Climate scientists, oil state.
Mexico’s Presidenta-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, has named biologist and current official Alicia Bárcena Environment Secretary.
Two climate scientists running a state dependent on oil money in the middle of an environmental crisis captures Mexico’s core dilemma. Anyone who’s spent time in Mexico City recently will have felt this crisis – an acute cocktail of record temperatures, poor air quality, and water shortages. In watching Mexican politics for ten years, the recurring gap between rhetoric and record is striking. It’s on display here.
Mexico rates as highly insufficient in its work to net zero. Its fossil fuel reliance has increased over the last six years. Plenty of speculation followed Sheinbaum’s victory about how the climate scientist will lead the oil state. With Bárcena’s appointment, we have an answer: kinda like AMLO did.
Morena’s partisans will tell you that Bárcena has real climate chops. Notionally that’s true. Bárcena is a biologist. She was Environment Undersecretary for former Mexican President De La Madrid. During that administration, Mexico started to grapple with the worst of its environmental problem. Bárcena also worked on sustainability with the UN. But like Sheinbaum, Bárcena has since embraced a political project built on skyrocketing oil consumption. This raises doubts about her commitment to Mexico’s decarbonisation.
Let’s look at the record of both. First, as Mexico’s current foreign secretary, Bárcena has pushed the Sonora Plan with some success. The plan promises new solar investment and lithium mining. Still, Sonora exemplifies Morena’s significant say-do gap. Mexico lacks technical capacity and expertise in this area. Recent nationalisation of lithium reserves compounds the problem. This will prevent it being the major player in EV battery manufacturing it wants to be.
Similarly, Sheinbaum made progress on renewables in Mexico City. But Mexico lags far behind peer nations, despite admirable goals. Mexico City accounts for just 3% of Mexico’s carbon emissions, so Sheinbaum’s successes are dwarfed by the broader challenges. The country's industrial and economic makeup are vastly different from the capital’s. They require the kind of structural reforms that aren’t in Sheinbaum’s record.
Let’s take water. In 2019 Sheinbaum pledged universal access to clean water in Mexico City by 2024. The pledge was sincere but failed, and the city nears a “Day Zero” crisis. The city’s only river, the Magdalena, remains polluted. Scientists are crowd-funding efforts to detoxify the UNESCO-protected Xochimilco canal system. This shows the absence of an effective water strategy. Sheinbaum’s 2019 pledge suggests she knew such a strategy was needed.
How will a water-scarce country mine lithium? How will Mexico protect its fragile waters from new mines’ toxic runoff? Few can answer these questions.
Sheinbaum and Bárcena’s climate credentials are worth something, they matter. Their embrace of a party and leader who are in a petro-fog undermines these credentials. Electric buses and solar panels are positive steps locally. They tinker at the edges of Mexico’s needs nationally, though. Clearly there are stronger pro-climate policies than lithium mines which could be enacted. Better to claw back some of the $73 billion spent propping up Pemex, Mexico’s struggling state oil company. That could help fund the needed structural reforms for the country’s water system. It’s also more coherent than extending fiscal support to Pemex and related polluting projects like Dos Bocas, as they have pledged to do.
It’s easy to see Sheinbaum’s win optimistically. It’s natural to hope the climate scientist will transform the oil state. For now, the gap between Mexico’s climate promises and actions remains.