The dilemmas of a petrostate preparing to organize a climate summit

The choice of a leading oil producer, the United Arab Emirates, to host this year’s UN climate talks has angered environmentalists. But for the Emirates and other countries, both are heavily dependent on oil and highly vulnerable to rising temperatures, Struggling with climate change is also an urgent dilemma for them.

If the world lets go of oil too quickly, the powerful authoritarian state that the Emirates’ rulers have built over 50 years could crumble as the revenues that finance much of their budget decline. But if the world moves away from oil too slowly, the patch of land they call home could become a wasteland by the time their grandchildren grow old: Scientists warn that outright burning of fossil fuels could ultimately cause temperatures in the Emirates to soar beyond the borders that people can survive.

It is an extreme example of the choices that many other countries in the world also face addicted to fossil fuels.

“Our leadership is very forward-looking and has understood many years ago how important it is for us to diversify,” Mariam Almheiri, the Emirates’ minister of climate change and environment, said in an interview last week.

The Emirates were among the first countries in the Gulf region to invest in renewable energy and develop industries beyond oil, including aviation, ports and tourism.

“Time is not on our side,” Ms Almheiri said. “We can’t wait another two or three years before we can make big moves.”

Starting Thursday, diplomats and world leaders from nearly 200 states will meet in Dubai over the next two weeks for the latest round of negotiations aimed at limiting the increase in global average temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial level – a target that many scientists fear out of range as the planet has already warmed by 1.2 degrees Celsius. This is the threshold above which, scientists say, people will struggle to adapt to intensifying wildfires, heat waves, droughts and storms.

An important part of the strategy to achieve that goal is to drastically reduce fossil fuel emissions worldwide.

Until recently, Gulf oil producers such as the Emirates and neighboring Saudi Arabia had largely approached climate negotiations by trying to slow the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy, said Karim Elgendy, a climate advisor and associate fellow at Chatham House, a London based company. research organization.

But now they are trying to “take the wheel” and take a leading role in the fight against climate change – influencing the trajectory of that energy transition in a direction “more favorable to their interests,” he added to.

Climate activists argue that the Emirates hosting this year’s climate talks undermines the credibility of the negotiations and gives the fossil fuel industry undue influence over the response to a global crisis.

The fact that the summit, known as COP28, will be led by Sultan al-Jaber, the head of the Emirates’ state oil company and leader of its push for renewable energy, has only fueled fears that oil companies’ self-interests are taking precedence over conversations. But the Emiratis have pushed back against the critics.

This week, a leaked document containing talking points for Mr Al-Jaber suggested he could have used summit-related meetings to promote oil and gas deals, a claim he firmly denied. calling it “an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency.”

“Nobody shoved this down our throats,” Mr al-Jaber told The New York Times earlier this year, explaining why the country wanted to host COP28. “It was our own interest. It is us who have decided that we want to show the world what we can do to tackle such a global problem.”

In the scenario that Emirati officials hope for – and which many climate experts call unrealistic – the world will transition to sustainable energy at a gradual pace. The Emirates would use profits from continued oil sales to prepare for life after oil, investing in industries such as artificial intelligence and restructuring their budgets and economies.

In the meantime, switching to renewable energy at home would allow them to consume less and sell more abroad while still being able to do so, Mr Elgendy said.

The Emirates, the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, will produce oil “as long as the market demands it,” Mr Al-Jaber told The Times. The energy company he heads, ADNOC, is investing tens of billions of dollars to expand oil production capacity.

As part of this approach, Emirati and Saudi officials say the world will have to rely in part on new technologies that are not currently commercially viable to reduce CO2 emissions from the continued burning of fossil fuels by capturing and to capture.

Climate Action Tracker, which assesses countries’ net-zero pledges, evokes the promise of the land to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 “poor” and said planned fossil fuel developments would make the targets “unachievable”.

Scientists say the world needs to cut emissions by 43 percent by the end of this decade.

Yet it feels natural for many in the Gulf to believe, despite evidence to the contrary, that “technology will save the day,” said Mr. Elgendy, the climate adviser.

Until oil was discovered in the Emirates in 1958, the disparate areas that later joined into the federation were largely sparsely populated deserts. Older Emiratis can remember the era before that electricity And running water. Without air conditioning, they slept on the roof of their house during the stifling summers. Many were desperately poor; about 20 percent of children died before the age of 5 years.

Oil changed all that, cramming into a single generation the industrialization and urbanization that spanned much of the world for centuries. Foreigners arrived to seek their fortunes. Skyscrapers erupted from the ground.

Today, the Emirates’ sovereign wealth funds control an estimated $1.5 trillion in assets.

Yet there has always been a sense of momentary vulnerability hanging over cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates.

A recent International Monetary Fund economic report outlined the risks that climate change and the energy transition pose to the Emirates, warning that if the world moves away from fossil fuels faster than expected, it will put pressure on state finances, erode its savings and hinder its own path to clean energy will hinder.

Although the Emirates’ economy is relatively diverse compared to that of other oil states – oil makes up about 16 percent of total exports – the IMF recently estimated that fossil fuel revenues account for more than 60 percent of the country’s total budget revenues.

And, crucially for political stability, oil wealth helps support household and state incomes advantages for citizens in a labor market where public sector jobs predominate, despite government efforts change that dynamic.

In the Gulf, even strategies to adapt to the environmental impacts of climate change revolve around oil revenues, says Aisha Al-Sarihi, a researcher at the Middle East Institute of the National University of Singapore. From trusting air conditioning To cope with the heat and use desalination to produce fresh water, oil wealth is part of what allows Gulf states to maintain a higher standard of living than neighbors like Yemen.

But if the planet warms by 3 degrees Celsius, Dubai will experience an estimated 384 hours a year when temperatures exceed the limits of heat stress that the human body can compensate, researchers wrote in a paper. study last month.

“Even if indoor cooling were accessible, there would be a shift in quality of life as most of a person’s time would have to be spent indoors for the sake of their health,” the authors wrote.

In the Emirates, one of the Gulf’s most autocratic states, many of the voices that might have raised alarm about such a bleak future have been silenced or co-opted by the government, says Joey Shea, who researches the country for Human Rights Watch. .

“There are no checks on these entrenched energy and economic interests in the state,” she said.

In that context, the Emirati national project is defined by “relentless optimism,” says Jim Krane, who researches energy geopolitics at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, has said he plans to make the city-state the largest. most livable in the world by 2040.

At the Museum of the Future, a doughnut-shaped building overlooking the twelve-lane highway that bisects Dubai, the emirate imagines life in 2071 through a series of simulations disconnected from today’s scientific reality. In one exhibit, a model of solar panels orbits the moon, radiating energy back to Earth.

In another vision, the Amazon rainforest will collapse in the 2040s and be digitally reproduced – in the hope that this will help repair and restore ecosystems in the future.

At the end, visitors emerge through a doorway in the building’s cavernous center and photograph Dubai’s gleaming skyline as the roar of traffic and the smell of exhaust fumes rise from the highway below.

Max Berak contributed reporting from New York.