COP28 comes at a ‘moment of both hope and danger’

About 70,000 people arrived in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s biggest oil producers, this year for the United Nations climate summit known as COP28.

Industry leaders, heads of state and diplomats gathered in Dubai at the annual summit to discuss ways to reduce fossil fuel emissions and move the world in a more sustainable direction. David Gelles, who writes the Climate Forward newsletter for The New York Times, was among those in attendance. He spent eight days reporting from the summit, which concludes on Tuesday.

It was the third UN climate summit that Mr Gelles attended as a reporter; he previously covered financial news for The Times and joined the Climate team in 2022. In an interview, he discussed how his background in corporate reporting shaped his approach to COP28 and what he learned from industry leaders. This conversation has been edited and condensed.

Is there anything specific from your previous UN summit experiences that you kept in mind when covering COP28?

I’ve been reporting on climate for a few years now, so one of the great things that happened this year was that I met people everywhere I went. I couldn’t walk from one building to another around the convention center, which is the size of Central Park, without encountering one, two, or even three people. Sometimes they were CEOs of large nonprofits, such as the Natural Resources Defense Council. Sometimes they were negotiators from different delegations, such as Barbados. And sometimes they were executives I have previously interviewed on stage. COP is this critical mass of people working in the climate space who are all in one place at the same time. That is truly an exceptional experience.

Does your background in financial reporting help combat climate change, especially when you encounter industry leaders?

Big time. A large part of my climate reporting for over a year has been the business angle. That’s not just the way big companies are trying to become more sustainable themselves, or green their supply chains. It’s also how banks and major international lenders like the World Bank are trying to adapt to tackle the climate crisis in more aggressive ways. Reporting on business for 15 years has been a huge help because I’ve covered the financial angle of the climate story.

Were the financial angles your main focus during the conference?

I wore a lot of different hats. For the first few days I presented The Times live blog. After the first full day of the conference, I wrote a front-page article. Then I went to a room where I attended a lot of meetings, both the ones I had arranged in advance and the impromptu meetings with CEOs and negotiators on the sidelines. In the evenings, I moderated live New York Times events taking place at COP.

On Monday, December 4, I held a fireside chat with former Vice President Al Gore and then interviewed several other development experts and nonprofit negotiators. World Bank President Ajay Banga, who I knew when he was CEO of Mastercard, came over for dinner. I interviewed him and wrote an article about what happened to the World Bank.

With so much happening, did you have a reporting routine?

There are not nearly enough hours in a day. I normally have between two and five meetings scheduled over the course of a day and then try to make time for impromptu meetings. These meetings usually took place in different places in the exhibition area. Sometimes I would interview someone I met; Sometimes I would see someone sitting in a coffee shop having lunch, and I would sit down with them and interview them there.

You had to be very opportunistic and not afraid to pull out your tape recorder at any time. They were long, long days.

What were your key takeaways after speaking to industry leaders?

It’s a moment of both hope and danger when you think about climate change right now. On the one hand, there are real gains to be made in the field of renewable energy. There is real momentum to try to reform the global financial system so that it is more responsive to climate change. At the same time, we are just ending the hottest year in history. There are more climate disasters happening around the world virtually every week; fossil fuel emissions and demand for fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming, continue to rise. We are in this very precarious moment, where there is a lot of momentum. But there are also serious dangers. That’s why everyone is working as hard and fast as they can to get us out of this mess. But it won’t be easy.