A climate summit starts with fossil fuels and frustration

As leaders from nearly every country in the world gather in the United Arab Emirates on Thursday to tackle global warming, many carry with them a sense of disillusionment about the annual climate summit convened by the United Nations.

Countries talk about the need to cut pollution that is dangerously warming the planet, but emissions are reaching record highs this year. Rich countries have promised to help poor countries transition away from coal, oil and gas, but have largely failed to deliver on their promises of financial aid. After 27 years of meetings, countries still cannot agree to stop burning fossil fuels, which scientists say are the main cause of climate change.

And this year, the hottest year in history, the talks known as COP28 are being hosted by a country that is ramping up its oil production and accused of using its position as a facilitator of the summit to broker oil and gas deals. the sideline.

“There is skepticism about this COP – where it is located and who is leading it,” said Ani Dasgupta, president of the World Resources Institute, a research organization.

To be sure, progress has been made since 2015, when countries signed a watershed agreement in Paris to work toward limiting global warming to relatively safe levels. The United States, European Union countries and other countries have reduced their emissions while increasing renewable energy, especially when it comes to transportation and electricity. Global investments in new solar and wind energy projects rose to record levels in 2023.

But the United States is also producing record amounts of crude oil and was the world’s largest exporter of natural gas in the first six months of 2023. And while China has led the way in electric vehicle adoption and is investing heavily in renewable electricity, it is also building new coal-fired power plants as emissions continue to rise.

The science is clear, researchers say: Countries must sharply reduce greenhouse gases this decade to avoid the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. The warning signs are everywhere. Extreme weather is destroying every continent. Biodiversity is collapsing and glaciers are melting. Billion dollar disasters occur regularly.

“The world is watching,” wrote a group of more than 650 scientists in a letter dated November 14 sent to President Biden by the Union of Concerned Scientists. “This is a critical moment for the United States to join other world leaders in demonstrating real progress toward resolving a crisis that is quickly spiraling out of control.”

Part of the challenge is the design of the UN climate summits, where every country must sign an agreement, only one country can sign an agreement, and none are legally binding.

“How many years have we had COPs now?” said Avinash Persaud, climate advisor for Barbados. “If people had been forced to act during COP1, COP2 or COP15, we would have a different world.”

Much of the progress in the fight against climate change has taken place outside United Nations summits. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the largest climate bill ever enacted in the United States, was the product of domestic politics, not a UN agreement. The rapid growth of wind and solar energy in Europe is caused by the war in Ukraine and the attempts to leave Russian oil and gas behind.

Yet the COP process is the only vehicle where diplomats, business leaders, princes and presidents come together to focus on a planetary crisis.

“This is probably the best format to discuss these kinds of global issues,” said John Miller, an analyst who covers environmental policy for TD Cowen, the investment bank. “There is progress in these events, but it is happening at a pace that is likely to disappoint. That’s not to say the whole thing is a farce.”

This year, tensions are particularly acute between the slow pace of progress and the need to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels.

The United Arab Emirates, the host country, is one of the largest oil producers in the world. And the man in charge of the event, Sultan Al Jaber, happens to be the head of Adnoc, the state-owned company that supplies 3 percent of the world’s oil. He also heads the much smaller state-owned renewable energy company Masdar.

Some activists argue that the UAE’s role as host and Mr Al Jaber’s dual role as oil executive and COP28 president threaten the conference’s credibility. In the spring, more than a hundred members of the US Congress and the European Parliament called for Mr Al Jaber’s resignation from the COP presidency, a position that rotates between countries every year.

“They went too far by appointing the CEO of one of the largest – and in many ways one of the dirtiest – oil companies in the world to chair this year’s UN climate conference,” said former Vice President Al Gore. said in an interview.

An internal document obtained by the Center for Climate Reporting And the BBC and made public this week, it emerged that UAE climate negotiators were given directives to discuss the country’s oil projects with representatives of other countries at COP28 meetings.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Al Jaber dismissed the allegations as “false, untrue, incorrect and not accurate. I promise I have never seen these talking points they refer to, or even used such talking points in my discussions.

Adding to the grievances are the unfulfilled promises made at last year’s COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Rich countries agreed to set up a fund to compensate poor countries for the destruction caused by climate disasters. But progress is painfully slow. There has also been little progress in efforts to overhaul the lending practices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund – which critics say could trap poor countries in a cycle of debt and disaster.

This has made many developing countries suspicious of the COP talks.

“They are bearing the consequences of climate change that they did not cause,” said Mariana Mazzucato, an economist at University College London who works on climate finance reform.

In Dubai, leaders are expected to discuss their progress, or lack thereof, in limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. That’s the threshold above which scientists say people will struggle to adapt to the intensification of wildfires, heat waves, droughts and storms. In 2015, countries at the Paris summit agreed to reduce emissions from burning coal, oil and gas to keep global warming “well below 2 degrees Celsius” and ideally no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius .

The planet has already warmed by an average of 1.2 degrees Celsius.

Negotiators hope to ratify the details of the loss and damage fund for poor countries, set new targets for cutting emissions and agree on better limits on methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term .

Recent developments offer a glimmer of hope. Two weeks ago, the US and China, the world’s two biggest polluters, agreed to accelerate efforts to boost renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels, although they did not provide a timeline or other details. And rich countries may have finally made good on their pledge to provide $100 billion a year to help developing countries adapt to climate change, albeit four years too late, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development said this month.

Saleemul Huq was a scientist from Bangladesh who had attended every COP since the inaugural meeting in Berlin in 1995. Mr Huq had helped push the idea that rich countries should help poor countries recover from climate disasters from a moral concept to a political reality.

But Mr Huq was still waiting for progress on that front when he died in October at the age of 71.

In an editorial published posthumouslyMr Huq called on world leaders to redouble their efforts in Dubai.

“As the world prepares for COP28, it is up to world leaders, companies and individuals to rise to the occasion and champion the cause of climate justice,” he wrote, along with co-author Farhana Sultana. “Rich countries must start putting real financing toward loss and damage, while increasing mitigation and adaptation efforts and limiting the fossil fuel industry’s influence on climate policy. The future of our planet depends on it.”