against petro-domination.

This internal tussle can sometimes make these five countries seem hypocritical as they boost oil production while also signing up to international climate treaties (as Obama did in Paris in 2015) or halting Arctic exploration (as Biden has done) or promising to halt new oil and gas licences (as the UK’s new Labour government has done).

But it would be far worse if they drifted any further towards the petro-dictatorship model of Vladimir Putin or Mohammed bin Salman because the people of Saudi Arabia, Russia and other petrostates want an energy transition but often have no means to lobby for it. Such countries are also twice as likely to engage in interstate conflict.

Which is exactly why Trump’s rhetoric in the US is so alarming for climate, democracy and peace. The last thing the world needs is for the biggest oil producer to join the ranks not just of the petrostates but also of the autocrats.