Claudia Sheinbaum: Climate Champion or Fossil Fuel Friend? 

Sheinbaum is Mexico’s first female and the most scientifically experienced president. But the lack of a net zero commitment in her roadmap and her support for the construction of new oil refineries raise questions about the former IPCC scientist’s real climate commitments. 

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On June 2, Mexico City’s former mayor Claudia Sheinbaum was elected as the country’s first-female president with 59% of the national vote. 

Born to scientist parents in Mexico City, Sheinbaum appeared set for a brilliant career in science. After pursuing an undergraduate degree in Physics and a master’s degree in energy engineering in her home country, she moved to California to work on her Ph.D. thesis. At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she spent four years during the 1990s, she focused on analyzing energy consumption in Mexico’s buildings and transportation sector. 

In 2007, Sheinbaum joined a panel of Nobel Peace Prize-awarded scientists that compiled the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the most respectable scientific body in the field of climate change assessment. She later also co-authored the Fifth Assessment Report. 

Sheinbaum’s political career began in 2000, when then-mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with whom she shares strong political ties, appointed her as Mexico City’s environmental minister. During this time, the city experienced a notable reduction in air pollution, saw the creation of community ecological reserves, and the introduction of a bus rapid transit system, which has since expanded to seven lines that cross the city of 8.8 million people.

She later served as mayor of the Tlalpan borough from 2015 to 2017 and was elected head of government of Mexico City in 2018, a position that sheheld until she announced her intention to run for the recent presidential election. 

During her years in the city’s top position, Sheinbaum electrified much of the bus system, installed a rooftop solar project at a central market, and introduced new cable-car routes, though she also faced backlash for building a bridge in an ecological zone that damaged wetlands in the historic Xochimilco borough.

Speaking with Inside Climate News, environmental activist at Conexiones Climáticas Claudia Campero highlighted how some of her policies were economically motivated, while the environmental benefits were secondary. Capero was referring in particular to a rainwater capture program in low-income neighborhoods, which aimed at improving the quality of life of marginalized communities. 

“She prioritizes social policy,” the activist said. “The environmental side is there, but the motive of economic growth has more weight in her decision making.”

Sheinbaum’s prominence in the scientific community makes many hopeful that her recent election will translate to climate progress. However, her scientific background will now have to be reconciled and negotiated with the existing political landscape when she enters office.

Besides the lack of extensive climate policies while serving as Mexico City’s mayor, skeptics also point at her long-standing alliance with her populist predecessor and mentor López Obrador, who doubled down on fossil fuels. He boosted oil production in the country by investing billions of dollars to increase power generation by fossil fuel-dependent state energy giants, including oil firm Pemex, one of the top ten firms globally to have contributed to global carbon emissions.

In contrast with her pledge to boost renewable energy by as much as 50% by end of her term in 2030, Sheinbaum vowed to continue his predecessor’s policies and stay true to his commitment to oil and gas production, prompting many to think the clean energy transition is not her priority after all.  

A Warming Nation

Mexico is grappling with a severe drought that began in 2011 and has progressively worsened as a consequence of climate change. 2022 data suggests that up to 71% of the national territory has high or very high water stress. Its capital Mexico City – along with many other urban areas – has suffered a long-running water crisis, with experts saying it may be just a few months away from running out of water altogether.

The long-running drought is intensified by heatwaves, a direct consequence of anthropogenic climate change and reckless human actions, including greenhouse gas emissions and deforestation. According to the National Forest Monitoring System, between 2001 and 2022, an annual average of 208,746 hectares of forest vegetation was lost nation-wide. This, combined with policies aimed at increasing fossil fuel production in the country, have contributed to rising carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. 

The country remains highly reliant on planet-warming fossil fuels, with oil and natural gas accounting for 44% and 39%, respectively, of the total energy supply in 2022.

According to Climate Action Tracker, Mexico’s climate policies “continue to go backwards, as fossil fuel use is prioritized and climate-related policies and institutions dismantled.” The organization ranks progress on its climate target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 35% by the decade’s end as “highly insufficient.” The country is also one of the few in the world without a net zero target in place.

With a steep decrease in forest area and a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide emissions, the country is now unsurprisingly grappling with even more serious climate-related consequences, and the situation is expected to worsen in the years to come.

A recent heatwave that has brought scorching temperatures to North and Central America has killed at least 125 people and led to hundreds of cases of heat stroke, power outages, wildfires, and mass die-off of endangered monkeys in Mexico. An assessment published earlier this week revealed that the heatwave was made at least 35 times more likely to occur due to fossil fuel-driven warming. 

“The results of our study should be taken as another warning that our climate is heating to dangerous levels,” said Izidine Pinto, Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute. “Potentially deadly and record-breaking temperatures are occurring more and more frequently in the US, Mexico and Central America due to climate change. As long as humans fill the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the heat will only get worse – vulnerable people will continue to die and the cost of living will continue to increase.”

Climate stakes in Mexico have never been higher. All eyes are not on its new climate-savvy president to turn that knowledge into science-informed policies.

Featured image: Wikimedia Commons.