Hannes P Albert/dpa/AP Images
Sultan Al Jaber, president of COP28, speaks to the press at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, December 11, 2023.
If the sponsors of the latest diplomatic U.N. circus on climate wanted to stage a fiasco, they hardly could have done better than to locate their meeting in Dubai, hosted by a science-denying minister of technology, with the giant oil companies as honored guests and in the role of ideologues.
Why on earth did they do this? The bureaucratic answer is that the world’s regions get to take turns hosting the periodic U.N. COP meetings, and it was the turn of the Asia-Pacific Group. The Emirates made an aggressive bid to host the sessions and got unanimous support from those nations. OPEC even has its own pavilion at the event.
The political answer is not hard to fathom. Since Abu Dhabi and Dubai are major oil producers, they were pleased to give their Western oil company allies a major role in revising the narrative.
According to the new narrative being relentlessly promoted by the oil companies, it’s important to have oil-producing countries as well as oil companies as part of the solution. And it’s neither necessary nor economically smart to ban carbon fuels entirely. So let’s concentrate on reducing carbon pollution by mitigating the impact.
What does that mean in practice? The oil companies have used almost identical rhetoric and framing. For instance, Chevron statements and ads declare, “We believe the future of energy is lower carbon.” But lower carbon doesn’t mean zero carbon. And oil company propaganda emphasizes reduced carbon pollution in the extraction of oil, not in the burning of carbon fuels, which is responsible for most of the carbon emissions.
The oil companies also make a big deal about their commitment to “net zero.” How do they propose to get to net zero if they are opposed to phasing out carbon fuels? By planting lots of trees. The oil companies are major investors in forests. We all love trees, but it remains to be seen if trees can offset the burning of gas and oil.
Several other oil companies, via the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, have announced a plan to cut methane emissions. But methane is a small part of the carbon problem.
Then there is that perennial, carbon capture, which is at the center of the oil companies’ fable about continuing to pump oil while reducing net emissions. Last week, Al Gore ridiculed the presence of the oil companies at the climate summit and debunked their claims about carbon capture.
Gore urged delegates to agree in their final text to phase out fossil fuels, without mentions of carbon capture technology. “The current state of the technology for carbon capture and direct air capture is a research project,” Gore said. “There’s been no cost reduction for 50 years and there is a pretense on the part of the fossil fuel companies that it is a readily available, economically viable technology.”
President Biden was initially criticized for not attending. It turned out to be a smart move.
On Friday, in slightly less scathing language, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry warned, “There are people here who want to just continue business as usual. And the great facade is: ‘Oh no, we’ll be able to capture everything,’” he said. “No scientist tells me we can capture it all. Can’t do it. Can we capture some? Yes, and by the way, I’m for it.”
Just to add to the sense of debacle, the conference president, Sultan Al Jaber—literally the head of the Emirates’ state-owned oil company—usefully made a fool of himself in a conversation with former U.N. special envoy for climate change Mary Robinson, in which he declared that there is “no science” behind the idea that a phaseout of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius, “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” Al Jaber subsequently claimed he was misunderstood and walked back his remarks.
Over the weekend, the UAE, in its capacity as conference chair, released a draft text that included several options including an agreement in principle to “phase out” fossil fuels. But it also included an option for no deal at all.
The conference is scheduled to wrap up December 12. However it ends, it’s unlikely that COP28 will be remembered for producing any breakthrough comparable to the Paris accords of 2015 that committed to concrete goals, and we will be lucky if it doesn’t result in backpedaling.
President Biden was initially criticized for not attending. It turned out to be a smart move.
As always, progress on climate will depend on national policies by the major polluting countries and agreements between major countries. The idea that the oil companies or the oil sheikhdoms could ever be part of that progress was always a dangerous fantasy.
