Climate hypocrisy
Fossil fuel giant Qatar—the world’s top LNG exporter and a known sponsor of extremist and terror groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, has no free press at home, yet floods London with glossy ad campaigns telling the West how to manage carbon credits and climate change. It’s the height of green hypocrisy: a petrostate profiting from the crisis while pretending to cure it.
If you’ve taken the London Underground lately, you may have seen them — sleek Al Jazeera English ads urging governments to “redouble their efforts to tackle climate change.” The image: a man knee-deep in floodwater, dragging what looks like the remains of a livelihood. The message: urgent, moral, global. The messenger here to save us: Qatar.
I’ve seen similar ads from Saudi Aramco about how we need to invest in clean energy on the back pages of the New York Times as they pump out megatons of oil.
It’s a curious irony — the world’s richest per-capita fossil fuel state paying for climate virtue ads in the West timed with COP30 in Brazil. Qatar, a monarchy built on liquefied natural gas exports and one of the highest per-capita carbon footprints on Earth, is telling London commuters how to save the planet. The country that bankrolls the world’s most polluting industries, limits press freedom, and funds a network forbidden from criticizing its own rulers now positions itself as a moral voice for climate action. You can’t make it up.
The Al Jazeera campaign has plastered slogans across London, part of a broader PR push to soften Qatar’s image ahead of the next round of UN climate talks happening now in Brazil, COP30, a charade of do-gooders where not much gets done. In a just world, no fossil fuel companies should be leading this conversation. Like cigarette companies, they should be banned from buying ads.
In a just world, the billions spent on soft-power PR that comes out of London offices (see our story on how a London firm greenwashes Qatar to ravage a Seychelles island) would go toward real decarbonization and freedom of information.
Until then, Qatar remains a master of doublethink—burning gas by the megaton while selling “sustainability” to a world desperate for clean air. Wake up from your slumber people.
Author: Karin Kloosterman
Karin Kloosterman is an award-winning journalist, innovation strategist, and founder of Green Prophet, one of the Middle East’s pioneering sustainability platforms. She has ranked in the Top 10 of Verizon innovation competitions, participated in NASA-linked challenges, and spoken worldwide on climate, food security, and future resilience. With an IoT technology patent, features in Canada’s National Post, and leadership inside teams building next-generation agricultural and planetary systems — including Mars-farming concepts — Karin operates at the intersection of storytelling, science, and systems change. She doesn’t report on the future – she helps design it. Reach out directly to [email protected]
