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| IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol |
Fatih Birol is chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which works to ensure energy security for its 28 member countries, including the U.S., U.K., Germany and Japan, and publishes the World Energy Outlook – the top strategic guide to global energy markets. Birol chairs the Davos (World Economic Forum) Energy Advisory Board and was named by Forbes as one of the most influential people in the world in energy.
Birol recently shared his thoughts with Ensia and Terry Waghorn of Forbes on climate change and our global energy future.
In a recent interview on BBC’s HARDtalk you expressed pessimism about our current energy situation and concern that we have only four years before we are forced to dramatically change our lifestyle. Why are you pessimistic?
We are seeing a very sharp increase in CO2 emissions worldwide on one hand. On the other hand, we see an increasing number of extreme weather events. Normally, increasing CO2 emissions and the increasing number of extreme weather events should put climate change higher in the policy agenda, but we see the opposite trend. We see that the importance of climate change is declining in the international policy agenda. This is definitely not good news, because in order to reverse the trend of increasing CO2 emissions we need growing public awareness and action from governments, business leaders and other key stakeholders. But I do not see this happening, and this is one reason why I feel pessimistic about this situation.
