More crucial than oil scarcity: climate change policies for a sustainable Libya

Libya is well placed to profit from climate change at the same time as it strives to achieve environmental sustainability. Libya's challenge is to allocate its oil export revenues to making water sustainable as fast as possible; first by basing desalination on solar energy, and second by converting its water pumps that extract fossil water, the ‘great man-made river’, to solar electricity. At the same time Libya can become the world's biggest exporter of sustainable solar electricity to Europe, thus approaching carbon neutrality. Libya has to achieve this before signing international treaties that will keep oil in the ground or before its oil is depleted, whichever comes first.