Look who’s polluting

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According to a new World Wildlife Fund, the average human in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), puts more demand on the earth’s resources than any other, but the Emirates is considered a “developing nation,” and as such, even as a Kyoto signatory, is not required to cut emissions.

According to Jim Krane’s recent AP report, “Energy consumption in the Emirates runs high for many of the same reasons found in the United States: a feeling that the good life requires huge air-conditioned houses and cars, and a disdain for public transportation.”

“Making matters worse are Dubai's audacious developments, including artificial resort islands that have destroyed coral reefs and an indoor ski slope that still creates snow when it is 120 degrees outside.”

The UAE puts the USA back to second in terms of its “ecological footprint," but the folks in the UAE’s government, embarrassed by the report have taken exactly the wrong tack on this flawed report.

The fact is that living well and producing wealth, requires a large amount of energy, places with “large ecological footprints,” like the UAE, the U.S., England, Germany, Kuwait, Japan and Qutar all produce much, so it’s only logical that they also consume much energy in the process.

Until the 1960s, the UAE was, like the rest other oil-producing Gulf states, an impoverished desert country whose residents survived through subsistence fishing, farming and very small-businesses.

Now, the government's energy subsidies give the citizens of the UAE free water and cheap electricity, and gasoline sells for about $1.70 per gallon.

While the Emirates’ state oil company has eliminated 80 percent of its wasteful flaring off of natural gas at oil wellheads and has considered some other projects involving renewable energy, unlike in the U.S. and most of Western Europe energy consumption has not been looked at as a problem.

Another factor in the region’s “large footprint” is its hevary reliance on the energy intensive process of desalinization. A focal point for Dubai's emissions is the red-and-white smokestacks jutting from gas-fired power plants and an aluminum smelter that line the beach on the city's outskirts. The plants also serve to distill fresh water from the Gulf’s seawater, a process that accounts for 98 percent of the fresh water in a country with no rivers and little usable groundwater.

Ecologists complain that in places like Dubai (above left, one of the seven Emirates that make up the UAE) and Abu Dhabi desalinated water is lavished, Las Vegas-style, on fountains, artificial lakes, swimming pools, resort greenery and golf courses sitting atop once drifting desert sands. Desalination also produces most fresh water in Saudi Arabia, Qutar and Kuwait, Gulf countries that also showed high footprints.

"Really, we're happy to be rich now," said Majid al-Mansouri, who heads the environment agency serving Abu Dhabi.