Episode 249 – Dismantling Green Colonialism Part 1 with Hamza Hamouchene

Macro N Cheese – Episode 249
Dismantling Green Colonialism Part 1 with Hamza Hamouchene
November 4, 2023

[00:00:00] Hamza Hamouchene [Intro/Music]: The historical responsibility of causing the climate crisis lies within the industrialized capitalist West. And all the studies and all the documents mentioned this clearly. So it is documented and it is out of the question that it is undeniable.

Europe want Tunisia to shoulder the burden of the energy transition in order to export green electricity to Europe. So Europe can say, we reached our target. We reduced our CO2 emissions.

[00:01:35] Geoff Ginter [Intro/Music]: Now, let’s see if we can avoid the apocalypse all together. Here’s another episode of Macro N Cheese with your host, Steve Grumbine.

[00:01:43] Steven Grumbine: Hello folks. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. You’re about to hear part one of the interview I did with Hamza Hamouchene. We weren’t planning on releasing it in two parts, but Hamza had such important things to say that the interview went on for quite a bit longer than usual. I just couldn’t bring myself to end it.

So, please come back next week for part two of Dismantling Green Colonialism.

All right. This is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today’s guest wrote a phenomenal book. I got this book a month ago. It just was recently released to the public within the last week. It is called Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region. The author is Hamza Hamouchene and I’m so excited about this.

I sound happy and giddy. I’m only happy and giddy because the thoughts that are captured in this book are things that people really need to hear. They’re reconstituting the way we see climate crisis and climate reparations and the way we see the Middle East, which is a loaded term we’ll find out.

And we’re going to understand the way that green capitalism and green colonialism work hand-in-glove to oppress people who need our help, who we have been predating upon and extracting their wealth, while indebting them with loans that we could simply be good partners and provide a solution, but that’s not the way it’s working out. So my guest, Dr. Hamza Hamouchene is a London based Algerian researcher and activist, commentator and founding member of Algeria Solidarity Campaign and Environmental Justice North Africa. He is currently the Arab region program coordinator at the Transnational Institute. And his work is on issues of extractivism, resources, land, and food sovereignty. So let me bring on my guest, Hamza, welcome to the show, sir.

[00:03:45] Hamza Hamouchene: Hi, Steve, thanks for having me.

[00:03:48] Grumbine: Absolutely. I want to thank you, first of all, for getting this book to me. This is amazing. You guys have done some great work. It’s not a book that you just read cover to cover. There are very important sections throughout this book. Various essays that do tie together, but each one of them is a case study in a different region.

How should we refer to this area? You made a great point in one of your notes, the colonial framing of Middle East is a pejorative, basically. What do you think is a proper way to refer to the area?

[00:04:22] Hamouchene: That’s a good question to start with. First of all, I don’t think there is a perfect naming for the region. Every naming or every coinage that you choose has its own limitations, its own contradictions and its own detractors. And this is based on my own experiences in the Arab region with movements, with scholars, with journalists and with activists. So, people refer to the region as the Arab region or the Arab world, but that sometimes elicits feelings of exclusion and discrimination against the minorities in that region of the world, like the Berbers, the Kurds, the Nubians and other minorities. But at least myself and other of my comrades and friends are not using it in the exclusionary way.

On the contrary. And we try to use it as a uniting framework because there is a shared language, there is a shared culture, but at the same time, there is a huge diversity. Myself I’m a Berber, I’m Amazigh, I call myself an Arab and Amazigh at the same time. I belong to the Arab region, I have an Arab culture, but at the same time, I’m ethnically Amazigh and I have a Berber and Amazigh culture.

So, these questions of identities shouldn’t be exclusionary, but at the same time, there are other names or namings of the region. The Middle East, and this is my personal assessment and the assessment of others, is a colonial coinage. Middle East, the middle of what and east of what, basically. And who coined that term?

Usually, it’s the imperialist west, in reference to the imperialist west. And the Middle East tends to include Israel in the region, the settler colonial apartheid state of Israel. And a lot of people reject that naming because of that. First of all, who is portraying the region as the Middle East? And second, the presence of an entity that is oppressing and dispossessing Palestinians.

But for me, the question is not to focus a lot on these discussions, because they can be divisive. So, the moment you use Middle East, people will accuse you of being a colonial agent or something. ‘No you’re not radical enough.” That’s why I’m saying there is no perfect naming. You can use Mashriq and Maghrib.

You can use the Arab region, the Arab world. You can use the Middle East and North Africa. What matters to me is the content that you give to those namings and the political visions that those namings are inserted in. If it is a vision of social and economic justice, of people’s unity, of anti imperialism, of anti capitalism, of anti authoritarian structures, of bringing people together around that beautiful vision of emancipation, you can call it whatever you want.

I prefer the words or the namings “North Africa and West Asia” or “West Asia and North Africa,” but those tend to be used by scholars and academics and people in the universities. They are not really terms used by the grassroots movements in the region, at least yet.

[00:08:07] Grumbine: Thank you so much. You wanna be a good ally and you don’t wanna say things in a way that immediately makes someone suspicious of your intent. So I appreciate you filling in that void. I want to start us off with a section of your book that I found informing, and it’s so concise that I think it’s worth reading, if you don’t mind.

It’s right out of the introduction, actually, and it’s the purpose of why you wrote the book, but I think this is good for framing our conversation. With your permission, I’ll read this.

[00:08:40] Hamouchene: Go ahead.

[00:08:42] Grumbine: It is increasingly clear that a just transition for the Arab region will require not only a recognition of the historic responsibility of the industrialized West in causing global warming, but also of the role of emerging economic powers, including the gulf states, in perpetuating a destructive global economic order.

It will also need to acknowledge the role of power, in shaping both how climate change is caused, who carries the burden of its impacts and of solutions to the crisis. Climate justice and a just transition will mean breaking with business as usual approaches, that protect global political elites, multinational corporations, and non democratic regimes. And adopting a radical social and ecological transformation and adaptation process.

The imperatives of justice and pragmatism are increasingly converging on the need for climate reparations or debts to be repaid to countries in the global south by the rich north. This must take the form not of loans and of additional debts, but of transfers of wealth and technology, canceling current odious debts, halting illicit capital flows, dismantling neo-colonial trade and investment agreements, such as the Energy Charter Treaty , and stopping the ongoing plunder of resources.

The financing of the transition needs to take into account the current ongoing and future loss and damage, which is occurring disproportionately in the South. At the same time, the inequalities exist not only between North and South, but also within all countries of the world, including those in the Arab region. This being so there is a need to consider how a program of climate reparations can be combined with the creation of a just democratic and equitable energy system within these countries.

These questions are increasingly urgent. International negotiations on climate action are stagnating, while at the same time, climate change is accelerating. With its effects increasingly deadly and undeniable, this book is intended as a tool for activists, both in the Arab region and around the world, to help them to continue to pose critical questions and to build coalitions, alliances, and popular power in support of their own solutions for a just transition.

And I think that was so well stated. Where do we begin with this discussion? To me, so much is not understood about climate crisis, how we are pilfering the global South and the mechanism of control and why we would say liberation is so necessary. And I guess you can point to Palestine as a key example of an apartheid neocolonial state.

That is trapping them as if they’re in an open air prison. So much to be said, get us started.

[00:12:15] Hamouchene: Great. Thanks for reading those sections from the book, Steve. Actually, they read very well.

[00:12:23] Grumbine: Yes.

[00:12:24] Hamouchene: I’m proud that Katie and I managed to write such powerful sentences, because truly, they summarize the gist of our arguments and our vision for climate justice and just transition in the Arab region and beyond.

And I would like to start by saying that this book, even if it focuses on the Arab region, it is not a regional contribution. It goes beyond. It has some global significance because the Arab region, as argued in the book, is an important locus. In terms of fossil fuel capitalism, in terms of the global markets for the production of oil and gas.

So, those countries are going to be indisputable protagonists in all discussions about climate action and about the move away from fossil fuels. So in that aspect, any discussions around just transition and climate justice in the Arab region have global significance and there are a lot of lessons to be learned.

So, this is one thing that I wanted to put out there. In terms of Palestine, maybe I’ll start with that before zooming out and talking about the global questions around the climate crisis, and how we are envisioning a just response to those. We cannot talk about colonialism, green or otherwise, or about dismantling it, as the title of the book refers to. Or decolonization or social environmental justice struggles without centering the Palestinian cause into the discussion.

And we cannot start any discussion around those issues by turning a blind eye to what is happening right now in Palestine. In terms of genocide, ethnic cleansing, displacement, a brutal siege, crimes against humanity, that are being committed by the settler colonial and apartheid state of Israel. With the shameful support of the imperialist powers from the US to the UK to the European Union to France and Germany and Co. And I think it is important for us to stand in solidarity with Palestinians right for self determination and struggle for liberation. We need to call for a ceasefire right now, to stop that genocide. The book actually tackles the question of Palestine from the outset.

There is a long chapter by a Palestinian author. She’s a scholar called Manal Shqair, who wrote about Israel’s greenwashing narrative, that it made the desert bloom by portraying itself as an environmental steward. As a green helper of its neighbors when it comes to water desalination in terms of technologies of renewable energies and so forth.

And she puts forward an important argument around what she calls a eco-normalization of relations between Israel and other Arab countries like Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Jordan, Egypt, and so forth. And she calls it eco-normalization because she focuses on the question of water, desalination of water and provision of water, and also the scramble and the grabbing of water resources by Israeli, basically water theft.

And then she focuses also on the aspect of energy, where she shows how Israeli companies are being active in creating and strengthening links with other Arab countries and Arab economic elites, creating some relationships that will constitute a challenge for the Palestinians cause and their struggle for self liberation.

And the Jordan chapter as well in the book shines a light on the Israeli-Jordan agreement around importing Israeli gas. And it also talks about that deal that is struck between Jordan and Israel, whereby Israel provides desalinated water and Jordan builds renewable plants on its land and exports all that energy in order to power those desalination plants in Israel. And then she shines also a light on the popular discontent of Jordanians themselves, against this agreement between the Jordan state and the Israeli state.

Showing that the popular masses, as we have seen lately, in the last few weeks, from Morocco to Jordan, to Yemen, to Algeria, to Egypt… Arab people are against normalization with Israel and stand in full solidarity with the Palestinians. So, we can put this question of Palestine at the center of the discussion. And it has some other elements and dimensions that we can bring into the discussion, like another decolonization struggle taking place in the region, which is Western Sahara.

Western Sahara is an occupied territory by the Moroccan kingdom and that struggle for self determination, I think is gaining much more importance when we put it in the deal, the quid pro quo deal between Israel, the United States, and the Moroccan kingdom to normalize relationships. So Israel recognizes the Morocco colonial sovereignty on Western Sahara, while Morocco recognizes Israel as a legitimate state and the United States as well, and this happened under Trump, what is called the Abraham Accords, recognizes also Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara.

So as you can see, Palestine is and remains central to any discussion of dismantling colonialism, green or otherwise. And when we talk about energy and climate justice questions, Palestine also has it’s shares and the book shines a good light on this. Let’s zoom out a little bit, because some of the sections that you read talks about the global climate crisis.

So, I want just to say something very important in this discussion, because we talk about the climate crisis as if it is an undifferentiated problem, like everyone is responsible and everyone needs to do its own share. That’s what people tell us: “we are all in this together.” This is not true. The climate justice movement, the global climate justice movement has been arguing that there is a shared responsibility, but there are undifferentiated responsibilities in that, the historical responsibility of causing the climate crisis lies within the industrialized capitalist west. And all the studies and all the documents mention this clearly. So it is documented and it is out of the questions, and it’s undeniable that the historic responsibility lies in the industrialized west. And they need to pay the climate reparations and the climate debts, because most of the impacts that we are seeing right now are felt by communities and countries in the global south.

Where these countries have been impoverished since colonial times and after the formal end of colonialism by other imperialists and colonial instruments. Such as the international financial institutions, that instituted structural adjustment programs that crippled those economies, weakened them and made them less able to tackle any form of crisis. Including the climate crisis that we are seeing.

So, the responsibility lies somewhere and then you have different levels of vulnerabilities. Those countries or communities are not being able to address the climate crisis. They don’t have the financial means, they don’t have the technology. And this is the legacy of that colonial and neo-colonial system that we are seeing now.

It’s not because these countries are retrograde or backward, they don’t know how to use technology. This stems from racist narratives. This is the racist narratives that is being promoted in the current discussions that we are seeing. It’s always the advanced world, the developed world, the West, that needs to come and help you, but help you with conditions.

And that’s why we were mentioning there that if we’re talking about climate reparations and debts, we need to talk about the radical transformation or the overhaul of the current trade architecture that is basically facilitating a huge wealth transfer from the global south to the north. Illicit flows, interest on debts, plunder of resources, and all other conditionalities and things, in terms of the dominance of the currency, the US currency. There are a lot of things happening in there that allow for that flow and siphoning off of the surplus value on a global scale. And then they come and tell you, ‘ah, we are providing you with aid. We are giving you loans to develop’, but to develop in a certain way that does not threaten the interests of the current capitalist and imperialist system.

So when we talk about the climate crisis, there are two strategies. The UN process that is specific on climate change, you have climate mitigation, which means the reduction of the CO2 emissions. And through renewable projects, through cutting down on polluting industries and reducing the use of fossil fuels.

And this is the priority of the industrialized West and the biggest economic powers, including China and Russia. And then you have the other strategy, which is climate adaptation. Climate adaptation, given that most of deadly impacts, the impoverishing impacts from droughts to sea level rises to wildfires to starvation, and is happening right now in the global South. This is the priority of countries and communities in the global South. But what we are seeing, and maybe I can give a clear example here of what we are talking about to go into some of the details. Tunisia, for example, the beacon of hope in 2010 and 2011 with the Arab uprisings, that’s where they started.

The spark of the uprisings started in Tunisia. Tunisia, its share of the CO2 emissions right now is 0.07%. Just I repeat it, 0.07%. So Tunisia’s responsibility in causing the climate crisis is insignificant, is almost nil. And at the same time, what Tunisia is suffering right now, of course, there are economic and social problems stemming from the neoliberal transition imposed on Tunisia right now.

The crippling debts and all that stuff, but at the same time, it is facing an escalating environmental and climate crisis. Tunisia has been witnessing three or four years of droughts, and this year has been really worse. All the dams are empty. It’s impacting agriculture. It’s impacting the livelihoods of small scale farmers, of pastoralists, of other people. So, the priority should be tackling those questions. Tackling the droughts, trying to find new water resources, rationalizing the use of water, or maybe transforming the economy, the Tunisian economy, in order to not virtually export water to Europe. Because they are doing it through the agribusiness, an export oriented monoculture agribusiness where Tunisia is exporting oranges, lemons, olives, dates, other vegetables.

All these commodities that need a lot of water. But instead of this in the Tunisia strategy to tackle climate change, 70% of the funds allocated are going to climate mitigation, which means reducing Tunisia’s ‘nil’, insignificant CO2 emissions and moving towards renewable energy, and building solar plants and building all that stuff. Of course, we’re not against moving to renewable energy, but this is not the priority of Tunisia, given its historical responsibility, does not have a historical responsibility in causing the climate crisis.

But what I want to say by this, ‘why is Tunisia doing this?’ ome people would tell you, ah, maybe the political elites there are irrational, or maybe they are stupid or corrupt because that’s the dominant and mainstream arguments out there. That’s the easy way to explain what is happening in those countries.

Ah, they got it wrong. They did not learn the lessons. They are stupid. They are corrupt and authoritarian and so forth. There might be some elements of that. I’m not going to deny this, but at the same time, you would need to know that in the Tunisian energy ministry, there is a whole office of a big team of the German corporation, GIZ.

This is the German development agency that dictates on Tunisians what to do and is involved in all the strategies in solar, wind, green hydrogen, and pushing Tunisia basically towards that path of climate mitigation and building more renewable projects. You would ask why? Because they’re gonna benefit from it.

They want Tunisia to shoulder the burden of the energy transition in order to export green electricity to Europe. So Europe can say, okay, we reached our target. We reduced our CO2 emissions. While those projects in themselves first of all, they are always public private partnerships. And I think the audience need to know something very important about the public private partnerships.

Public private partnerships, that word sounds wonderful. It’s positive. It’s a partnership between the public and private sectors. What’s not to like? But in reality, and this is documented through analysis, through studies, through various experience all over the world, public private partnerships mean the privatization of profits.

So the profits would go to the private sector. And the socialization of losses and externalization of costs to the public sector, to the citizens, to the communities. That’s what it means. It means the public does not have a say. It’s the private sector that controls those projects. And in here it would be German companies, Emirati companies, probably Chinese, French companies and some Tunisian small companies controlling those sectors and controlling those projects and benefiting from them.

The technology won’t be transferred, so those companies would come, they would do their best to benefit from the project, but they will never transfer technology. And this is a pattern that has been established for decades. Technology is not transferred. So, is Tunisia benefiting from those projects? Is it really creating jobs?

No. Those projects are capital intensive. They do not create a lot of jobs. They create jobs just in the preliminary phase of construction. And then after four or five years, it’s just a few jobs, basically engineers and technicians who tend to come in from urban areas rather than the rural areas where these projects are constructed.

And then there are other examples that we can go to about the green credentials of such project and how they are built without consulting the local communities. There are a lot of examples that I can go to in Tunisia, in Morocco, in Jordan, in Saudi Arabia, where communities basically have been dispossessed of their land.

They have not been consulted at all. And that’s why we are talking about green colonialism or neo colonialism or green grabbing, if people prefer, or maybe ecological imperialism. There are all these concepts that can help guide the discussion, but I feel that green colonialism represents the main framework for the book.

[00:31:29] Intermission: You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast brought to you by Real Progressives, a non profit organization dedicated to teaching the masses about MMT, or Modern Monetary Theory. Please help our efforts and become a monthly donor at PayPal or Patreon, like and follow our pages on Facebook and YouTube, and follow us on TikTok, Twitter, Twitch, Rokfin, and Instagram.

[00:32:21] Grumbine: I appreciate that so much. Everything you just said screams for an answer to the pain and suffering that is going on as well. If you buy this book, and I strongly recommend it, this book is that powerful. If what Hamza has already said hasn’t grabbed you, this is the very first page of the introduction of the book.

Hamza, with your permission, I’m going to read this as well.

[00:32:48] Hamouchene: please go ahead.

[00:32:50] Grumbine: The reality of climate breakdown is already visible in the Arab region, undermining the ecological and socioeconomic basis of life. Countries such as Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt are experiencing recurrent severe heat waves and prolonged droughts, with catastrophic impacts on agriculture and small scale farmers.

Ranked as one of the world’s five most vulnerable nations to climate change and desertification, Iraq was hit in 2022 with many sandstorms that shut down much of the country, with thousands of people admitted to hospitals because of respiratory problems. The country’s environmental ministry has warned that over the next two decades, Iraq could endure an average of 272 days of sandstorms a year, rising to above 300 by the year 2050. In the summer of 2021, Algeria was struck by unprecedented and devastating wildfires. Kuwait experienced a suffocating heat wave registering the highest temperature on earth that year at well over 50 degrees Celsius, and the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Oman, Syria, Iraq and Egypt all experienced devastating floods while Southern Morocco struggled with terrible droughts for the third year in a row. In the years ahead, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, projects that the Mediterranean and Gulf regions will set an intensification of extreme weather events, such as wildfires and flooding, and further increases in aridity and droughts.

There’s another section here and I wish that I had it earmarked, but you speak specifically about how, because of these floods and the conditions, that salt water is seeping into the potable drinking water, making it impossible to farm and for people to consume. And further into the book, they also speak about the harsh necessities of rationing water and the inability to use potable water for agriculture and cleaning vehicles or anything just to clean up in general, that they turn the water off at night.

Things are really harsh in this region of the world that we’re expecting to ultimately bear the burden of the North’s excesses. I find that to be completely immoral. And that grabbed me, that’s the first page of the book. Talk to me about the conditions that the people are living in. To me, instead of predating upon these countries, we should help them and not in the form of loans, but as you said, energy transfers, technology transfers, getting rid of debts, talk to me about that.

[00:36:00] Hamouchene: Yeah, it’s the immorality of imperialism. As you know, imperialism is about domination, dominating other countries and other people and communities in order to plunder their resources, to siphon off the surplus value, to accumulate capital. That’s what imperialism is. And you mentioned Iraq, you mentioned Libya there.

Imagine two countries that have been destroyed by imperialism, destabilized by imperialist interventions, by imperialist wars, the devastation that has been caused, especially in Iraq and Libya in the last decade. And you see them now facing another crisis, which is the ecological and climate crisis. So the ecological and climate crisis is not happening in a vacuum.

It exacerbates already existing problems and crisis from the political to the economic, to the social, to the food, to the energy, to the water crisis. And it adds to it and it makes it an explosive mix. And I’ve seen a lot of reports after the floodings that took place in Libya. Deadly, really deadly floods, the deadliest in the history, I would say, of North Africa, or even the African continent.

I think it’s more than 10,000 deaths from those floods that led to the collapse of two dams and the destruction of whole towns, especially the town of Derna. But you look at the mainstream media, you look at the mainstream reports and the liberal analysis around it. If it’s a natural catastrophe, first of all, they tell you it’s a natural catastrophe.

It has been really worse this time, but nobody takes the time to say why it didn’t kill as much in Greece and Italy and other countries because that storm or that typhoon touched the same countries, but it killed 10,000 in Libya, but it killed a dozen in Greece and Turkey. So, they tell you it’s a natural disaster.

The second thing they tell you it is about internal conflict. There are two, you could say governments right now in Libya, one in the East and one in the West, and it’s about internecine struggle between these two. It’s about corruption. It’s about mismanagement. Nobody says that perhaps this vulnerability to the climate event or to that natural catastrophe is due to the imperialist destruction and destabilization of a whole country as if it is insignificant, secondary. What led to the creation of two warring factions or governments in Libya?

Wasn’t it the imperialist intervention in there? Wasn’t it the destabilization and the hijacking of a popular uprising against Qaddafi? So these elements need to be put at the table when we talk about the climate crisis. About the just energy transition or just transition as a whole. Because just transition for me, it’s more than energy and the climate.

It needs to be an anti imperialist struggle. It needs to be a democratic struggle. It needs to be an anti capitalist struggle. The same thing for Iraq. Iraq, as you read in that section, is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. It’s not just in terms of droughts and sandstorms, but also water.

And you rightly mentioned in the question of water, it is already a huge problem and it’s going to get worse in the region. A lot of reports and analysis are saying that the region, the Arab region, and most of the countries in the Arab region, if not all, are going to be in absolute levels of water poverty. Like less than 100 cubic meters per person per year.

Some countries are already under this, like Algeria, Libya, I believe Tunisia as well as some countries in the Gulf. And things are gonna get worse with the escalating climate crisis. But instead of putting all the efforts and getting the money – not in loans – money transfers and technology to tackle that problem of water in terms of desalination, in terms of trying to find other sources of water, rationalizing the use of water, maybe changing, as I mentioned earlier, the economic outlook of certain countries that basically, as I said, virtually export water through agricultural commodities.

What we see is the diversion of that desalinated water into some projects that they call green hydrogen. Maybe here, I’d like to explain a little bit what is green hydrogen, if you allow me, Steve.

[00:41:28] Grumbine: Oh, please. Yeah.

[00:41:29] Hamouchene: Just to explain how… Those plans that have been concocted mainly in the West, mainly in the capitalist West. By companies, by development agencies, by Western governments, or let’s call them Northern governments, are trying to shoulder the burden of that transition on a region that is already suffering, that is already in pain. And it’s not suffering because of its own making or own problems. Some of them, yes, there are some of that, but mainly because of the imperialist interferences and the continuing capitalist plunder coming from outside in the region, with the complicity of local and political elites.

So we cannot just blame everything on foreigners in the west because our regimes, our political elites, are also complicit in the plunder of resources and the subjugation and subordination of economies. Let’s come back to green hydrogen. So there is a huge hype right now around green hydrogen, I’m sure you heard of it.

In the TV, in articles, in analysis, the EU is talking about it. A lot of companies jumped on it. The desert tech idea that wanted to see the Sahara and the desert in the Arab region, exporting green electricity, jumped on that bandwagon of green hydrogen. Hydrogen, basically, is being portrayed as the future fuel, replacing oil and gas, that can be used in cars, in planes. That can be used for heating and so forth.

There is a lot of discussions and debate around this. Most people are critical of hydrogen or green hydrogen as the miraculous solutions, and I’m one of them. It will play a role in the transition to renewable energy for sure, but not as presented by the industry, or by the EU or by the hydrogen lobbies in Europe and in North America.

And when you look at who’s behind those lobbies, you’ll find the fossil fuel industry. Because currently most of the hydrogen used, which is used in petrochemical industry and fertilizers. Fertilizers that we use to produce what we eat basically, for agribusiness, for industrial agriculture, hydrogen is used in those industries.

Most of it is coming from gas, from fossil gas, which means it’s what we call gray hydrogen. It’s gray. But to make it green, it needs to be produced from water. The molecule of water, which is H2O, you break that molecule of water by a process called electrolysis. And if that process is powered by green electricity coming from renewable energy, the produced hydrogen is green.

So basically it does not put out emissions. So there is no CO2 emissions. It’s coming from H2O and that’s the purest, that’s the cleanest form of hydrogen. Right now, 99 percent of the hydrogen produced is gray, is not green. So they are telling us that we need to move to the green hydrogen. But you look at the plans that the EU is putting forward, it says we cannot produce that green hydrogen here in Europe. Maybe the maximum that we could produce for our needs is half, the other half needs to be imported. So let’s look for another region, and what’s the best region to do that, it’s mostly North Africa. But there are other countries like Namibia, South Africa, Chile. And the Germans are championing this by the way. Like they are going all over the place designing national strategies of green hydrogen for most countries in the world. In order for these countries to export that green hydrogen to them.

But then, let’s just think about it for one second. To produce green hydrogen, you need water. North Africa is semi arid to arid. And it’s suffering from water poverty, there are a lot of water issues. So, what is the most rational thing to do here? Let’s not go at all into morality, just rational, logical. Is desalinated water produced for your own use first for drinking and for the agriculture and maybe for your industries, before producing it for the green hydrogen that needs to be exported to Europe, so it can meet its own reduction of CO2 emission target? That’s not very logical to me. That’s irrational. It doesn’t make sense. And on top of that, the production of green hydrogen would necessitate the building of huge and new solar plants and wind farms, in order to produce the green electricity needed to break the water molecule.

Why don’t these countries just use that green electricity to green their grid? To produce cheap, affordable and green energy for themselves. Why do they need to produce that in order to produce green hydrogen for export? So, the whole logic is just lopsided. It is neo colonial because that’s what the global north, those imperialist powers, want you to continue to do. They want those countries in the South, in North Africa to continue to be the providers of cheap natural resources, including green energy, including green hydrogen, including solar power. While they own and dominate and monopolize the technology. And at the same time, externalizing the social environmental costs.

And this is an important point because not a lot of people shine a light on it. Externalizing means you are going to exacerbate the water crisis in there. Desalination of water, you’re going to build a lot of desalination plants. It has its own environmental concerns, because you’re gonna throw all the salts to the sea, again, destabilizing the ecosystems. And then you need a lot of land.

The Green Hydrogen Project that is being built right now in Guelmim by Total Eren, which is a subsidiary of the French Company Total, now it’s called Total Energies. The greenwashing, it’s not about fossil fuels anymore, right? But they do fossil fuels and renewables at the same time. For them, it’s not just about greenwashing, but it’s an opportunity to make money.

That project in Southern Morocco in that region in Guelmim needs 180, 000 hectares of land. And I had to look at what that entails, what does that mean, 180,000 hectares? And I said, let’s compare it to the size of a capital or a town in Europe or in North America. And I live in London right now. So, I compared 180,000 hectares, is more than the size of the greater London area, the whole London area. They are gonna build it there and they are gonna tell us, using a colonial environmental narrative, which is steeped in Orientalism, that those lands are empty. There are no people there. Let’s go and make that land valuable. Let’s create economic opportunity.

Let’s be environmental stewards, create sustainability. They’re going to say ‘we’re going to create modernity’ and do some jobs and do this green hydrogen, and it’s going to be a win-win situation for all. It’s not true. This is bullshit!

It is not true, because if we look at the pattern of the older projects that the Western powers, the World Bank, and including the African development bank, has been a sponsoring has been funding, like what is that solar plant in Morocco?

It is a greed grab , it is privately owned, it’s losing money. It’s plundering the water resources in Ouarzazate, which is a semi arid region. Because you need the water to cool down the system and to clean the solar panels. And I’ve been to Ouarzazate myself three times, and I went to that dam, the nearby dam, called the Dam El Mansour Eddahbi.

It’s empty. Most of the water has been diverted to the solar plant. How is that sustainable? I always ask that question, how is that sustainable? And what is the impact on local populations? What is the impact? Capital accumulation and all those companies do not tell you about those things. They tell you ‘we did an environmental and social assessment and the project can go ahead.’ And when the people resist, and there is always resistance, people protest and they resist, they get repressed by the authoritarian regimes who are in bed with global capital. That’s what happens. This is what it is, Steve.

[00:51:40] Grumbine: Everything you said needed to be said.

[00:51:47] End Credits: Macro N Cheese is produced by Andy Kennedy, descriptive writing by Virginia Cotts and promotional artwork by Andy Kennedy. Macro N Cheese is publicly funded by our Real Progressives Patreon account. If you would like to donate to Macro N Cheese, please visit patreon.com/realprogressives.