Hey
Look here what we're dealing with:
What sea level rise will look like in cities that have hosted climate summits. Rachel Ramirez, CNN, December 3, 2023
"Ahead of this year’s summit, which kicked off Nov. 30 in Dubai, Al Jaber claimed that there is 'no science' to support the idea that phasing out oil, gas and coal is needed to limit planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the goal of the landmark Paris climate agreement, The Guardian reported Sunday.
Al Jaber on Monday [December 4] attempted to walk back the claim, saying he supports climate science and arguing his comments were taken out of context, but not before scientists condemned them as 'farcical' and climate change deniers celebrated.
* * *
'A phase-down and a phase-out of fossil fuel in my view is inevitable. It is essential,' he later added. 'But we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.'
The exchange, a video of which The Guardian included in its reporting, grew increasingly tense.
'The science is very acute now,' [former UN special envoy for climate change Mary] Robinson said. 'We don’t have any time.”
'You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuel,' Al Jaber responded. 'Please, help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.'
* * *
Al Jaber stressed he 'respects the science in everything I do' and said he’s been 'quite surprised at the constant attempt to undermine this message' and the work of the COP28 presidency.
* * *
His November remarks stand in stark contrast to what U.N. Secretary General António Guterres told COP28 attendees on Friday: 'The science is clear: The 1.5 C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.'"
— "Head Of Global Climate Summit Manages To Deny Science In Pro-Science Comment." Sultan Al Jaber says his statement on fossil fuels was "taken out of context," but a full, unedited video of his comments suggests otherwise. Chris D'Angelo. HuffPost. Dec 4, 2023.
See also: Climate summit leader defends controversial comments that alarmed scientists and sent shockwaves through meeting, Laura Paddison, CNN, December 4, 2023
"Hilda Heine, a former president of the Marshall Islands, on Friday [December 1] resigned from the main advisory committee of this year’s United Nations climate summit, citing allegations that the conference president tried to use the international talks to strike oil and gas deals.
Heine’s resignation, first reported by Reuters, came just one day after the summit kicked off in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC reported Monday on leaked documents that purportedly show Sultan al-Jaber — the controversial president of the 28th Conference of the Parties, or COP28, and the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — planned to leverage his role at COP28 to boost fossil fuel exports from the UAE."
"Ex-Marshall Islands President Resigns From Climate Summit Post Over Oil Scandal." Hilda Heine said allegations of backdoor fossil fuel deal-making "undermine the integrity" of the international climate talks. Chris D'Angelo, HuffPost, Dec 1, 2023.
Also:
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said:
“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."
Of this, Bill McKibben explained that oil companies "want to 'abate' the damage of their product. It doesn’t really work..." Carbon capture is "so [cost-] prohibitive that no coal or oil or gas company or utility wants to pay for it themselves — instead, they use their political power to make taxpayers foot the bill, so they can keep selling their product. In order to secure Joe Manchin’s vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden had to lard it with billions of dollars in funding for this particular boondoggle." When you hear US climate envoy John Kerry advocating the Group of Seven's April 2023 agreement for "phase-out of unabated fossil fuels," he means abatement, not phaseout. That wording implies that there's something that can be done to fix fossil fuels so it won't be necessary to phase them out; only the unfixed products would be phased out. But the product can't be fixed. McKibben says:
"The point of the COP — the point of all climate efforts — should not be to produce a deal. Let me repeat myself. The point of climate negotiations should not be to produce a deal, no matter how many pixels are spilled about that prospect over the next two weeks. It’s to stop the flow of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And Guterres is right: there’s one way to do that, and it’s renewable energy. Phase out fossil fuels period, and stat."
—'Unabated': A single word can derail climate progress. Bill McKibben. The Crucial Years. December 2, 2023.
Also:
"The Biden administration has finalized a rule to significantly cut the US oil and gas industry’s emissions of methane, a powerful planet-warming gas that scientists and climate advocacy groups have pressed nations to rapidly reduce as global temperature soars.
The announcement came amid a wave of commitments at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai on Saturday, including a pledge from at least 117 countries to triple renewable energy by 2030. Vice President Kamala Harris also announced the US was committing another $3 billion to global climate action.
* * *
Methane emissions surged in recent years, to the surprise of scientists and energy experts, who are now advocating for capping leaks and ending flaring and venting as easy ways to pump the brakes on the pace of global warming."
"US announces rule to slash powerful planet-warming methane by nearly 80% from oil and gas," Ella Nilsen, CNN, December 2, 2023
Meanwhile, this is happening
Are the annual climate summits working? These countries are going to the courts, instead. Ella Nilsen, CNN, November 29, 2023
"Venezuelans voted by a wide margin Sunday to approve the takeover of an oil-rich region in neighboring Guyana – the latest escalation in a long-running territorial dispute between the two countries, fueled by the recent discovery of vast offshore energy resources.
The area in question, the densely forested Essequibo region, amounts to about two-thirds of Guyana’s national territory and is roughly the size of Florida.
Sunday’s largely symbolic referendum asked voters if they agreed with creating a Venezuelan state in the Essequibo region, providing its population with Venezuelan citizenship and 'incorporating that state into the map of Venezuelan territory.'"
— Venezuelans approve takeover of oil-rich region of Guyana. What happens next?, David Shortell, CNN, December 4, 2023
"The world is still off track to limit global warming to the crucial 1.5-degree threshold, despite pledges made by dozens of countries at UN-backed climate talks in Dubai, an analysis by the International Energy Agency published Sunday shows."
— "Pledges from climate talks not enough to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees, IEA says," Angela Dewan, CNN, December 10, 2023
"‘Verge of complete failure’: Climate summit draft drops the mention of fossil fuel phase-out, angering advocates." Angela Dewan and Laura Paddison, CNN, December 11, 2023
An agreement
"Nearly 200 countries struck a breakthrough climate agreement Wednesday, calling for a transition away from fossil fuels in an unprecedented deal that targets the greatest contributors to the planet’s warming. The deal came swiftly — with no discussion or objection — in a packed room in Dubai following two weeks of negotiations and rising contention. It is the first time a global climate deal has specifically called to curb the use of fossil fuels." — "Countries clinch unprecedented deal to transition away from fossil fuels," Washington Post, December 13, 2023
"The final deal at COP28 is technically historic, in that it is the first deal that specifically calls on all nations to 'transition away' from fossil fuels." But calling it historic "convey[s] almost zero meaning. Because when you leave a massive problem like climate change unaddressed for decades, almost anything you do represents 'historic' progress." That's the assessment of Emily Atkin, "On climate deals, beware the word 'historic,'" Substack, December 14, 2023. "So I urge anyone reading climate news, both today and in the future, to keep this in mind: Just because a country or corporation did something 'historic' and 'unprecedented' to slow climate change, does not mean they did something laudable, effective, or in line with their responsibility. It merely means they did more than they ever did — which, in most cases, is very little."
"You can’t expect a negotiation among 198 parties to agree anything deep and substantial, but it can use its legitimacy to send a broad signal about the direction of travel. COP28 did that reasonably well.
* * *
Another signal, less noticed but still helpful, was the formal endorsement in negotiated text of a goal first agreed by leaders of many countries at COP26 two years ago, to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.
Finally, a different kind of signal was sent by the commitment of $700m to the new ‘loss and damage’ fund – a recognition in all but name of the right to compensation. How much this will help in practice remains to be seen. According to one estimate, that amount of money is less than the losses suffered by the world every two days in extreme events attributable to climate change."
— COP28: signal, noise, and structure: Another one down. 28 of them. 100,000 people shivering in the air conditioning while the world bakes outside. Emissions still going up. What’s new? Simon Sharpe FIVE TIMES FASTER: Rethinking the Science, Economics, and Diplomacy of Climate Change. 13 December 2023
Bill McKibben said: "For two weeks every December, the giant global climate meeting—this year with at least 70,000 delegates, lobbyists, activists, and journalists enjoying the tacky spaceport that is Dubai—provides a cascade of feelings." He notes that Canada's environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, said: "I’ve been coming to Cop since Cop1 in 1995 in Berlin. It would be the first time in almost 30 years of international negotiations that we can agree on language regarding fossil fuels." McKibben goes on to observe that "it’s taken twenty eight annual sessions to maybe include some language about the thing that is, you know, the source of the problem," which shows that COP is "designed less to solve a crisis than to guard the interests of the world’s powers (both political and economic) as they relate to that crisis." The COP doesn't legislate. "Let’s say, for instance, that Guilbeault manages to convince everyone to include some phrase about phasing out fossil fuels into the text. It will be vague, ambiguous, unconnected to any particular time—and it will have no authority." Language is a tool, but it doesn't automatically "translate into action." Remember that "Donald Trump, currently leading in presidential polls, said last week that he would happily come to work as a ‘dictator’ on the very first day of his presidency, in order to ‘drill drill drill.’ If anyone thinks he will be slowed by the language of an agreement initialed by a bunch of functionaries in Dubai, I’d like to sell you the deed to the world’s tallest building, which as it happens is in Dubai." (The COP is the Scoreboard, not the Game: It's what happens in between meetings that matters, Bill McKibben, The Crucial Years, December 8, 2023)
Bill McGuire:
"What we needed from the climate summit in Dubai was a binding commitment to cut emissions in half within six years, so as to have any chance of keeping the global average temperature rise (compared to pre-industrial times) this side of 1.5°C, and side-stepping dangerous, all pervasive, climate breakdown.
What we got was a vague intention to transition away from fossil fuels — no timeline, no roadmap. It was the sort of outcome that elicits a chuckle and a shaking of the head in disbelief. But chuckling is a healthy response, even when things seem bleak — especially then, in fact."
— "Opinion: I’m a climate scientist. This is why I’m laughing," Bill McGuire, CNN, December 15, 2023
However, McGuire says: "If you don’t laugh, you will cry."
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