The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (a.k.a., COP28) is now going on in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). DUBAI!!!??? More than 70,000 people are expected to attend the two-week conference. The president of the summit, Sultan Al Jaber, is also the head of the UAE’s state oil company. He and his oil-sodden accomplices will shape COP28’s direction and results.
Who, I wonder, thought it was a great idea to hold a climate conference in an oil sheikdom? Maybe the same folks who opted to hold soccer’s World Cup tournament in nearby Qatar last summer (average daily temperature, 110°F), another autocracy drowning in fossil fuels. This time, they got a big boost from the United States in the person of Biden administration climate advisor, John Kerry. Kerry naively believes that the perpetrators of the problem are the best people to solve it.
The cynic in me opines that COP28 is destined to be little more than performance art on a scale rivaling what congressional Republicans do every day in lieu of governing. That’s virtually a guarantee if the prior 27 climate change conferences are any indication. A generation after the first COP, the world is no closer to engaging with the biggest threat facing humanity in this century.
You can expect a barrage of communiqués from conferees about the gravity of global warming and the usual empty pledges from attending nations about what they intend to do about it (very little) followed up by inaction on a grand scale. Their real strategy is to kick the climate can down the road to the next generations: Let them worry about it. We’ll all be gone, so what does it matter?
Except that it does matter. Warming temperatures, as we have so tragically experienced, already wreak havoc with the weather and with our lives. Monster storms, unprecedented droughts, long-lasting heat waves, melting sea ice that causes rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities, declining snow packs that lead to drinking water shortages, etc. And all of these annually recurring climate calamities are getting worse as the nations of the world just keep on keeping on.
If COP28 signifies anything, it is that the nations of the world that have contributed the most to climate change have little or no interest in (1) changing their ways, or (2) committing the resources necessary to combat an existential threat. A partial exception to this otherwise universal condemnation is the United States under the Biden administration. Its Inflation Reduction Act, opposed by every congressional Republican, goes a small way toward tackling global warming. Conversely, the other major carbon polluters—China, Russia, India, Japan, Germany and Iran—talk a good game, but do little or nothing to stop the now inexorable rise in temperatures of the air and water that threaten all of us.
You can expect a climate summit run by the oil industry to focus most of its attention on carbon capture. The oil sheiks and their fossil fuel company colleagues are all gung-ho about carbon capture, and have poured billions of dollars into this technology. It is the darling of the fossil fuel sector because it allows them to keep on doing business as they always have, without any consideration for adverse climate effects or consideration of renewable alternatives to oil, gas and coal.
The problem is that carbon capture to date doesn’t work. Projects have consistently failed, and the few that have promise are nowhere near the scale needed to combat climate change. Relying on carbon capture as the global warming panacea is a fool’s errand. Nevertheless, expect COP28 to endorse it as the way forward.
If anything good comes out of COP28, it could be a set of rules to implement the Loss and Damage Fund, established at COP27 and designed to compensate poor countries, the people most vulnerable, impacted by climate change. Some countries have pledged significant funds for this purpose; others have promised much less—the U.S. pledged a “whopping” $17 million, about the cost of a rivet on an F35 Strikefighter plane. Why such a piddling sum? Because this money must receive congressional approval and Republicans, besotted with Trump’s climate hoax BS and fearing retribution from MAGA voters if they vote to alleviate climate change, will never approve substantial aid.
Another possibility is an agreement to triple global renewable electricity capacity by 2030, chiefly via solar. Solar is now the cheapest form of electricity to install in many places around the world. Good.
Overall however, color me skeptical. A climate conference run by people committed to a fossil fuel future is not likely to do much to confront a problem they are largely responsible for creating.
Dick Hermann
December 2, 2023
Who, I wonder, thought it was a great idea to hold a climate conference in an oil sheikdom? Maybe the same folks who opted to hold soccer’s World Cup tournament in nearby Qatar last summer (average daily temperature, 110°F), another autocracy drowning in fossil fuels. This time, they got a big boost from the United States in the person of Biden administration climate advisor, John Kerry. Kerry naively believes that the perpetrators of the problem are the best people to solve it.
The cynic in me opines that COP28 is destined to be little more than performance art on a scale rivaling what congressional Republicans do every day in lieu of governing. That’s virtually a guarantee if the prior 27 climate change conferences are any indication. A generation after the first COP, the world is no closer to engaging with the biggest threat facing humanity in this century.
You can expect a barrage of communiqués from conferees about the gravity of global warming and the usual empty pledges from attending nations about what they intend to do about it (very little) followed up by inaction on a grand scale. Their real strategy is to kick the climate can down the road to the next generations: Let them worry about it. We’ll all be gone, so what does it matter?
Except that it does matter. Warming temperatures, as we have so tragically experienced, already wreak havoc with the weather and with our lives. Monster storms, unprecedented droughts, long-lasting heat waves, melting sea ice that causes rising sea levels that threaten coastal communities, declining snow packs that lead to drinking water shortages, etc. And all of these annually recurring climate calamities are getting worse as the nations of the world just keep on keeping on.
If COP28 signifies anything, it is that the nations of the world that have contributed the most to climate change have little or no interest in (1) changing their ways, or (2) committing the resources necessary to combat an existential threat. A partial exception to this otherwise universal condemnation is the United States under the Biden administration. Its Inflation Reduction Act, opposed by every congressional Republican, goes a small way toward tackling global warming. Conversely, the other major carbon polluters—China, Russia, India, Japan, Germany and Iran—talk a good game, but do little or nothing to stop the now inexorable rise in temperatures of the air and water that threaten all of us.
You can expect a climate summit run by the oil industry to focus most of its attention on carbon capture. The oil sheiks and their fossil fuel company colleagues are all gung-ho about carbon capture, and have poured billions of dollars into this technology. It is the darling of the fossil fuel sector because it allows them to keep on doing business as they always have, without any consideration for adverse climate effects or consideration of renewable alternatives to oil, gas and coal.
The problem is that carbon capture to date doesn’t work. Projects have consistently failed, and the few that have promise are nowhere near the scale needed to combat climate change. Relying on carbon capture as the global warming panacea is a fool’s errand. Nevertheless, expect COP28 to endorse it as the way forward.
If anything good comes out of COP28, it could be a set of rules to implement the Loss and Damage Fund, established at COP27 and designed to compensate poor countries, the people most vulnerable, impacted by climate change. Some countries have pledged significant funds for this purpose; others have promised much less—the U.S. pledged a “whopping” $17 million, about the cost of a rivet on an F35 Strikefighter plane. Why such a piddling sum? Because this money must receive congressional approval and Republicans, besotted with Trump’s climate hoax BS and fearing retribution from MAGA voters if they vote to alleviate climate change, will never approve substantial aid.
Another possibility is an agreement to triple global renewable electricity capacity by 2030, chiefly via solar. Solar is now the cheapest form of electricity to install in many places around the world. Good.
Overall however, color me skeptical. A climate conference run by people committed to a fossil fuel future is not likely to do much to confront a problem they are largely responsible for creating.
Dick Hermann
December 2, 2023
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