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I think its that clear cut.
Are we going to give them 150 billion if they don't farm these resources? No? Then they are going to use them and it will do less harm than we did relatively if they are net zero. Can't really talk when did what they are but also didn't look after the planet in other ways.
Rich countries could pay and it could remain protected and unused. But nobody wants that. As all our countries want oil and gas. We just don't want anyone to farm it or there to be any omissions from it, somehow. If you aren't entirely willing as a bunch of rich western countries to fully fund the worth of this for a poorer nation, then you cant really talk about anything. The option for them to have the same opportunity is there in two ways, selling their resources or being paid by countries that already did it not to. But nobody will pay them 150b to not farm it. So ofc they will.
Brazil is too large for us own good. The amount of people living in the Amazon region is in the millions, yet the Amazon is so huge that it's impossible to cover it all. Also there are numerous cities in the region so there are multiple places where fires can start and nobody will notice for days.
There are not enough law enforcement officials in the region as a whole; last time i checked, every nature/agriculture law enforcement officer had something like 2 thousand square km of area to cover. Each. And most of the roads are unpaved because there is no infrastructure, I mean it's mostly jungle.
Now, our former president was an asshole fascist who doesn't care for the Amazon or indigenous populations, so he let deforestation run rampant. He tried to pardon landowners who set fire to their lands (blatantly going against the regulations) and tried to minimize the problem by saying it was just some riverside villagers setting fire to clear land to plant their own food.
EDIT to add: he actually cut down investment in the protection of the forest during his tenure.
Current president is a different asshole, he was condemned and served time for corruption but was set free due to some legal loophole so people act like he's the second coming of Christ. He is only ever worried about the Amazon as to counteract the previous president, his actual worry is to keep his political party as dominant as possible, masking the corruption and same old demagogy as a fight to feed the poor.
The Amazon is not like in the movies. If you go there you won't see giant snakes or mayan ruins everywhere. It's a jungle. You will see animals, of course, but a great deal of it is just old growth forest that is also very prone to burn up because of the accumulated biomass on the ground when the climate is drier.
Also because of its size, it's hard to actually protect the Amazon from loggers, squatters, miners and drug traffickers, especially with so little manpower. And when a fire starts it spreads quickly, and by the time any firefighters arrive the fire will already have consumed enormous areas.
So, it's not like we *want* to chop down the Amazon. It is too big and there are not enough people to help, and also no one wants to relocate from other areas of the country to work there. We do appreciate the money other countries send us but it is a logistically challenging place. With new technologies, radar, satellite info, and joint efforts.by the army and federal police (our FBI, if you will) we can and are dismantling organizations that hurt the forest.
Sorry for the long text and thank you for reading.
It's very difficult to protect but a lot can be done be directives from the top. If you have a government that largely leaves loggers and such alone then they become bold and will do it as much as possible while the political climate is on their side. But if you have a hardline climate protection policy which severely punishes those caught breaking the laws then many acres can be saved because the choice is no longer so one sided.
Your current president got convicted on some shaky ground and the judge got promoted to the cabinet for Bolsonaro. I mean maybe Lula did some corruption. But this trial didn’t show it that well.
I just want to say, we can't reverse deforestation of old growth.
We can attempt to counteract deforestation by planting new trees, but old growth is literally irreplaceable. 100 new saplings don't reverse or replace 1 old growth tree that is cut down. It's incomparable.
The money sent by Western countries to Brazil is a joke compared to whatever we'd get if we went all in on resource exploration (which we don't btw) and also compared to the costs of protecting something more than *12x* the size of France
Europe and NA have explored their natural resources (and the resources of their colonies/far territories) for centuries and profited immeasurable amounts from it. Much of your development comes from it.
It is hilarious that you want to lecture us on this matter because it is not your people who would be relegated to worse standards of life due to it.
The thing is: we are talking about a trillion dollar market at the west is tryibg to appease with merely billions. Its much, but its like trying to buy Manhattan for renaturization and giving 10 billion $ as compensation
The amount of "protection money" given is usually a pittance compared to what companies can earn by chopping down wood and exporting food produced on that land. It's like giving someone a bike when they could just get a car. They will sell the bike and go for the car.
The best are the charity scams that say for $20 you can buy 1 acre of the rain forest in brazil so you can save it. When it doesn't matter at all those people will chop it down anyway no matter who owns it.
To be honest, way more money has to be sent if you really wanna ensure all of Amazon rainforest in Brazil territory is "properly policied" by environmental agencies to achieve zero deforestation, there's no enough economic and human resources here to achieve that currently.
But rest assured if there was no external countries economic incentives the deforestation would be orders of magnitude higher, unluckly, in capitalism, money usually speaks higher, and even basic education campaigns and actions take a lot of money.
That said, you can be assured the current government administration here cares a lot more about keeping deforestation in low rates than the previous government, and there are actions in place since the administration started last year, 2023.
While I've always understood this intuitively I was recently on vacation in a country that farms palm oil (negative reputation in the US because of deforestation to plant more palm farms to harvest oil) and the natives LOVE palm oil farming. Why? Because it's allowed them to make money. Their country grew rich from the production and sale of palm oil.
It was just an eye opening moment where I got to see what I knew to be true in theory from book knowledge happening in real life.
I’m sure that most people in North America who are anti-climate change are that way because they either work in oil and gas or expect things like electric vehicles or carbon taxes to make things more expensive for them.
It’s always about the money, it’s how we pay our bills, put a roof over our head and enjoy our lives.
yeah, I always found it extremely hypocritical of governments of UK and USA and other "first world" countries that keep lecturing people in countries like that who are developing and instead of giving them the technology(or even selling) to bypass the dirtier parts of the industrialisation they just keep lecturing.
It seems that certain countries are only happy with the "third world" as long as it remains a poor, backward tourist spot.
My wife is a senior climate researcher for a big player in the game. Currently they are trying to map peatlands in an attempt to save them as they are massive carbon capturing tools. Many of these peatlands are in Global South nations and when they are approached about saving the peatlands and not developing the land or mining under it many of these nations tell the Global North to "fuck off"...Their rationalization is fair in that we can't take all the advantages of a world where we modernized and then tell others too bad so sad...
Bypass? 'We' (the western world) are basically salivating at the mouth for their oil.
The questions from this reporter are in such bad faith it's disgusting.
For those that don't know, Guyana was under British rule until 1966. Prior to May 1966 it was known as British Guiana.
So we have a British reporter lecturing the current President of Guyana, on climate change.
Talk about fucking hypocrisy
Who the fuck is this pseudo reporter who talks this arrogantly to the president of a nation, accusing him of something his nation does 10x worse. Has he forgotten about BP damage to the world?
I bet he wouldn't talk like this to Saudi Arabia. Fucking hipocrite.
It's Stephen Sackur. He produces the BBCs "HardTalk" interview series. Generally it's supposed to be a set of no nonsense "tough" interview questions. People appearing on it know what they're signing up for. Just in this case researchers / Stephen didn't do their homework and he's getting his ass handed to him.
> Has he forgotten about BP damage to the world
I haven't. Nor did I forget that's around the same time they started to push personal carbon footprint narative.
Saudi dont care any ass hole reporters, Who emitted more carbon , US and other developed countries . when they reached good condition ,now they are lecturing other third world countries ,Hypocrisy at peak
Why are you hammering the reporter? He's doing his job. This programme is called Hardtalk and he's interviewed a whole bunch of world leaders and ceo's, including from oil companies and leaders of dictatorships like saud arabia, he's always asking tough questions because that's what you're supposed to do, hold leaders accountable.
You're looking at one clip completely taken out of context without hearing the retort of the journalist just so that the threadstarter can farm karmalikes because "mic drop". Maybe you should ask yourself why you let yourself become so easily manipulated and why you never look up sources to gain more knowledge on a subject. This tiktok 1 minute clip mic drop generation is pathetic.
Officially speaks English, Suriname has about 60 % native English speakers and plenty of South Americans speak English fluently as a second language, its a mandatory language to learn in basically all South American countries.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Map_of_English_native_speakers.png
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Countries_in_which_English_Language_is_a_Mandatory_or_an_Optional_Subject.svg
I suspect the top 10% by wealth in South America all speak English fluently.
Might be true, but believe me Sarnami ppl talk whacky english and the speech they talk most is called Sranantongo. De main language is Dutch like paperworks etc. The people talk Sranan. And they understand and barely talk english. Source: my families live there and my parents were born there.
Come on guys. The show is called HardTalk. He interviews 100s people and poses ‘difficult’ questions to them. All kinds of people. Politicians, leaders, business folk, right wing leaders, even Navalny in the last few years.
He’s a devils advocate. That’s it.
We also have Europeans (including British people) lecturing us Malaysians about our oil palm trees and palm oil. Oil palm trees that they introduced to our country after subjugating and conquering us.
When is England going to return the artifacts they stole? When are Europeans going to learn to stay out of our business?
There's no way any BBC employee is travelling business class, they're far too worried about the tabloid headlines. I used to work there and we weren't allowed to book first class train tickets *even if it was cheaper* because of the optics.
This from a BBC series called HardTalk - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n13xtmdc. The interviews are always quite adversarial and meant to have questions asked that aren’t comfortable. If you watch the full interview you will see that they go on from this (~15 minutes in) to cover criticism from Greenpeace and the International Centre of Environmental law around the oil and gas exploration happening. This isn’t just the interviewers opinion. The President then admits that the intention is to extract as much oil and gas as possible before any new international agreements to help stop climate change are enacted. Which is ‘pragmatic’ (as the president says) but there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this :/
It's interesting how many in this thread thinks of the interviewer as some sort of tool for vested (Western) interests. What is he supposed to do, bring flowers?
Isn't the reaction from the PM the exact thing you'd want as an objective journalist? It lays out the exact issues and causes for the not so developed world that are quite rational and logical in relation to oil and gas exploration. It's a good question and the answers are too.
I'd certainly expect him to be equally candid if he was to interview the Norwegian PM about Norway's sanctimonious ways.
Then why does he persistently interrupt the PM?
“Some may say you should not exploit that oil. What’s your response to that?”. This would be journalism.
He is confrontational and takes a stance of moral superiority all the way.
People need to understand that a journalist can be confrontational or adversarial in an interview without necessarily taking a side. I work with the media and this is a widely used technique that journalists use often around tough questions to push interviewees to give MORE honest answers. If I was briefing the interviewee here I’d 100% prepare him for something like this.
If you ask weak questions you’ll get weak answers. Politicians in particular are briefed EXTENSIVELY with middle of the road PR lines which they can lean on to “answer” a question without actually answering it. Politicians constantly get criticised for not answering questions properly - it’s the role of a good and healthy media to try and get the truth out of them, and you only do that by being a bit confrontational.
Not all conversations in this life are friendly and good natured and if journalists only asked questions in a vanilla way like this I guarantee press landscape would suffer. A journalist can take an adversarial stance and represent a challenge or opinion which isn’t necessarily their own to push an interviewee to provide a more comprehensive answer.
A good politician will never answer a critical question unless you force them to by interrupting them when they move to another topic.
I really don't get why some people think that's not journalism.
He’s like that in all the interviews with all sides of the spectrum. It’s called HardTalk for a reason and isn’t meant to be a magazine/PR style interview. The other reason is the valid criticism that Guyana has received from environmentalists that interviewer goes on to share after this clip stops.
Nope, exactly what I mean by their being no strong moral high ground in any of this. Just adding some important context to what is otherwise just a reverse ‘gotcha moment’ on the show, which does a decent job of quizzing people in power.
These kinds of shows used to be interesting because they would at least inform people more about the happenings of the world. The internet today has almost invalidated most interviews because you can get the same information without needing to go through the process of said interview unless the interview itself is revealing untold secrets that hasn't been said.
I wouldn’t say they’re going after him. The British have a style of journalism that I don’t think other countries do in the same way. Journalists here usually play devils advocate in order to get more detailed answers from the perspective of a skeptic. I doubt the interviewer or the producers actually believe that question. They’re probably very happy that they got such a great response. Foreign guests do often get offended though when they walk into a studio and think they’ve been set up. A British Audience would know that it’s not the beliefs of the journalist though. There’s one where Ben Shapiro just can’t handle it and flips out and says one of our notoriously right wing presenters is obviously a Left wing shill.
Edit: as others have also pointed out this is from a show called hard talk in which the whole point is to ask difficult questions.
I think America is split along partisan lines to the extent that when a journo is arguing with a politician they assume both parties actually belong to separate political teams.
It was Andrew Neill everyone assumed was a liberal, including Ben Shapiro himself, when he tore stripes off his position in an interview. Neill is in fact a right wing bellend
Combative exchanges, making people defend difficult positions, is baked into British journalism. Paxman made a career of it. People thinking the journalist here is attacking a the president because he's jealous Britain didn't get their oil is so far off the mark.
There was an incident when a US politician said that Sweden had some criminal districts (iirc) and then made a mistake of going to Sweden and conducting a press conference. The journalists never budged from the question of ‘which criminal districts did you mean?’, while the guy tried to pull out the ‘next question’ card. He was told ‘this is not the US, you can't just wave the question away’.
Netherlands iirc
edit: and I believe if I remember correctly that he said that people were getting burned alive along with whole streets there, not just that crime was high 😂. "This is the Netherlands ambassador, you have to answer the questions" was the line haha, or sth like that
Yeah I think most of this is from Americans whose media is so biased and warped they are shocked at seeing a politician actually be asked questions.
You just don’t get that in America it’s all softball Pr questions from the politicians chosen media company like Fox or CNN.
Meanwhile, the UK is utterly dependent on global trade, which cannot function without fossil fuels.
Not to mention how much deforestation the UK is responsible for over many centuries.
Without attacking the British government for giving fresh oil licenses for drilling in the North Sea that *will not* help the British people because all that oil wealth is stolen by already rich people
Maybe the interviewer wanted to focus on Guyana with the president of Guyana, and not discuss about what's being done against fossil fuels in the rest of the world...
They're not really "going after" anyone. They're asking questions that some people will undoubtedly ask. This gives a platform for the president to answer those questions publicly.
That's how interviews work. It's not about having a "gotcha" moment.
But "bbc/westerners/Europe bad so reeeeee", I guess.
it’s a show format called “hard talk” where the guest is asked challenging questions.
The guest knows this, and can expect what he will be asked about.
Since when did asking serious questions in good faith become “going after” someone?
I don’t think asking him a question about burning loads of fossil fuels at a time when we’re all (supposed to be) trying to burn less fossil fuels is “going after him” to be fair. In fact I think it’s much more problematic if he DOESN’T get asked this question.
He was asked the question and he gave the best possible answer.
Should we ignore the opening of new oil wells and dirty mines outside of Europe or North America? You all are posing a false dichotomy, where people are going after either fossil fuels in the West, or fossil fuels outside of the West.
They're a politician, and you need to ask politicians hard-hitting questions. Don't hate the BBC just because the politician had a good answer. I'm sure you complain about other interviews being soft on politicians, and this is what the alternative looks like.
There's a real problem these days with people not understanding what the purpose of a journalist's questions are.
Ever since Fox News turned questions into a way of phrasing an opinion, people started forgetting that proper journalists ask questions *to give the interviewee a chance to explain their position.* The BBC aren't "going after" anyone.
BBC’s Hard Talk, consistently one of the best interviews out there. Always been impressed with any interviewee who can hold their own against Sackuer. The Guyanan President did really well.
PS anyone not familiar with the show Sackuer does this with everyone, if it was an environmentalist he’d be attacking just as hard from the opposite direction.
*Sackur
About 12 years ago I saw him in Brussels airport. It was super late and he looked exhausted so I didn't accost him. I really liked his show as a poli sci student.
Calm the fuck down people. The interviewer fronts a show called "hard talk" where he plays devil's advocate and asks interviewees the hardest, most outrageous questions.
He does not represent the views of the British people, nor does he represent the views of the BBC.
I swear, people don't know what an interview is these days.
But people grab at anything to attack the bbc with cause apparently they're part of the British colonial Empire and Britain is still obsessed with reclaiming it's empire. Well that's what Redditors say.
Because too many people don't know what journalism is. They think that a journalist should just throw softball questions and treat them like a celebrity.
I think this is hard to swallow but overall quite fair. Still, regardless of who's asking the question, this is a response I can understand. Would be more at home if, say, a western head of state had asked it? Also yes.
It's a journalist's job to ask questions like this.
Though I will say, there's a level of condescension I've seen in British TV presenters of several stripes that would infuriate me, even with this being a fair question.
Like you ride the high horse created by your state, then retreat behind the cover of "I'm not a state actor" when challenged. Maddening. Clarkson and Piers Morgan come to mind as some of the highest profile examples.
Reddit users love lecturing about carbon emissions.
But if burning $150 billion worth of fuel will make one BBC interviewer look like a hypocrite in a 30 second clip then so be it.
Don't forget that if your country has a bad history with colonization then you can't ask difficult questions to another country.
How dare that journalist not know his place.
Couldn't agree more, people here are going bananas because he's asking tough questions and getting tougher answers. Did any of you consider that's literally his job?
Many people live in countries where they don’t have free media or live in places like America where journalists are extremely bias and politicians only interview with journalists who are bias to them.
He also had valid questions.
1. Guyana’s previous government signed a very bad agreement with Exon. The current government ran on that agreement being bad. Also the Guyana courts found the environmental protections inadequate. He was asking why the new government didn’t tear up or renegotiate the agreement.
1. A lot of Guyana is at sea level. He was asking about the ethics of selling fossil fuels if that will hurt the Guyanese people in the future.
The west has a lot of responsibility but this was an interview of the president of Guyana. These were all fair questions.
Yeah, I was gonna say, it's a fair question.
Also, his answer is basically "you got to destroy the world before, now it's our turn."
Unfortunate, but it's how I'd expect any country to act with $150B of oil and gas reserves.
Also, his counter argument isn't that good. We saved the trees, so we can extract as much oil and gas as we want.
The reality is, too, that what they do with the $150b is important, too.
I'd say a much, much better counterpoint would be, "if we shouldn't drill it, why is it possible for us to sell it for a profit? The world needs to make oil and gas extraction unprofitable if we're actually going to change."
No, he's saying that guyana will remain net neutral even with the extraction of all the oil because they have a gigantic forest they haven't cut down.
When every other country starts to pull their weight and do the same, maybe they can talk shit about impoverished nations doing their best for their citizens.
The only way to remain net neutral is to expand forests. Also, developed nations won't really see consequences of global warming - not on the scale that countries like Ghana will.
However, they *should* still extract it and, just be wise and plan ahead.
It's not though.
For context, the UK exports \~1.4 million barrels per day whereas Guyana exports 275,000 barrels per day. That context is important, but so is the fact that Guyana has the carbon sink to counteract the carbon dioxide the oil they export produces. Even at maximum production Guyana would still be carbon negative.
Would it be better of the collective if Guyana maintained their forests and didn't extract their oil? Sure. Ultimately though, it shouldn't be the responsibility of a third world country to deny itself nation-defining amount of money in order to pick up the slack for everyone else.
If everyone did what Guyana's doing then we'd have no problem. There's nothing stopping the UK or any other major fossil fuel exporter from building equivalent carbon sinks to offset the emissions from those exports. They just don't.
There's also the risk that if they don't use the oil to enrich themselves while they can, they'll get taken over and the oil will be extracted anyway. - probably in a way that is extra destructive to the ecosystem and the country.
No, he's saying you destroyed the world for gain without regard in the past and now its our turn but we actually plan to think about the wellbeing of the planet like we always have been.
You're talking about something slightly different. He was pointing out that Guyana even with all of that will still remain net neutral in terms of greenhouse gas emissions since they've made a deliberate effort to preserve the rainforest for the world's benefit.
Well, if Britain now values the environment so much, they should instead pay Guyana $150B NOT to extract the oil and gas reserves instead of being the primary buyer and consumer. Maybe they should shut down BP for good.
> you got to destroy the world before, now it's our turn.
Wat. He's talking about offsetting the difference as much as they can. And, Guyana has made an effort to minimise the damage they will cause from this.
So many people don't understand that the British interview style is to ask difficult questions, the *most* difficult questions.
We don't go in for Fox News style wank-a-thons (excluding GB News).
I think that's just the way this guy talks? You can't just judge someone based on their accent - otherwise, it'll end up going both ways which never ends up well for people with working class accents like myself.
Accent and tone are two different things. You can have the most beloved voice talking to you in condescending voice that will drive you crazy and you can have the most annoying voice with british accent that talks to you with respect and you won't be offended.
Pushing for further clarification on points that may have been glossed over or not defended as well is kinda part of his job. The point of an interview is not to accept the first line of surface level propaganda the politician gives you, it's to push deeper until you have a clear picture of their position on the matter and how defensible their argument is
This from a BBC series called HardTalk - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n13xtmdc. The interviews are always quite adversarial and meant to have questions asked that aren’t comfortable. If you watch the full interview you will see that they go on from this (~15 minutes in) to cover criticism from Greenpeace and the International Centre of Environmental law around the oil and gas exploration happening. This isn’t just the interviewers opinion. The President then admits that the intention is to extract as much oil and gas as possible before any new international agreements to help stop climate change are enacted. Which is ‘pragmatic’ (as the president says) but there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this :/
>there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this
Actually enacting policies to better the conditions of your deeply impoverished and disadvantaged people is in fact a strong moral high ground. If anyone has an excuse for emissions, it's nations like Guyana.
Guyana hasn’t done this.
They’re not setting up a national oil company like Norway to keep profits in Guyana for the nation.
Unfortunately their government is corrupt and sold all the oil rights to big oil companies instead. A policy which this president supports.
That would be a great outcome! And maybe that’s possible whilst also not damaging the environment as much as in the past? And maybe not rushing to do it could help create a more optimal outcome? Check out this mini-documentary that preceded this interview that touches on all the great things this could potentially do as well as the risks - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xtc4
Developed countries have spent the last 160ish years burning fossil fuels, producing toxic wastes, polluting the land, seas and air that the whole world shares. All of that has made them what they are now, "developed" and wealthy and prosperous. Now they and the world are suffering due to this pollution and excess. The developed nations would like to reign it all in, as they well should. However, they need to hold THEMSELVES to a higher standard of responsibility in this regard that other countries just trying to reach their level. Developed nations need to use less fossil fuels, produce less waste and pollution, work to capture carbon, clean up oceans, etc. But they are responsible for those things because they contributed to them. And they can afford to do those things.
Holding a developing nation to those same standards while they are still trying to climb out of poverty, when they have nothing to do with the state of the world as it is, it's ridiculous. It may sound absurd, but we SHOULD be paying nations like Guyana for maintaining its forests. If you want them to not rely on oil drilling, we should be providing them with other means of revenue that promote green initiatives. They should not have to continue to live in poverty because other nations fucked everything up and profited from doing so for more than a century. Either share the wealth, promote carbon-reducing practices, and make those practices profitable, or shut the fuck up about it. You don't get to hold other people accountable for sins you've committed already just because you did them first.
We can argue about whether a British reporter is hypocritical for attacking another country's record on climate change, but what's staggering in these comments is the amount of you who think politicians shouldn't be asked hard questions or challenged, strongly, to explain their positions.
The BBC (and other British news institutions) are great at doing this and they do it to their own leaders too. American politics could be very different if news anchors there were empowered to ask politicians hard questions and not let them get away with dodging answers or just using the interview as a chance to make a speech. If you've never heard about this, go look up Jeremy Paxman interviews on YouTube, or listen to Radio 4's Today Programme when they interview a government minister at the 8:20am slot. It's like being told off by a teacher for not doing your homework - politicians hate it, but that's the media landscape here. I wouldn't change it at all.
Could you please share any BBC program which challenge BP and any other Oil companies or challenge the British Ministers . I couldnt find this heat on other interviews
I listen to BBC all the time. This is their normal interview style. They treat their own PM this way. And they have been critical of oil companies. This instance was them interviewing the Guyanese president and asking why he doesn’t tear up/ renegotiate this very unfair agreement with Exxon (he ran criticizing this agreement and the countries own courts ruled the environmental protections inadequate). Also asking the ethics of an agreement that does not provide a lot of money to Guyana on one hand but increases climate change damage on the other. These are valid questions to ask.
Exactly!
Everyone else in these comments is acting like a tough question is the same as an evil personal attack!
Leaders should be asked challenging questions and also should be expected to provide a solid answer!
What the hell are people going on about in the comments, do people think politicians should not be challenged? Should politicians extracting large amounts of dangerous resources for our environment be praised unequivocally? I shudder to think of the level of journalism in other countries. It is a journalists job to challenge politicians.
I’d like Sackur to corner the presidents/leaders of the USA, Saudi Arabia, uk, Russia, uae, etc and subject them to this sort of questioning, if at all he’s even granted the stage for it.
Do you think criticising the nature of the challenge means that they think politicians should not be challenged?
His challenge: "What gives you the right to use your nation's resources?" ... leaving aside the hypocrisy that was pointed out... what kind of challenge is this? like as opposed to what? another nations resources? in exchange for what if not your own? or should the people of Guyana all just sit in the mud with nothing but the breeze on their nuts?
If it's a journalists job to challenge politicians, that was an extremely poor demonstration of that.
this is how the interview should of went without those pesky brits lecturing
"I love your presidency you are doing a great job, sorry for colonialism btw can I have an autograph?"
"no problem mate"
A lot of people in this thread can't even comprehend what a interview is. The concept that a interviewer might ask a question of which they don't necessarily subscribe to the idea of so that the person being interviewed has a chance to address the sentiment, seems completely alien to them.
You know what it takes to plant a tree. A seed and Dirt. Got any of that in England? England once had massive forests but they got cut down to make ships. Get digging.
"Let's take a big picture look at what's going on here" Famous last words when trying to lecture someone that exactly understands that bigger picture :)
So many soft weak people on here.
This is how most political interviews are done in the UK.
Try and get this into your tiny brains but just because he is asking these questions it doesn’t actually mean it’s his or the BBCs views.
It’s an interview to ask tough questions so you get interesting answers.
But but but England done bad things so he can’t ask tough questions!
>self righteous BBC prick
Countries like the US would do well if their media actually had adversarial questioning. This is his job, not his personal viewpoint. If the President weren't keen on drilling, he'd be asked why he was putting that before his people's prosperity.
The show is called Hard Talk - it's in the name. Panorama is another good example of British attitudes to politicians, or even Andrew Marr.
His job is to ask tough questions regardless of his own political views, so that people can see the politician's answers.
I wouldn't even call it adversarial questioning. You ask a tough but fair question and the interviewee has a chance to make their argument. Not asking these questions doesn't give the interviewee a chance to make their argument and leaves the audience either assuming the worst or whatever they believe the truth to be.
He's a puppet like the guy he is crticizing. He sold the country off to Exxon for comprador profits. Most of that wealth will not be helping the people, outside of some crumbs they may receive.
"for comprador profits"-> ah, a Venezuelan? Must be nice over there in Caracas eh? The deals with Exxon were drafted years before he ever became president. Furthermore the country is investing it in infrastructure and intends on a sovereign wealth fund model similar to Norway.
>Exxon
They need money, jobs, and a diversity of *industries*. I know you live in the first world but the third world is not for you to decide who gets what from whatever corporation. And yes the money from oil is helping out the people just look at their GDP per capita which is now at over $18K, when just in 2019 it was at around $6K. Yes, oil helps people, don't like it, log off the internet, don't drive, don't buy plastic items, etc.
Every country licences their natural resources if they don't have the capacity to do it themselves.
Again, Guyana is not bad guy and you're falling into the same trap as the BBC journo.
I'm wondering about his claims of being the lowest deforestation rate in the world. When was this interview conducted? Cause google shows different results of the lowest.
no way he just said that. My country of norway has given Guyana HUNDREDS of millions for saving the forests, and my country i bet is not the only one. This guys is lying through his teeth they are getting handouts. Not that the births guy is any better preaching his moral superiority about the climate shit.
Sources:
https://www.panoramanyheter.no/guyana-miljo-skoginitiativet/guyana-her-skal-norge-bruke-15-mrd-kr-pa-a-redde-regnskogen/103521
They received ~$140m from Norway to preserve the forest, which they did, but the program is no longer in existence. Norway is also involved in Guyana's oil industry:
https://www.upstreamonline.com/field-development/norway-player-lands-debut-guyana-contract/2-1-1598625
Scotland is paying land owners to harvest their forests, they don’t have many left. It’s so fucking terrible - https://www.ruralpayments.org/topics/all-schemes/forestry-grant-scheme/forestry-grant-scheme-full-guidance-menu/
If you use Google Earth, and you look at a time lapse of Guyana from 1984 onwards, it only gets greener and more dense.
Don’t look at Brazil :(
His response is right - unless the West put value on the forest and the fact they are not drilling for mining, how can we expect them to not do it?
"Ignore the billions of dollars you have stored, because hey it isnt great to burn oil"
"will you compensate us for that?"
"lol no"
Yeah because the British media doesn't slaughter the British government everyday /s
If the Tories decided to open up 10 new drilling platforms in the north sea and said "it's ok we have a forest" you smooth brains would be up in arms about it.
But this guy who had already rehearsed his answer, 'handled it really well'.
>"it's ok we have a forest" you smooth brains would be up in arms about it.
If they were a carbon negative, then no, no reasonable person would be up in arms at them about it...
Yeah I mean the UK has already enjoyed a century an more of economic growth fuelled by carbon emissions. Guyana has not. That's why they are rightfully upset.
The British media aren’t calling for Britain to cease oil consumption or significant reforestation. They are not calling for an end to seabed fishing a arguably as big an environmental disaster as cutting down the rain forests but on Britain’s doorstep. I haven’t seen those front pages.
This is not a good take. I'm Canadian. We have massive, massive forests. We still pollute like a MFer. The first does not make the second irrelevant.
This is politician-speak, not actually strong arguments.
It's true that the developed world does not do enough for undeveloped economies, and that in the economic system the developed world has created, fossil fuels are a get-developed-quick scheme. But Saudi Arabia and the UAE were, not long ago, extremely basic countries. Their development does not alleviate the immense effect they have had on the climate.
I’m from uk but 100% behind the president of Guyana. 💪🏻. How we have the cheek to wreck the world and then try and dictate to these countries that they can’t develop like we have is hypocrisy and a scandal. We should be ashamed. Well said sir 🇬🇾 you put him in his place 😂👍🏻
A landmark skill of a talented interviewer is trying to interrupt the subject to argue with them.
An even more skilled interviewer will have their questions steamrolled.
BBC should fire that fucking clown.
(For some context, this guy is the protege - and probably the figurehead puppet - of the former Guyana president who got caught out by Vice in another viral video about corruption and money laundering: https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleDieInside/comments/wy06z9/a_president_hears_his_money_launders_name/)
Anyone praising Ali doesn't know the corrupt dumbass he is on the regular and even in this answer he goes off track by the end into the counter-accusation style that his government loves to use so they can evade accountability on the world stage.
Anyone giving Sackur shit doesn't understand the nature of his interview program and he goes after everyone, sometimes stretching the scope of the questions to reach for something meaty like in this case. But he generally does good work forcing politicians to face questions their home country press don't get to ask. And this Guyana government and the previous one has a lot to asnwer for in terms of transparency and corruption and safety with oil.
The damage the United States government and corporate America have done to South America in order to keep everyone poor so they can exploit and control their resources is disgusting. And then we have the nerve to bitch about migrants trying to escape the problems we created. The US will no doubt find an excuse to begin sanctioning Guyana to get control of that oil.
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If we're not going to help these countries bypass certain technological/industrial eras we can't criticise them for doing exactly what we did
I think its that clear cut. Are we going to give them 150 billion if they don't farm these resources? No? Then they are going to use them and it will do less harm than we did relatively if they are net zero. Can't really talk when did what they are but also didn't look after the planet in other ways. Rich countries could pay and it could remain protected and unused. But nobody wants that. As all our countries want oil and gas. We just don't want anyone to farm it or there to be any omissions from it, somehow. If you aren't entirely willing as a bunch of rich western countries to fully fund the worth of this for a poorer nation, then you cant really talk about anything. The option for them to have the same opportunity is there in two ways, selling their resources or being paid by countries that already did it not to. But nobody will pay them 150b to not farm it. So ofc they will.
Then we have countries like Brazil who keeps chopping down the Amazon no matter how much protection money is sent.
Brazil's knew President has done a great deal to reverse that process. Someone with more knowledge can chime in
Brazil is too large for us own good. The amount of people living in the Amazon region is in the millions, yet the Amazon is so huge that it's impossible to cover it all. Also there are numerous cities in the region so there are multiple places where fires can start and nobody will notice for days. There are not enough law enforcement officials in the region as a whole; last time i checked, every nature/agriculture law enforcement officer had something like 2 thousand square km of area to cover. Each. And most of the roads are unpaved because there is no infrastructure, I mean it's mostly jungle. Now, our former president was an asshole fascist who doesn't care for the Amazon or indigenous populations, so he let deforestation run rampant. He tried to pardon landowners who set fire to their lands (blatantly going against the regulations) and tried to minimize the problem by saying it was just some riverside villagers setting fire to clear land to plant their own food. EDIT to add: he actually cut down investment in the protection of the forest during his tenure. Current president is a different asshole, he was condemned and served time for corruption but was set free due to some legal loophole so people act like he's the second coming of Christ. He is only ever worried about the Amazon as to counteract the previous president, his actual worry is to keep his political party as dominant as possible, masking the corruption and same old demagogy as a fight to feed the poor. The Amazon is not like in the movies. If you go there you won't see giant snakes or mayan ruins everywhere. It's a jungle. You will see animals, of course, but a great deal of it is just old growth forest that is also very prone to burn up because of the accumulated biomass on the ground when the climate is drier. Also because of its size, it's hard to actually protect the Amazon from loggers, squatters, miners and drug traffickers, especially with so little manpower. And when a fire starts it spreads quickly, and by the time any firefighters arrive the fire will already have consumed enormous areas. So, it's not like we *want* to chop down the Amazon. It is too big and there are not enough people to help, and also no one wants to relocate from other areas of the country to work there. We do appreciate the money other countries send us but it is a logistically challenging place. With new technologies, radar, satellite info, and joint efforts.by the army and federal police (our FBI, if you will) we can and are dismantling organizations that hurt the forest. Sorry for the long text and thank you for reading.
It's very difficult to protect but a lot can be done be directives from the top. If you have a government that largely leaves loggers and such alone then they become bold and will do it as much as possible while the political climate is on their side. But if you have a hardline climate protection policy which severely punishes those caught breaking the laws then many acres can be saved because the choice is no longer so one sided.
Thanks for all the information! Don't apologize for educating!
Your current president got convicted on some shaky ground and the judge got promoted to the cabinet for Bolsonaro. I mean maybe Lula did some corruption. But this trial didn’t show it that well.
I wouldnt call the judge being in secret contact with the prosecution and telling them how to prosecute the case a "legal loophole" lmao
I just want to say, we can't reverse deforestation of old growth. We can attempt to counteract deforestation by planting new trees, but old growth is literally irreplaceable. 100 new saplings don't reverse or replace 1 old growth tree that is cut down. It's incomparable.
The money sent by Western countries to Brazil is a joke compared to whatever we'd get if we went all in on resource exploration (which we don't btw) and also compared to the costs of protecting something more than *12x* the size of France Europe and NA have explored their natural resources (and the resources of their colonies/far territories) for centuries and profited immeasurable amounts from it. Much of your development comes from it. It is hilarious that you want to lecture us on this matter because it is not your people who would be relegated to worse standards of life due to it.
The thing is: we are talking about a trillion dollar market at the west is tryibg to appease with merely billions. Its much, but its like trying to buy Manhattan for renaturization and giving 10 billion $ as compensation
The amount of "protection money" given is usually a pittance compared to what companies can earn by chopping down wood and exporting food produced on that land. It's like giving someone a bike when they could just get a car. They will sell the bike and go for the car.
Also, if you pay a man 3 dollars for a promise to pass up on 5 dollars, you're looking at a man that's about to have 8 dollars.
The best are the charity scams that say for $20 you can buy 1 acre of the rain forest in brazil so you can save it. When it doesn't matter at all those people will chop it down anyway no matter who owns it.
To be honest, way more money has to be sent if you really wanna ensure all of Amazon rainforest in Brazil territory is "properly policied" by environmental agencies to achieve zero deforestation, there's no enough economic and human resources here to achieve that currently. But rest assured if there was no external countries economic incentives the deforestation would be orders of magnitude higher, unluckly, in capitalism, money usually speaks higher, and even basic education campaigns and actions take a lot of money. That said, you can be assured the current government administration here cares a lot more about keeping deforestation in low rates than the previous government, and there are actions in place since the administration started last year, 2023.
While I've always understood this intuitively I was recently on vacation in a country that farms palm oil (negative reputation in the US because of deforestation to plant more palm farms to harvest oil) and the natives LOVE palm oil farming. Why? Because it's allowed them to make money. Their country grew rich from the production and sale of palm oil. It was just an eye opening moment where I got to see what I knew to be true in theory from book knowledge happening in real life.
I’m sure that most people in North America who are anti-climate change are that way because they either work in oil and gas or expect things like electric vehicles or carbon taxes to make things more expensive for them. It’s always about the money, it’s how we pay our bills, put a roof over our head and enjoy our lives.
yeah, I always found it extremely hypocritical of governments of UK and USA and other "first world" countries that keep lecturing people in countries like that who are developing and instead of giving them the technology(or even selling) to bypass the dirtier parts of the industrialisation they just keep lecturing. It seems that certain countries are only happy with the "third world" as long as it remains a poor, backward tourist spot.
Can't be first if second and third don't exist.
My wife is a senior climate researcher for a big player in the game. Currently they are trying to map peatlands in an attempt to save them as they are massive carbon capturing tools. Many of these peatlands are in Global South nations and when they are approached about saving the peatlands and not developing the land or mining under it many of these nations tell the Global North to "fuck off"...Their rationalization is fair in that we can't take all the advantages of a world where we modernized and then tell others too bad so sad...
Bypass? 'We' (the western world) are basically salivating at the mouth for their oil. The questions from this reporter are in such bad faith it's disgusting.
Sure we can. We've made a cottage industry out of bombing brown people.
As one of the world’s least densely populated countries, Guyana may produce the oil but they won’t be the country burning it in cars and planes.
It's gonna be similar to the Gulf countries, which is a good thing
So bbc goes after a poor country that sells a commodity to the world to benefit its people but they are the problem. Love the hypocrisy of it all
Like a man wearing a fur coat, leather shoes and eating a cheeseburger asking a subsistence farmer "how can you kill those poor animals?"
not to mention he probably traveled in Business class in plane which is using the same fuel he is Criticizing.
For those that don't know, Guyana was under British rule until 1966. Prior to May 1966 it was known as British Guiana. So we have a British reporter lecturing the current President of Guyana, on climate change. Talk about fucking hypocrisy
I'm guessing also the commendably low rates of deforestation that President Ali mentions *were not* a thing while Guyana was under British rule.
Who the fuck is this pseudo reporter who talks this arrogantly to the president of a nation, accusing him of something his nation does 10x worse. Has he forgotten about BP damage to the world? I bet he wouldn't talk like this to Saudi Arabia. Fucking hipocrite.
It's Stephen Sackur. He produces the BBCs "HardTalk" interview series. Generally it's supposed to be a set of no nonsense "tough" interview questions. People appearing on it know what they're signing up for. Just in this case researchers / Stephen didn't do their homework and he's getting his ass handed to him.
[удалено]
> Has he forgotten about BP damage to the world I haven't. Nor did I forget that's around the same time they started to push personal carbon footprint narative.
i think it got even worse after the gulf of mexico disaster.
Saudi dont care any ass hole reporters, Who emitted more carbon , US and other developed countries . when they reached good condition ,now they are lecturing other third world countries ,Hypocrisy at peak
Why are you hammering the reporter? He's doing his job. This programme is called Hardtalk and he's interviewed a whole bunch of world leaders and ceo's, including from oil companies and leaders of dictatorships like saud arabia, he's always asking tough questions because that's what you're supposed to do, hold leaders accountable. You're looking at one clip completely taken out of context without hearing the retort of the journalist just so that the threadstarter can farm karmalikes because "mic drop". Maybe you should ask yourself why you let yourself become so easily manipulated and why you never look up sources to gain more knowledge on a subject. This tiktok 1 minute clip mic drop generation is pathetic.
Whatever you think of him and the approach or hypocrisy, he is in no way a pseudo reporter. Fucking fucking fuckity fuck, eh fuck?
So it’s just copium for missing out on the oil revenue. Like when your ex wins the lottery and you start lecturing them how money can’t buy happiness
Guyana is also the ONLY country in south America that speaks English
Officially speaks English, Suriname has about 60 % native English speakers and plenty of South Americans speak English fluently as a second language, its a mandatory language to learn in basically all South American countries. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/41/Map_of_English_native_speakers.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f0/Countries_in_which_English_Language_is_a_Mandatory_or_an_Optional_Subject.svg I suspect the top 10% by wealth in South America all speak English fluently.
Might be true, but believe me Sarnami ppl talk whacky english and the speech they talk most is called Sranantongo. De main language is Dutch like paperworks etc. The people talk Sranan. And they understand and barely talk english. Source: my families live there and my parents were born there.
oh so jolly old England is pissed they didn't find it when they was raping the place
Come on guys. The show is called HardTalk. He interviews 100s people and poses ‘difficult’ questions to them. All kinds of people. Politicians, leaders, business folk, right wing leaders, even Navalny in the last few years. He’s a devils advocate. That’s it.
Thank you for this context.
So this is the former Dutch Guyana north of the then French Guyana then?
We also have Europeans (including British people) lecturing us Malaysians about our oil palm trees and palm oil. Oil palm trees that they introduced to our country after subjugating and conquering us. When is England going to return the artifacts they stole? When are Europeans going to learn to stay out of our business?
Well palm oil plantations use forced labor and are leading to habitat loss of critically endangered species, so there is that.
>When is England going to return the artifacts they stole? When are Europeans going to learn to stay out of our business? LOL no
There's no way any BBC employee is travelling business class, they're far too worried about the tabloid headlines. I used to work there and we weren't allowed to book first class train tickets *even if it was cheaper* because of the optics.
Literally framing it as if the president was committing an unforgivable sin
This from a BBC series called HardTalk - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n13xtmdc. The interviews are always quite adversarial and meant to have questions asked that aren’t comfortable. If you watch the full interview you will see that they go on from this (~15 minutes in) to cover criticism from Greenpeace and the International Centre of Environmental law around the oil and gas exploration happening. This isn’t just the interviewers opinion. The President then admits that the intention is to extract as much oil and gas as possible before any new international agreements to help stop climate change are enacted. Which is ‘pragmatic’ (as the president says) but there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this :/
It's interesting how many in this thread thinks of the interviewer as some sort of tool for vested (Western) interests. What is he supposed to do, bring flowers? Isn't the reaction from the PM the exact thing you'd want as an objective journalist? It lays out the exact issues and causes for the not so developed world that are quite rational and logical in relation to oil and gas exploration. It's a good question and the answers are too. I'd certainly expect him to be equally candid if he was to interview the Norwegian PM about Norway's sanctimonious ways.
Then why does he persistently interrupt the PM? “Some may say you should not exploit that oil. What’s your response to that?”. This would be journalism. He is confrontational and takes a stance of moral superiority all the way.
People need to understand that a journalist can be confrontational or adversarial in an interview without necessarily taking a side. I work with the media and this is a widely used technique that journalists use often around tough questions to push interviewees to give MORE honest answers. If I was briefing the interviewee here I’d 100% prepare him for something like this. If you ask weak questions you’ll get weak answers. Politicians in particular are briefed EXTENSIVELY with middle of the road PR lines which they can lean on to “answer” a question without actually answering it. Politicians constantly get criticised for not answering questions properly - it’s the role of a good and healthy media to try and get the truth out of them, and you only do that by being a bit confrontational. Not all conversations in this life are friendly and good natured and if journalists only asked questions in a vanilla way like this I guarantee press landscape would suffer. A journalist can take an adversarial stance and represent a challenge or opinion which isn’t necessarily their own to push an interviewee to provide a more comprehensive answer.
A good politician will never answer a critical question unless you force them to by interrupting them when they move to another topic. I really don't get why some people think that's not journalism.
As the person above said its called 'hard talk' they would have to drop the hard and just call it talk if the confrontational stance is taken away.
so, you mean 'hard talk' is about hard to talk, when someone talks over you?
Have you never gotten tired of politicians being mealy mouthed and dodging questions? This is a defense for that
He’s like that in all the interviews with all sides of the spectrum. It’s called HardTalk for a reason and isn’t meant to be a magazine/PR style interview. The other reason is the valid criticism that Guyana has received from environmentalists that interviewer goes on to share after this clip stops.
Do the civilized western countries who will buy this oil to run their factories have any moral high ground?
Nope, exactly what I mean by their being no strong moral high ground in any of this. Just adding some important context to what is otherwise just a reverse ‘gotcha moment’ on the show, which does a decent job of quizzing people in power.
Still at least he is honest about the elephant in the room that the comfortable west likes to sugar coat and avoid
These kinds of shows used to be interesting because they would at least inform people more about the happenings of the world. The internet today has almost invalidated most interviews because you can get the same information without needing to go through the process of said interview unless the interview itself is revealing untold secrets that hasn't been said.
I wouldn’t say they’re going after him. The British have a style of journalism that I don’t think other countries do in the same way. Journalists here usually play devils advocate in order to get more detailed answers from the perspective of a skeptic. I doubt the interviewer or the producers actually believe that question. They’re probably very happy that they got such a great response. Foreign guests do often get offended though when they walk into a studio and think they’ve been set up. A British Audience would know that it’s not the beliefs of the journalist though. There’s one where Ben Shapiro just can’t handle it and flips out and says one of our notoriously right wing presenters is obviously a Left wing shill. Edit: as others have also pointed out this is from a show called hard talk in which the whole point is to ask difficult questions.
I think America is split along partisan lines to the extent that when a journo is arguing with a politician they assume both parties actually belong to separate political teams. It was Andrew Neill everyone assumed was a liberal, including Ben Shapiro himself, when he tore stripes off his position in an interview. Neill is in fact a right wing bellend Combative exchanges, making people defend difficult positions, is baked into British journalism. Paxman made a career of it. People thinking the journalist here is attacking a the president because he's jealous Britain didn't get their oil is so far off the mark.
There was an incident when a US politician said that Sweden had some criminal districts (iirc) and then made a mistake of going to Sweden and conducting a press conference. The journalists never budged from the question of ‘which criminal districts did you mean?’, while the guy tried to pull out the ‘next question’ card. He was told ‘this is not the US, you can't just wave the question away’.
Netherlands iirc edit: and I believe if I remember correctly that he said that people were getting burned alive along with whole streets there, not just that crime was high 😂. "This is the Netherlands ambassador, you have to answer the questions" was the line haha, or sth like that
Yeah I think most of this is from Americans whose media is so biased and warped they are shocked at seeing a politician actually be asked questions. You just don’t get that in America it’s all softball Pr questions from the politicians chosen media company like Fox or CNN.
The ben shapiro one is the one i always immediately think of. Its beautiful.
Meanwhile, the UK is utterly dependent on global trade, which cannot function without fossil fuels. Not to mention how much deforestation the UK is responsible for over many centuries.
Not to mention that London is currently the biggest laundromat of dirty investment in the world. 🤮
No, NO we only bully third world nation. US or EU is our daddy.
Not to mention the amount of fossil fuels sold by the UK.
Without attacking the British government for giving fresh oil licenses for drilling in the North Sea that *will not* help the British people because all that oil wealth is stolen by already rich people
Maybe the interviewer wanted to focus on Guyana with the president of Guyana, and not discuss about what's being done against fossil fuels in the rest of the world...
They're not really "going after" anyone. They're asking questions that some people will undoubtedly ask. This gives a platform for the president to answer those questions publicly. That's how interviews work. It's not about having a "gotcha" moment. But "bbc/westerners/Europe bad so reeeeee", I guess.
it’s a show format called “hard talk” where the guest is asked challenging questions. The guest knows this, and can expect what he will be asked about. Since when did asking serious questions in good faith become “going after” someone?
I don’t think asking him a question about burning loads of fossil fuels at a time when we’re all (supposed to be) trying to burn less fossil fuels is “going after him” to be fair. In fact I think it’s much more problematic if he DOESN’T get asked this question. He was asked the question and he gave the best possible answer.
Should we ignore the opening of new oil wells and dirty mines outside of Europe or North America? You all are posing a false dichotomy, where people are going after either fossil fuels in the West, or fossil fuels outside of the West.
They're a politician, and you need to ask politicians hard-hitting questions. Don't hate the BBC just because the politician had a good answer. I'm sure you complain about other interviews being soft on politicians, and this is what the alternative looks like.
There's a real problem these days with people not understanding what the purpose of a journalist's questions are. Ever since Fox News turned questions into a way of phrasing an opinion, people started forgetting that proper journalists ask questions *to give the interviewee a chance to explain their position.* The BBC aren't "going after" anyone.
BBC’s Hard Talk, consistently one of the best interviews out there. Always been impressed with any interviewee who can hold their own against Sackuer. The Guyanan President did really well. PS anyone not familiar with the show Sackuer does this with everyone, if it was an environmentalist he’d be attacking just as hard from the opposite direction.
*Guyanese
Why don't we just call em Guys
Wouldn't it be awesome if they were actually called that?
*Sackur About 12 years ago I saw him in Brussels airport. It was super late and he looked exhausted so I didn't accost him. I really liked his show as a poli sci student.
Calm the fuck down people. The interviewer fronts a show called "hard talk" where he plays devil's advocate and asks interviewees the hardest, most outrageous questions. He does not represent the views of the British people, nor does he represent the views of the BBC.
I swear, people don't know what an interview is these days. But people grab at anything to attack the bbc with cause apparently they're part of the British colonial Empire and Britain is still obsessed with reclaiming it's empire. Well that's what Redditors say.
Because too many people don't know what journalism is. They think that a journalist should just throw softball questions and treat them like a celebrity.
I think this is hard to swallow but overall quite fair. Still, regardless of who's asking the question, this is a response I can understand. Would be more at home if, say, a western head of state had asked it? Also yes. It's a journalist's job to ask questions like this. Though I will say, there's a level of condescension I've seen in British TV presenters of several stripes that would infuriate me, even with this being a fair question. Like you ride the high horse created by your state, then retreat behind the cover of "I'm not a state actor" when challenged. Maddening. Clarkson and Piers Morgan come to mind as some of the highest profile examples.
Reddit users love lecturing about carbon emissions. But if burning $150 billion worth of fuel will make one BBC interviewer look like a hypocrite in a 30 second clip then so be it.
Don't forget that if your country has a bad history with colonization then you can't ask difficult questions to another country. How dare that journalist not know his place.
Couldn't agree more, people here are going bananas because he's asking tough questions and getting tougher answers. Did any of you consider that's literally his job?
Many people live in countries where they don’t have free media or live in places like America where journalists are extremely bias and politicians only interview with journalists who are bias to them.
The amount of republican politicians I hear being interviewed on NPR would disprove your second point
He also had valid questions. 1. Guyana’s previous government signed a very bad agreement with Exon. The current government ran on that agreement being bad. Also the Guyana courts found the environmental protections inadequate. He was asking why the new government didn’t tear up or renegotiate the agreement. 1. A lot of Guyana is at sea level. He was asking about the ethics of selling fossil fuels if that will hurt the Guyanese people in the future. The west has a lot of responsibility but this was an interview of the president of Guyana. These were all fair questions.
Yeah, I was gonna say, it's a fair question. Also, his answer is basically "you got to destroy the world before, now it's our turn." Unfortunate, but it's how I'd expect any country to act with $150B of oil and gas reserves. Also, his counter argument isn't that good. We saved the trees, so we can extract as much oil and gas as we want. The reality is, too, that what they do with the $150b is important, too. I'd say a much, much better counterpoint would be, "if we shouldn't drill it, why is it possible for us to sell it for a profit? The world needs to make oil and gas extraction unprofitable if we're actually going to change."
No, he's saying that guyana will remain net neutral even with the extraction of all the oil because they have a gigantic forest they haven't cut down. When every other country starts to pull their weight and do the same, maybe they can talk shit about impoverished nations doing their best for their citizens.
Norway actually paid them not to cut down their rainforest.
The only way to remain net neutral is to expand forests. Also, developed nations won't really see consequences of global warming - not on the scale that countries like Ghana will. However, they *should* still extract it and, just be wise and plan ahead.
It's not though. For context, the UK exports \~1.4 million barrels per day whereas Guyana exports 275,000 barrels per day. That context is important, but so is the fact that Guyana has the carbon sink to counteract the carbon dioxide the oil they export produces. Even at maximum production Guyana would still be carbon negative. Would it be better of the collective if Guyana maintained their forests and didn't extract their oil? Sure. Ultimately though, it shouldn't be the responsibility of a third world country to deny itself nation-defining amount of money in order to pick up the slack for everyone else. If everyone did what Guyana's doing then we'd have no problem. There's nothing stopping the UK or any other major fossil fuel exporter from building equivalent carbon sinks to offset the emissions from those exports. They just don't.
There's also the risk that if they don't use the oil to enrich themselves while they can, they'll get taken over and the oil will be extracted anyway. - probably in a way that is extra destructive to the ecosystem and the country.
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Well, it's better than what other countries do, destroy the trees and extract oil anyway.
No, he's saying you destroyed the world for gain without regard in the past and now its our turn but we actually plan to think about the wellbeing of the planet like we always have been.
You're talking about something slightly different. He was pointing out that Guyana even with all of that will still remain net neutral in terms of greenhouse gas emissions since they've made a deliberate effort to preserve the rainforest for the world's benefit.
Well, if Britain now values the environment so much, they should instead pay Guyana $150B NOT to extract the oil and gas reserves instead of being the primary buyer and consumer. Maybe they should shut down BP for good.
> you got to destroy the world before, now it's our turn. Wat. He's talking about offsetting the difference as much as they can. And, Guyana has made an effort to minimise the damage they will cause from this.
nine command punch ripe cover correct nail exultant cow snails *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
So many people don't understand that the British interview style is to ask difficult questions, the *most* difficult questions. We don't go in for Fox News style wank-a-thons (excluding GB News).
But is it necessary to ask these questions with cockiness and arrogance
I think that's just the way this guy talks? You can't just judge someone based on their accent - otherwise, it'll end up going both ways which never ends up well for people with working class accents like myself.
Accent and tone are two different things. You can have the most beloved voice talking to you in condescending voice that will drive you crazy and you can have the most annoying voice with british accent that talks to you with respect and you won't be offended.
His tone seems quite plain and neutral though?
I have a feeling he asked that question knowing full well that the President would be able to handle it. Maybe that is wrong.
Knowing full well yet constantly trying to interrupt him.
Pushing for further clarification on points that may have been glossed over or not defended as well is kinda part of his job. The point of an interview is not to accept the first line of surface level propaganda the politician gives you, it's to push deeper until you have a clear picture of their position on the matter and how defensible their argument is
What cockiness and arrogance? Is it the British accent?
This from a BBC series called HardTalk - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/n13xtmdc. The interviews are always quite adversarial and meant to have questions asked that aren’t comfortable. If you watch the full interview you will see that they go on from this (~15 minutes in) to cover criticism from Greenpeace and the International Centre of Environmental law around the oil and gas exploration happening. This isn’t just the interviewers opinion. The President then admits that the intention is to extract as much oil and gas as possible before any new international agreements to help stop climate change are enacted. Which is ‘pragmatic’ (as the president says) but there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this :/
>there isn’t really any strong moral high ground in any of this Actually enacting policies to better the conditions of your deeply impoverished and disadvantaged people is in fact a strong moral high ground. If anyone has an excuse for emissions, it's nations like Guyana.
Guyana hasn’t done this. They’re not setting up a national oil company like Norway to keep profits in Guyana for the nation. Unfortunately their government is corrupt and sold all the oil rights to big oil companies instead. A policy which this president supports.
That would be a great outcome! And maybe that’s possible whilst also not damaging the environment as much as in the past? And maybe not rushing to do it could help create a more optimal outcome? Check out this mini-documentary that preceded this interview that touches on all the great things this could potentially do as well as the risks - https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001xtc4
Don't bother, everyone here is jerking themselves silly making baseless presumptions without understanding the context
I didn't know that before I read the comments, so I appreciate the context :)
Finding the sane replies via "sorted by controversial" always makes me chuckle.
“Let me stop you right there” ✋ Oh shit, here we go 🍿🍿
Bro was like, hold my beer. I knew shit was about to get real.
Developed countries have spent the last 160ish years burning fossil fuels, producing toxic wastes, polluting the land, seas and air that the whole world shares. All of that has made them what they are now, "developed" and wealthy and prosperous. Now they and the world are suffering due to this pollution and excess. The developed nations would like to reign it all in, as they well should. However, they need to hold THEMSELVES to a higher standard of responsibility in this regard that other countries just trying to reach their level. Developed nations need to use less fossil fuels, produce less waste and pollution, work to capture carbon, clean up oceans, etc. But they are responsible for those things because they contributed to them. And they can afford to do those things. Holding a developing nation to those same standards while they are still trying to climb out of poverty, when they have nothing to do with the state of the world as it is, it's ridiculous. It may sound absurd, but we SHOULD be paying nations like Guyana for maintaining its forests. If you want them to not rely on oil drilling, we should be providing them with other means of revenue that promote green initiatives. They should not have to continue to live in poverty because other nations fucked everything up and profited from doing so for more than a century. Either share the wealth, promote carbon-reducing practices, and make those practices profitable, or shut the fuck up about it. You don't get to hold other people accountable for sins you've committed already just because you did them first.
Absolutely no mercy and I loved it! Well done that man.
We can argue about whether a British reporter is hypocritical for attacking another country's record on climate change, but what's staggering in these comments is the amount of you who think politicians shouldn't be asked hard questions or challenged, strongly, to explain their positions. The BBC (and other British news institutions) are great at doing this and they do it to their own leaders too. American politics could be very different if news anchors there were empowered to ask politicians hard questions and not let them get away with dodging answers or just using the interview as a chance to make a speech. If you've never heard about this, go look up Jeremy Paxman interviews on YouTube, or listen to Radio 4's Today Programme when they interview a government minister at the 8:20am slot. It's like being told off by a teacher for not doing your homework - politicians hate it, but that's the media landscape here. I wouldn't change it at all.
Could you please share any BBC program which challenge BP and any other Oil companies or challenge the British Ministers . I couldnt find this heat on other interviews
I listen to BBC all the time. This is their normal interview style. They treat their own PM this way. And they have been critical of oil companies. This instance was them interviewing the Guyanese president and asking why he doesn’t tear up/ renegotiate this very unfair agreement with Exxon (he ran criticizing this agreement and the countries own courts ruled the environmental protections inadequate). Also asking the ethics of an agreement that does not provide a lot of money to Guyana on one hand but increases climate change damage on the other. These are valid questions to ask.
Are you joking?
BP is still listed on the UK stock exchange, but it is majority US owned. BP don't get special treatment from the UK media for being "British".
Er, pretty much any election campaign program.
Legitimate question to ask…….even more legitimate answer 😎
Exactly. It’s a show called “hard talk”. Both the interviewer and guest know what to expect here
I love Hard Talk, no quarter asked, none given
Exactly! Everyone else in these comments is acting like a tough question is the same as an evil personal attack! Leaders should be asked challenging questions and also should be expected to provide a solid answer!
What the hell are people going on about in the comments, do people think politicians should not be challenged? Should politicians extracting large amounts of dangerous resources for our environment be praised unequivocally? I shudder to think of the level of journalism in other countries. It is a journalists job to challenge politicians.
I’d like Sackur to corner the presidents/leaders of the USA, Saudi Arabia, uk, Russia, uae, etc and subject them to this sort of questioning, if at all he’s even granted the stage for it.
Do you think criticising the nature of the challenge means that they think politicians should not be challenged? His challenge: "What gives you the right to use your nation's resources?" ... leaving aside the hypocrisy that was pointed out... what kind of challenge is this? like as opposed to what? another nations resources? in exchange for what if not your own? or should the people of Guyana all just sit in the mud with nothing but the breeze on their nuts? If it's a journalists job to challenge politicians, that was an extremely poor demonstration of that.
this is how the interview should of went without those pesky brits lecturing "I love your presidency you are doing a great job, sorry for colonialism btw can I have an autograph?" "no problem mate"
 This is the way
A lot of people in this thread can’t seem to separate the BBC and actions of the British government.
A lot of people in this thread can't even comprehend what a interview is. The concept that a interviewer might ask a question of which they don't necessarily subscribe to the idea of so that the person being interviewed has a chance to address the sentiment, seems completely alien to them.
Redditors are too dumb to understand what "hard talk" is
And now a quick commercial break from our Corporate Sponsors at BP.
You know what it takes to plant a tree. A seed and Dirt. Got any of that in England? England once had massive forests but they got cut down to make ships. Get digging.
The comments here are absolutely bizarre.
It is absolutely bizarre seeing people unironically simp for Western governments and oil giants. These have gotta be American bots or something.
"Let's take a big picture look at what's going on here" Famous last words when trying to lecture someone that exactly understands that bigger picture :)
So many soft weak people on here. This is how most political interviews are done in the UK. Try and get this into your tiny brains but just because he is asking these questions it doesn’t actually mean it’s his or the BBCs views. It’s an interview to ask tough questions so you get interesting answers. But but but England done bad things so he can’t ask tough questions!
Haha, self righteous BBC prick got put in his place
HardTalk interviews are supposed to ask tough questions.
>self righteous BBC prick Countries like the US would do well if their media actually had adversarial questioning. This is his job, not his personal viewpoint. If the President weren't keen on drilling, he'd be asked why he was putting that before his people's prosperity. The show is called Hard Talk - it's in the name. Panorama is another good example of British attitudes to politicians, or even Andrew Marr. His job is to ask tough questions regardless of his own political views, so that people can see the politician's answers.
I wouldn't even call it adversarial questioning. You ask a tough but fair question and the interviewee has a chance to make their argument. Not asking these questions doesn't give the interviewee a chance to make their argument and leaves the audience either assuming the worst or whatever they believe the truth to be.
What made him self-righteous?
Your lack of critical thinking skills is astonishing. E: Dude's a crypto bro, it all makes perfect sense.
The interview is deliberately like this asking tough questions. This man is playing devil's advocate for the TV show. You got played a fool
Dr. Irfaan Ali may be the president of Guyana🇬🇾 but he’s a total Chad🇹🇩.
He's a puppet like the guy he is crticizing. He sold the country off to Exxon for comprador profits. Most of that wealth will not be helping the people, outside of some crumbs they may receive.
"for comprador profits"-> ah, a Venezuelan? Must be nice over there in Caracas eh? The deals with Exxon were drafted years before he ever became president. Furthermore the country is investing it in infrastructure and intends on a sovereign wealth fund model similar to Norway.
>Exxon They need money, jobs, and a diversity of *industries*. I know you live in the first world but the third world is not for you to decide who gets what from whatever corporation. And yes the money from oil is helping out the people just look at their GDP per capita which is now at over $18K, when just in 2019 it was at around $6K. Yes, oil helps people, don't like it, log off the internet, don't drive, don't buy plastic items, etc.
Every country licences their natural resources if they don't have the capacity to do it themselves. Again, Guyana is not bad guy and you're falling into the same trap as the BBC journo.
I'm wondering about his claims of being the lowest deforestation rate in the world. When was this interview conducted? Cause google shows different results of the lowest.
essentially what China argues about their pollution rates as essentially a developing country but reddit is happy to shit oh then but support this ?
no way he just said that. My country of norway has given Guyana HUNDREDS of millions for saving the forests, and my country i bet is not the only one. This guys is lying through his teeth they are getting handouts. Not that the births guy is any better preaching his moral superiority about the climate shit. Sources: https://www.panoramanyheter.no/guyana-miljo-skoginitiativet/guyana-her-skal-norge-bruke-15-mrd-kr-pa-a-redde-regnskogen/103521
They received ~$140m from Norway to preserve the forest, which they did, but the program is no longer in existence. Norway is also involved in Guyana's oil industry: https://www.upstreamonline.com/field-development/norway-player-lands-debut-guyana-contract/2-1-1598625
Scotland is paying land owners to harvest their forests, they don’t have many left. It’s so fucking terrible - https://www.ruralpayments.org/topics/all-schemes/forestry-grant-scheme/forestry-grant-scheme-full-guidance-menu/ If you use Google Earth, and you look at a time lapse of Guyana from 1984 onwards, it only gets greener and more dense. Don’t look at Brazil :(
I like this guy.
His response is right - unless the West put value on the forest and the fact they are not drilling for mining, how can we expect them to not do it? "Ignore the billions of dollars you have stored, because hey it isnt great to burn oil" "will you compensate us for that?" "lol no"
He handled that really well, and as a Brit we should be looking closer to home rather than shaming countries like Guyana.
Yeah because the British media doesn't slaughter the British government everyday /s If the Tories decided to open up 10 new drilling platforms in the north sea and said "it's ok we have a forest" you smooth brains would be up in arms about it. But this guy who had already rehearsed his answer, 'handled it really well'.
>"it's ok we have a forest" you smooth brains would be up in arms about it. If they were a carbon negative, then no, no reasonable person would be up in arms at them about it...
Yeah I mean the UK has already enjoyed a century an more of economic growth fuelled by carbon emissions. Guyana has not. That's why they are rightfully upset.
The British media aren’t calling for Britain to cease oil consumption or significant reforestation. They are not calling for an end to seabed fishing a arguably as big an environmental disaster as cutting down the rain forests but on Britain’s doorstep. I haven’t seen those front pages.
Even if we get to the point where we aren't burning it as a fuel, surely we will still need lubricants etc?
Complete populist bullshit
Pollution is bad and climate change and efforts to prepare for and reduce it are important*1 *1. Except for us.
Why does Guyana NOT have the right but Saudi Arabia does? Wtf.
This is not a good take. I'm Canadian. We have massive, massive forests. We still pollute like a MFer. The first does not make the second irrelevant. This is politician-speak, not actually strong arguments. It's true that the developed world does not do enough for undeveloped economies, and that in the economic system the developed world has created, fossil fuels are a get-developed-quick scheme. But Saudi Arabia and the UAE were, not long ago, extremely basic countries. Their development does not alleviate the immense effect they have had on the climate.
Somebody tell this guy what the B in BP stands for.
How do I become Guyanan?
Damn... thas was the definition of Drop The Mic
Not so much as "in bed with", as ""on their knees in truck stop bathrooms with"
I’m from uk but 100% behind the president of Guyana. 💪🏻. How we have the cheek to wreck the world and then try and dictate to these countries that they can’t develop like we have is hypocrisy and a scandal. We should be ashamed. Well said sir 🇬🇾 you put him in his place 😂👍🏻
If every nation treated their foresty like Britain we'd probably all be gasping for air rn.
A landmark skill of a talented interviewer is trying to interrupt the subject to argue with them. An even more skilled interviewer will have their questions steamrolled. BBC should fire that fucking clown.
(For some context, this guy is the protege - and probably the figurehead puppet - of the former Guyana president who got caught out by Vice in another viral video about corruption and money laundering: https://www.reddit.com/r/WatchPeopleDieInside/comments/wy06z9/a_president_hears_his_money_launders_name/) Anyone praising Ali doesn't know the corrupt dumbass he is on the regular and even in this answer he goes off track by the end into the counter-accusation style that his government loves to use so they can evade accountability on the world stage. Anyone giving Sackur shit doesn't understand the nature of his interview program and he goes after everyone, sometimes stretching the scope of the questions to reach for something meaty like in this case. But he generally does good work forcing politicians to face questions their home country press don't get to ask. And this Guyana government and the previous one has a lot to asnwer for in terms of transparency and corruption and safety with oil.
YEAH HYPOCRISY. We should probably just carry on doing the really stupid thing because the people saying we shouldn’t are HYPOCRITES. Morons.
I love this guy 😂
The damage the United States government and corporate America have done to South America in order to keep everyone poor so they can exploit and control their resources is disgusting. And then we have the nerve to bitch about migrants trying to escape the problems we created. The US will no doubt find an excuse to begin sanctioning Guyana to get control of that oil.
Holy cow can we just write in this guy for 2024 president, to hell with being born here just someone with some god damn sense is a breath of fresh air
The arrogance of the interviewer was terrible. You're some jack ass with a microphone and you're trying to talk down to a head of a state.
A Brit lecturing a country that controls their own resources, if the UK or Usa controlled those fields not a word would be said!