Taking Economies Dependent on Oil With Us To Net Zero?

To get to carbon zero, the world needs to get from using 90 million, to using fewer than 25 million barrels of oil a day. That would inevitably lead to a 76% decline in net revenues for oil-producing economies. Many of these countries are dependent on oil revenues for most of their infrastructure and activities. Ali Allawi and Fatih Birol (Finance Minister of Iraq and Executive Director of the International Energy Agency) argue that "without help for oil-producing countries, net zero by 2050 is a distant dream" (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/sep/01/oil-producing-countries-net-zero-2050-iraq). Allawi and Birol admit that the impact of climate change is especially clear in Iraq. In that country, temperatures are rising 7 times faster than the global average. There are also current water shortages. Allawi and Birol are keen to counter climate change. They maintain, however, that attempts at energy transition, that fail to engage with fossil fuel-producing countries, are doomed. Those countries, they say, need financial and technical help to diversify their economies in anticipation of the change. The problem is clearly illustrated by the fact that poverty doubled in Iraq in 2020, due to the pandemic-related decline in oil income. Allawi and Birol think that rich countries should help finance economic diversification in countries like Iraq. Will it happen? The UK, although getting most of its finance independently of oil revenues, apparently still wants to extract every last drop of 'its' oil and build the odd new coalmine. Chairing COP26, they might find selling the need to make the energy transition to poor oil-dependent counterparts, a tad difficult.