In a fun little farrago, OPEC Secretary General Haitham al-Ghais1 bemoaned why calling crude oil a fossil fuel “falls far short of the threshold of precise scientific terminology”. You are welcome to guess how it goes:
- Crude oil is not only used to make fuels. It is also used to make ocean-polluting plastics and hormone-disrupting petrochemicals. How is it fair to call it a “fuel”?
- The term “fossil fuel” was first coined in 1759 (ancient times!) to describe how crude oil is dug out of the ground. Why should we continue to use a 266-year-old term that still accurately describes how oil is produced?
- Crude oil and actual fossils (the kind you see in museums) were formed by different physical and chemical processes. We don’t want people to think crude oil comes from dinosaur bones!
If these sound ridiculous, that’s because al-Ghais’ new love for “precise scientific terminology” is part of a coordinated, convoluted effort to rehabilitate the reputation of fossil fuels (“a slur”, as he calls it) and distract us from the crucial task of phasing them out. He thinks this “derogatory” “slur” feeds into a “distorting” “narrative that some energies are morally superior to others”. But wouldn’t you agree that some energy sources are morally superior to others when renewables cause far fewer diseases and deaths than fossil fuels?
Al-Ghais didn’t offer any alternatives to replace the term “fossil fuel”, so in the spirit of scientific precision, I propose “climate-altering-ocean-choking-hormone-disrupting-killer-goo” to describe crude oil.
- Whose home country Kuwait was invaded by the infamous Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein for its oil reserves. When a US-led international coalition intervened, the retreating Iraqi forces dumped millions of barrels of oil into the Persian Gulf and set hundreds of Kuwaiti oil wells on fire for months, resulting in one of the worst public health and environmental disasters in history. ↩
An Inconvenient Thought 