COP28: Where Fossil Fuel Industries Go to Gloat
Binoy Kampmark
The sequence of COP meetings, ostensibly a United Nations forum to discuss dramatic climate change measures in the face of galloping emissions, has now been shown for what it is: a luxurious, pampered bazaar for the very industries that fear a dip in their profits and ultimate obsolescence. Call it a drugs summit for narcotics distributors promoting clean-living; a convention for casino moguls promising to aid problem gamblers. The list of wicked analogies is endless.
Reading the material from the gathering that is known in its longer form as the United Nations Climate Change Conference, one could be forgiven for falling for the sweetened agitprop. We find, on the UN website explaining the role of COP28, that the forum is “where the world comes together to agree on ways to address the climate crisis, such as limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, helping vulnerable communities adapt to the effects of climate change, and achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.”
Then comes the boggling figure: 70,000 delegates will be mingling and haggling, including the parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Business leaders, young people, climate scientists, Indigenous Peoples, journalists, and various other experts and stakeholders are also among the participants.
The view from outside the conference is a matter of night and day. Fernando Racimo, evolutionary biologist and member of the activist group Scientist Rebellion, sums up the progress of ever bloating summitry in this field since 1995: “Almost 30 years of promises, of pledges,” he told Nature,
and yet carbon emissions continue to go up to even higher levels. As scientists, we’re recognizing this failure.
In Dubai, where COP28 is being held, representatives from the coal, oil and gas industries have come out in numbers to talk about climate change. They, it would seem, are the business leaders and stakeholders who matter. And such representatives have every reason to be encouraged by the rich mockery of it all: the United Arab Emirates is a top league oil producer and member of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries.
According to an analysis from the environmental Kick Big Polluters Out (KBPO) coalition, 2,456 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to the summit.
In a year when global temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions shattered records, there has been an explosion of fossil fuel lobbyists heading to UN talks, with nearly four times more than were granted last year.
The breakdown of the attendee figures makes for grim reading. In the first place, fossil fuel lobbyists have outdone the number delegates from climate vulnerable nations: the number there comes to a mere 1,509. In terms of country delegations, the fossil fuel group of participants is only outdone by Brazil, with 3,081 people.
In contrast, the numbers of scientist presents are minimal to the point of being invisible. Climate change activists, the young, and journalists serve in decorative and performative roles, the moralising priests who give the last rites before the execution.
The theme of the conference had already been set by COP president Sultan al-Jaber, who felt, in his vast wisdom, that he could simultaneously host the conference with high principle and still conduct his duties as CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc).
This, after all, presented a wonderful chance to gossip about climate goals in hazy terms while striking genuine fossil fuel deals with participating countries. This much was shown by leaked briefing documents to the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR).
The documents in question involve over 150 pages of briefings prepared by the COP28 team for meetings with Jaber and various interested parties held between July and October this year. They point to plans to raise matters of commercial interest with as many as 30 countries. The CCR confirms “that on at least one occasion a nation followed up on commercial discussions brought up in a meeting with Al Jaber; a source with knowledge of discussions also told CCR that Adnoc’s business interests were allegedly raised during a meeting with another country.”
The COP28 team did not deny using bilateral meetings related to the summit to discuss business matters. A spokesperson for the team was mightily indifferent in remarking that Jaber “holds a number of positions alongside his role as COP28 President-Designate. That is public knowledge. Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them.”
The Sultan proved to be more direct, telling a news conference that such “allegations are false, not true, incorrect, are not accurate. And it’s an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency.” Jaber went on to promise that he had never seen “these talking points that they refer to or that I ever even used such talking points in my discussions.” No need for notes, then, when advancing the fossil fuel interests of country and industry.
Concerned parties are attempting to find various ways of protesting against a summit that has all the hallmarks of gross failure. Scientists and environmentalists are choosing to voice their disagreement in their respective countries, thereby avoiding any addition to the increasingly vast carbon footprint being left by COP28. As well they should: Dubai is, essentially, hosting an event that could be best described as a museum piece of human failings.
Currently, delegates are poring over a draft of the final agreement that proposes “an orderly and just phase-out of fossil fuels”. What is just here is a fascinating question, given the lobbying by the fossil fuel advocates who have a rather eccentric notion of fairness. As Jean Paul Prates, CEO of Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras declared, “The energy transition will only be valid if it’s a fair transition.” The prospects for an even more grandiose, stage-managed failure, helped along by oil and gas, is in the offing.
With the figures of science essentially excluded from these hot air gatherings in favour of industries that see them as troubling nuisances best ignored, the prospect for local and domestic reform through informed activism becomes the only sensible approach. There are even heartening studies suggesting that climate protest can warm frigid public opinion, the only measure that really interests the vote getting politician. Unfortunate that this seems a last throw for much of humanity and the earth’s ecosystem.
(Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne. Courtesy: Dissident Voice, a US based internet newsletter dedicated to challenging the distortions and lies of the corporate press and the privileged classes it serves.)
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Climate Summit at the Petroleum Kingdom
Evaggelos Vallianatos
The Petroleum Kingdom is the United Arab Emirates. The chief negotiator is the president of the UAE’s petroleum company, Sultan al-Jaber. This petroleum businessman probably oiled his influence onto the UN officials. And without a second thought, he assumed the responsibility of being president of the UN Summit as well. One wonders if Antonio Guterres, the UN Secretary General, was so innocent about this brutally obvious corrupt connection with UAE and al-Jaber in particular. This oil executive revealed his contempt and ignorance of science when he said there is no reason to believe that fossil fuels must be phased out in order to prevent global temperature from reaching 1.50 Celsius above preindustrial levels. “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5[degrees Celsius,” he said. And this is the same man who is directing the Climate Summit, COP28, which is supposed to urge all states to bring the era of fossil fuels to an end?
Masquerade at the Climate Summit
The remarks of al-Jaber infuriated Al Gore, former US Vice President, and environmentalist. He emailed the New York Times: “From the moment this absurd masquerade began, it was only a matter of time before his preposterous disguise no longer concealed the reality of the most brazen conflict of interest in the history of climate negotiations. Obviously, the world needs to phaseout fossil fuels as quickly as possible. [Al-Jaber] has been preparing one of the most aggressive expansions of fossil fuel production, timed to begin as soon as he bangs the final gavel to conclude COP28.”
We don’t know the reaction of Antonio Guterres, though he will have plenty of explaining to do. However, Guterres in UAE affirmed the importance of putting the brakes on the burning of fossil fuels, their elimination: “We cannot save a burning planet,” he said, “with a firehose of fossil fuels. We must accelerate a just, equitable transition to renewables. The science is clear: The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate. Phaseout – with a clear timeframe aligned with 1.5 degrees. Not reduce. Not abate. Phaseout. With a clear time frame aligned with 1.5 degrees [Celsius].”
Striking petroleum deals
Al-Jaber convinced the UN to have its 2023 climate meeting at Dubai, not because he took climate change seriously, but, according to the BBC, as an avenue to strike deals for more petroleum excavations and extractions the world over and, naturally, earn more petroleum money. BBC revealed this dark scheme, saying the UAE “planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals.”
Al-Jaber’s “COP28 team” prepared the leaked documents, which described proposed “talking points.” For example, al-Jaber urged China to join forces with UAE for facilitating liquified natural gas “opportunities” in Mozambique, Canada, and Australia. Another corrupt deal urged a government minister in Colombia to consider Adnoc, the petroleum state company of UAE, as a partner for the development of the fossil fuel resources of the country. Other “talking points” for fossil fuels and even renewable energy included 20 other countries. For example, UK, United States, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Brazil, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Kenya.
Artificial Intelligence and climate change
With Al-Jaber in charge of the Dubai Climate Summit, proponents of Artificial Intelligence tried to sell their fast technology for fighting climate chaos. Yet the ominous potential of AI did not fade into nothing. AI experts from the industry and academia warned the world about the potential risks of AI. The Center for AI Safety published a brief but succinct statement capturing their concern. They said: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”
However, climate experts at the Climate Summit at Dubai examined another AI risk. They figured that feeding AI computers with electricity would be so demanding that the greenhouse gas emissions would make the climate emergency worse. AI works with thousands of specialized computer chips, which “could consume immense amounts of electricity.” For example, by 2027, AI would consume something like 85 to 134 terawatt hours every year. This amount of electricity would be somewhat equivalent to the electricity used annually by Argentina, the Netherlands and Sweden. That is to say, powering AI services in a few years would demand “about 0.5 percent of the world’s current electricity use.” In addition, a Google-funded study on the benefits and risks of AI, is warning that very large quantities of water would be necessary for cooling AI “data centers.” Like small nuclear power stations, data centers emit tremendous amounts of heat, which has to be dissipated by water. The Google study cites a 2016 report from the US Department of Energy, which estimated “data center water consumption at 1.7 billion liters/day, of which 0.3 billion liters/day is used on site for cooling, or 0.02% of total US water consumption of 1,218 billion liters/day.” E-wastes are also projected to increase with more uses of AI.
For philosophical and political reasons, AI should not exist. Yet warfare and corporate profits gave it birth and sustenance. Like an octopus, the owners of AI keep “improving” its uses to the point it becomes, like nuclear bombs, unmovable behind the thrones of billionaires. AI paraded in the Climate Summit, supposedly as a solution for mitigating the deadly effects of the anthropogenic climate disaster. This is telling of the power of powerful corporations, which felt they had also to issue a warning about their deadly gift to powerless humanity.
We need a bullet train to speed up the phase out of fossil fuels
Despite the AI distraction, the Climate Summit, COP28, at Dubai had a powerful voice in Simon Stiell, UN Climate Change Executive Secretary. On December 6, 2023, he urged the delegates from 200 states to take climate chaos seriously—and act, NOW. “If we want to save lives now,” he said, “and keep [the] 1.5 [degrees Celsius] goal within reach, the highest ambition COP outcomes must stay front and center… we need COP to deliver a bullet train to speed up climate action. We currently have an old caboose chugging over rickety tracks. But the tools are all there on the table, the technologies and solutions exist.It’s time for governments and negotiators to pick them up and put them to work. UN Climate Change will be working with Parties every step of the way, as the honest broker and convenor. We’ll make sure all countries have a seat at the table and can use their full voice.”
Epilogue
Al Gore is right. Al-Jaber is a dangerous oil man. His morality is the morality of Exxon. The UN compromised its integrity by accepting the proposal of UAE to host the Climate Summit. Antonio Guterres, for whom I have tremendous respect, made a terrible mistake. He needs to explain and come clean. After all, he knows intimately the corruption governing fossil fuel executives and their dark influence on governments. Guterres must, once again, denounce these enemies of humanity and the Earth. We certainly need a bullet train to power climate action to phase out fossil fuels at the speed of bullet train.
(Evaggelos Vallianatos is a historian and environmental strategist, who worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency for 25 years. He is the author of seven books, including the latest book, ‘The Antikythera Mechanism’. Courtesy: CounterPunch.)
