MEXICO CITY — Mexico is warming faster than the rest of the world. The recent record heat waves are a clear illustration of the climate crisis and the urgent need for adaptation policies.
In addition to such pressing issues as the protection of biodiversity, the mitigation of the water crisis and the transition to greener energies, Mexico’s president-elect, Claudia Sheinbaum, will also face a nation marked by inequality.
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The gap between the harsh reality and her government proposals will be difficult to close if she wants Mexico climb out of the environmental and climatic slump that her mentor, Mexico’s outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, left it in.
For Luis Fernández-Carril, coordinator of Sustainability and Climate Change at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, Sheinbaum’s proposals are far from the priorities.
The crisis “represents a major challenge for Mexico, and we have experienced very strong effects in recent months. It is permeating our daily lives; it is not an abstract issue. We are behind with respect to climate change, and the public policy instruments and laws in place are not working,” he says.
Along the same problematic path
The plan outlined by Sheinbaum, a 61-year-old climate scientist, is basically the continuation the policies of AMLO, who appointed her secretary of the environment in 2000 when he was head of the of Mexico City government (2000-2006). Yet AMLO’s model has had a negative impact on the environment, and Mexico is already suffering the consequences of the climate crisis.
Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico’s first woman president, aims to extend her predecessor’s fossil fuels-centered energy model and to strength the state-owned Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) and Petróleos Mexicanos (Pemex), as well as to promote the energy transition through domestic distributed generation and renewable energy projects — a contradiction she has not yet explained.
Sheinbaum will not be able to say she ‘did not know,’ or was not familiar with the subject.
During her presidential campaign, Sheinbaum was cautious to stay in line with AMLO’s positions on environmental issues. Sheinbaum, who will take office on October 1 and end her term in 2030, boasts of her scientific career and her environmental achievements at the head of the capital city’s government (2018-2023).
Yet she did not solve the water issues nor the air pollution problems that plague Mexico City. And she refused to declare a climate emergency in the city, which has a population of more than 8 million, and more than 20 million including the city’s outskirts.
The former mayor, who collaborated to the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), also proposes a program for energy efficiency, the promotion of electric transport and the construction of water infrastructure, such as dams, despite the intense drought that plagues the country and makes them unviable as an energy alternative.
A harmful legacy
For environmental consultant Alín Moncada, Sheinbaum cannot use ignorance as an excuse, given her academic career.
“She needs to distance herself from what was done during Obrador’s six-year term. The [climate] fight was totally neglected, the policies that were initially proposed looked very nice but in practice, it was totally different. All eyes are on her, because she will not be able to say she ‘did not know,’ or was not familiar with the subject. We will have more elements to demand climate action and that is what is expected,” Moncada says.
The outgoing administration operated without a national strategy for electric mobility and energy efficiency or a national adaptation plan to the effects of the climate crisis.That weakened climate fight, by reducing the budget allocated to that sector, dismantling the institutions of the environmental sector and slowing down the energy transition.
In terms of fossil energy promotion, one of the AMLO government’s main themes has been energy sovereignty, or meeting the country’s needs with domestic production. But Mexico, the second largest country in Latin America behind Brazil, still imports gasoline and depends on U.S. gas for electricity generation, burned in combined cycle power plants that also use steam.
Mexico is the second largest polluter in Latin America, after Brazil.
Furthermore, the rescue of Pemex through substantial public aid has not improved hydrocarbon production. Oil and gas extraction have fallen in recent months, as well as external gasoline purchases.
Along the same lines, the government bought the remaining 50% of the Deer Park refinery in Houston, Texas, from the oil company Shell in 2021 and is still building the Olmeca refinery, known as Dos Bocas, in the municipality of Paraíso, about 760 kilometers from Mexico City. Construction began in 2019 and its operation was scheduled for 2022, and its cost has jumped from billion to almost billion.
Mexico’s sovereignty depends on Dos Bocas, as it will process some 340,000 barrels of crude oil, to produce 170,000 barrels of gasoline and 120,000 of diesel.
The world’s 11th largest crude oil producer, Mexico’s electricity is generated mainly by fossil fuels. It is the second largest polluter in Latin America, after Brazil, and is among the 12 largest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world. Pemex is among the 15 most polluting companies in the world.
Contradictory plans
In contrast, the CFE is building the Puerto Peñasco solar plant, in the northern state of Sonora, the first phase of which generates 120 megawatts (MW), and solar panels, with a capacity of 18 MW, at the Central de Abasto, the largest wholesale market in Latin America, located in the southeast of Mexico City.
Meanwhile, it is building at least six gas-fired generators, for some 4,000 MW of installed capacity, and modernizing at least nine hydroelectric plants, despite predictions of drought and variable rainfall for the coming decades.
Mexico’s emissions have risen since 2019, due to the promotion of fossil fuels and deforestation, constituting an example of environmental deterioration. In this sense, the international platform Climate Action Tracker considers Mexican climate policy to be “critically insufficient,” obtaining the worst rating by contributing to the increase in planetary temperature that could reach 4 °C.
An issue that may seem to be only environmental will also affect the economy and the society.
Mexico also is not on track to meet the 17 Sustainable Development Goals for 2030, signed by the UN in 2015, including those related to affordable and clean energy, climate action, and the protection and restoration of terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
Those are not the only causes of concern. On April 22, at an event to sign climate commitments by the Mexico Resilient coalition, Pedro Álvarez-Icaza, a member of Sheinbaum’s environmental team, downplayed the size of the public budget for the environmental branch.
“It is not just a matter of money, but of commitments. We are all responsible for the expense,” Álvarez-Icaza said, faced with a scenario of budgetary contraction for the next government which may harm the environmental sector, in a repetition of the financial anemia that has been worsening since 2019.
Toward the unknown
In short, the future president faces two complex options: to follow AMLO’s path of environmental damage, or build her own path, which would distance her from her political mentor, with far-reaching consequences for the official movement.
Fernández-Carril, an IPCC collaborator, says that a transversal vision must prevail, in which development and climate policies must be the same.
Sheinbaum “is sensitive to what is happening, but if the political machinery does not tackle the issue in a comprehensive manner, then it will continue on the same path. We can assert that we are not on a path to climate-resilient development. The cost is an increasingly limited leeway, not just in terms of sustainable development or the environment. It is the climatic burden that we will have to bear from now on. It is not about taking care of water shortages or heat waves today, but taking care of them from now on,” he says.
For activist Alín Moncada, the climate crisis will have a high socioeconomic cost.
“We have to highlight the effects and how they affect the country. An issue that may seem to be only environmental will also affect the economy and the society. [Sheinbaum] has to keep her word on renewable energy,” she said.
With her scientific background and her professional political career, Sheinbaum has a barrel of oil or a solar panel at hand. Opting for both means choosing the path to rising temperatures.
