Guyana President Mohamed Irfaan Ali slammed a BBC reporter in an interview this week for claiming that his small nation was contributing to climate change by allowing oil drilling off its coast.
BBC journalist Stephen Sackur suggested that Ali was wrong for allowing the drilling and asked him if he had the “right” to do so.
“Let’s take a big picture look at what’s going on here. Over the next decade, two decades, it is expected that there will be $150 billion worth of oil and gas extracted off your coast,” Sackur said. “It’s an extraordinary figure. But think of it in practical terms. That means, according to many experts, more than 2 billion tons of carbon emissions will come from your seabed from those reserves and be released into the atmosphere.”
“Let me stop you right there,” Ali fired back. “Let me stop you right there. Do you know that Guyana has a forest,…
