Interview: ’Petroleum is a stranded asset. That’s old technology’

BANGKOK | 12 September 2026

“Why are nearly 8 billion people on the planet Earth, their whole future, is in the hands of a few people with vested interests in control of things?” asked climate scientist Benjamin Horton, dean of the School of Energy and the Environment at the City University of Hong Kong.

He was referring to the petroleum industry, saying that oil is a “stranded asset” that has had its day. In this interview, he tells Reporting ASEAN’s Johanna Son that the oil sector has been resisting the shift to renewables and “delaying action at the expense of the rest of us”.

The climate crisis shows us a dark future, but fixing it brings huge benefits for all of life, from health to biodiversity to addressing inequality in human society, he points out. “Climate change is horrific, but solve climate change – and you’re living in utopia,” said Horton, who received the 2026 Axford Medal of the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society for his work on earth and climate sciences.

Johanna Son: We’ve seen the fires in Europe but we’re also seeing hotter temperatures in our region, hottest day in Hong Kong, floods in China, heat in Korea. So, what are all of these?

Benjamin Horton: Well, we see throughout the world records being broken, it has to do with heat, to do with rainfall, and that causes incredible impacts the world over. What’s driving it is climate change, because if you increase the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, you raise global temperatures and the result of that is that extremes become more likely. They’re still extremes in terms of their impacts, but they’re no longer extreme in terms of their probability.

You said that the evidence [of climate change] is irrefutable.

What the climate science community have been doing over the last 40 years is producing data that it’s now certain the climate is changing on Earth as a result of greenhouse gases. We are warming, and the cause is greenhouse gases, and the polluter are the petroleum industry. Just connect the dots.

So we know what we need to do, which is to stop burning fossil fuels. But I guess for… to a certain extent, it’s hard to imagine that.  People find it very difficult to think ‘what do you mean, not to use oil and oil products?’

You know, the history of civilization is always about new technologies, from the Stone Age, to the Iron Age, to the Industrial Revolution, the Great Acceleration – and now we’re in the green age. The future is green technology. The future is renewables. 

If you think about petroleum, the cost of petroleum has not changed for decades because we haven’t improved the technology. But solar power is amazing. Ten years ago, we used to think it was out of our reach. Now, in many parts of the world, using solar power is cheaper than the petroleum alternatives. And if we think about solar power, one of the things is that we’ve still got so much further to go with technology. So when the solar rays come in, we only absorb about 18 to 20 percent. We have all this remaining efficiency to get.

So would you agree that petroleum actually is becoming a fuel of the past?

In financial terms, it’s a stranded asset. It is. We will be unable in the near future to use petroleum unless we balance it. So the other aspect is net zero and climate repair. So we’re going to have to have a future, we must have a future where every time we produce carbon in the atmosphere, we absorb it out of it, either naturally or through technology.

There’s a lot of talk now about El Niño coming in. What does El Niño look like in Southeast Asia?

So when you think about the temperatures or the extremes that people feel, there are a combination of factors. They depend about what time it is in the year, so seasonally. So here in Asia, be aware of which monsoon season you’re in – and then also in Asia, you’re dominated by a natural cycle called the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.

And it has sort of two stages to it. One, a La Niña, which means in Southeast Asia, it suppresses the influence of climate change – it’s slightly cooler, but it’s much wetter. Conversely, when you get into an El Niño state, it enhances the impacts of climate change because it becomes drier and hotter. So when you add these up, when you pick the warmest times of the year, the inter-monsoon periods, then you combine it with an El Niño part of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and climate change – one, two, three – then you get this extreme heat.

So the picture looks grim. Is that a preview of what’s ahead?

There are two things about this. So, you know, glass full, glass half empty, okay? Or maybe glass nearly full, glass a little bit empty. If we don’t do anything about the problem, our future is horrendous. It’s awful. If we don’t stop the burning of fossil fuels, certain people talk about what we call the carrying capacity.

We currently have 8 billion people on planet Earth. If we don’t control climate change, people talk about the carrying capacity being only 4 billion. That means 4 billion people don’t reach their life expectancy. So there’s two of us here – 0ne of us goes, yeah? The people in there – one in every two. What are you going to do? Roll the dice?

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It’s like the ‘Avengers: Endgame’. Click your fingers, half the population. It’s a horrific thought. Because A, one of us goes, but for the one who’s remaining, what type of world is that? Let’s flip on that.

So, climate change is horrific, but solve climate change – and you’re living in utopia. Solve climate change, solve gender equality. Solve inequality in general. You solve climate change, improve your health. You solve climate change, you stop biodiversity [loss a lot]. You solve climate change, you are basically resilient.

It makes a lot of sense – but we’re not there.

It makes so much sense; it makes so much sense to me. When I give talks, I can give a talk about how bad it’s going to be, and then you can give a talk about well, if we do this and we do this, just what kind of social care improves, your lifestyle improves, your mental health improves.

You know, I’m a parent – and what’s most important to me is the health and happiness of my children. If we don’t solve climate change, they won’t be healthy and they won’t be happy. You know how frustrating that makes me, but if we solve climate change, they will be healthy and happy. I’m getting to that part of my life where I want to retire and I want to see my kids healthy and happy and I want them to have grandchildren. I want to be a grandad. If we don’t solve climate change, I will not be a grandad. Young people don’t want to have kids. It’s so serious. 

But the solutions are so good. They’re good for you, they’re good for me, they’re good for everybody that’s watching this. They really are. You know, of 8 billion people on planet Earth, the solutions for climate change are good for 7,999,900,000. Maybe there’s about a thousand people in the oil industry that it’s not going to be good for.

But I don’t care about them. Why are nearly 8 billion people on the planet Earth. Their whole future is in the hands of a few people with vested interests in control of things?

They’ve had their day. That’s old technology. It’s a stranded asset. If they’re so smart, the oil industry, pivot. Pivot to the future – green technology.

That’s why they say ‘What’s the cause of climate change?’ The answer is ‘thepetroleum companies.’

Very simple, very simple. Initially, they wouldn’t have known. In the 60s and 70s, they did all the analysis on this. They did all the analysis. The best models on climate change were by the petroleum sector and they were the leaders in understanding the impacts of the burning of their fossil fuels in the 70s and 80s. But beginning in the 90s, they went on misinformation. They wanted to misinform the public, to delay action at the expense of the rest of us – and that is completely unacceptable.

(END/Reporting ASEAN)