Mexico elects Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, as president

On Sunday, Mexicans selected Claudia Sheinbaum as their new chief – blazing a path not simply by electing the nation’s first feminine president but in addition by placing a local weather scientist on the helm of a serious nation.

Sheinbaum, an power engineer who labored unpaid on two main studies issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change (IPCC), will take management of the world’s 14th largest financial system on December 1, for a time period because of final till 2030.

Whereas IPCC local weather scientists have been appointed as setting ministers in nations like Chile and Egypt, Local weather Residence was unable to establish any who’ve served as a nationwide chief.

As Sheinbaum courted votes throughout the nation of 127 million grappling with a drought, heatwave and smog, she promised to take a position practically $14 billion in clear power and increase electrical buses and trains. 

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“We have now to hurry up the promotion of renewable energies,” she instructed a gaggle of Mexican businessmen in April. “We’re engaged on the nationwide power plan not solely by means of 2030, however to 2050”.

Deep scepticism

However some fellow Mexican local weather scientists and political analysts instructed Local weather Residence they had been sceptical about whether or not she is going to ship on her inexperienced guarantees.

They criticised her file as mayor of Mexico Metropolis, a place she held from 2018 to 2023, and stated her local weather ambition could be held again by her shut ties to present pro-fossil gasoline President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (referred to as AMLO) and her ideological aversion to private-sector power.

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Political threat analyst Carlos Ramirez, a accomplice at Integralia Consultants, instructed Local weather Residence that “there is no such thing as a query that her dedication to local weather change is actual”, including “that may be a welcome shift from what we have now seen to this point [under the current government]”.

However, he stated, “there shall be López Obrador ghosts haunting her – his legacy will imply that she can not transfer a lot from what we’re seeing now, and the individuals who encompass him shall be watching her carefully.”

If she did go for greater inexperienced modifications, “she must pay a political value for that,” he famous. “To this point she has not given any proof that she is going to achieve this.”

Emissions professional

Sheinbaum grew up in Mexico Metropolis with scientists for folks. She signed as much as examine physics herself, incomes undergraduate and masters levels on the Nationwide Autonomous College of Mexico (UNAM).

Within the early Nineties, she spent 4 years on the Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory in California, doing a PhD on power emissions and environmental issues in Mexico Metropolis’s transport sector earlier than becoming a member of UNAM’s workers.

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Following a stint because the setting secretary of then Mexico Metropolis Mayor López Obrador, she returned to UNAM and helped write the emissions discount sections of the flagship IPCC evaluation studies in 2007 and 2014. Her analysis on Mexican manufacturing and cement emissions was cited and – like all IPCC authors – she labored lengthy hours unpaid.

Mexico Metropolis Mayor

Sheinbaum then went again into politics with López Obrador’s new left-wing celebration MORENA and was chosen as its candidate for mayor of Mexico Metropolis in 2018, a place she held till she resigned final yr so as to run for the nationwide presidency.

As mayor, she promoted solar energy. However UNAM local weather scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota stated she had seen no signal of Sheinbaum making an attempt to unravel the town’s severe air air pollution downside.

One other UNAM local weather scientist, Xochitl Cruz Núñez, who labored with Sheinbaum on the IPCC’s fifth evaluation report, instructed Local weather Residence that Sheinbaum’s local weather work as mayor was “minimal”.

Cruz Núñez criticised the town’s diesel-powered bus system, water shortage and elevated urbanisation underneath Sheinbaum’s management, saying it had prompted “uncontrolled” building in surrounding conservation areas.

AMLO’s legacy

Mexico beforehand loved a popularity as a front-runner on local weather motion, passing one of many creating world’s earliest local weather change legal guidelines in 2012. However a few of that progress was reversed throughout López Obrador’s presidency.

The outgoing president dismantled local weather insurance policies and establishments and promoted power sovereignty by means of home fossil gasoline manufacturing, placing energy again into the arms of state-owned firms: electrical energy utility CFE and oil and gasoline big PEMEX.

His authorities invested billions of {dollars} into oil and gasoline infrastructure, and blocked personal funding into renewables. As we speak, Mexico is one in every of solely two G20 nations with out a web zero emissions goal and has watered down its 2030 emissions discount purpose. 

Sheinbaum grew to become MORENA’s candidate for the presidency largely due to López Obrador’s assist for her, successful the nationwide election on Sunday partly because of his observe file because the nation’s hottest trendy president.

Lopez Obrador and Sheinbaum earlier than a manifesto presentation on November 20, 2017. (REUTERS/Henry Romero)

Political analyst Ramirez stated Sheinbaum’s political alignment with López Obrador hinders the possibilities of her pursuing extra formidable local weather motion.

“Sheinbaum is talking loudly about bringing renewables again into the system however on the similar time – and right here is the place the issues start – she desires to provide continuity to the power coverage of López Obrador,” he stated.

“She has a powerful ideological view that [state-owned] CFE and PEMEX ought to lead the power transition,” he added. “This can be a contradiction. I feel will probably be a really sluggish course of and finally fail.”

Cruz Núñez famous that Sheinbaum intends to take care of state stewardship over oil and electrical energy, whereas mobilising public sources for renewables, however questioned whether or not this alone might work. “My opinion is that non-public funding is required if renewable power is to be launched on the degree wanted for Mexico to meet its guarantees underneath the Paris Settlement,” she added.

Regardless of her alliance with AMLO, Sheinbaum has disagreed with him up to now. Through the Covid-19 pandemic, for instance, she promoted mask-wearing, testing and vaccinations in Mexico Metropolis whereas the president performed down the dangers. 

Cruz Núñez expressed hope that, having received the election, Sheinbaum will reap the benefits of her new independence from López Obrador to ascertain a transparent programme for reducing Mexico’s emissions and adapting to local weather change.

“I consider she is aware of sufficient about local weather change and the necessity to resolve it,” she added.

(Reporting by Daisy Clague, modifying by Joe Lo and Megan Rowling)