Laura Paddison, CNN
Tue, 5 December 2023
Sultan Al Jaber, the oil executive who is leading the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, sent shockwaves through the gathering by claiming in the days before the UN-backed talks that there is “no science” that says phasing out fossil fuels is necessary to keep global warming under a critical threshold — comments Al Jaber said were misinterpreted.
Al Jaber held a surprise news conference Monday where he fiercely defended his commitment to climate science, after an increasing number of scientists and advocates expressed alarm at the comments and concern for the direction of the talks.
The future role of fossil fuels is one of the most controversial issues countries are grappling with at the COP28 climate summit. While some are pushing for a “phase-out,” others are calling for the weaker language of a “phase-down.” Scientific reports have shown that fossil fuels must be rapidly slashed to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius — the goal of the Paris climate agreement, and a threshold above which scientists warn it will be more difficult for humans and ecosystems to adapt.
Al Jaber made the remarks during the She Changes Climate panel event on November 21, which came to light on Sunday in a story published by the Guardian, and in video that CNN has reviewed. Al Jaber was asked by Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and current chair of the Elders Group, an independent group of global leaders, if he would lead on phasing out fossil fuels.
In his response, Al Jaber told Robinson, “there is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5.” He said he had expected to come to the She Changes Climate meeting to have a “sober and mature conversation” and was not “signing up to any discussion that is alarmist.”
He continued that the 1.5-degree goal was his “north star,” and a phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel was “inevitable” but “we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.”
In an increasingly fractious series of responses to Robinson pushing him on the point, Al Jaber asked her “please, help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Al Jaber’s presidency of the COP28 summit has been controversial. The Emirati businessman is the UAE’s climate envoy and chairs the board of directors of its renewables company, but he also heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
Al Jaber told reporters Monday, “I have always been very clear on the fact that we are making sure that everything we do is centered around the science.”
“I honestly think there is some confusion out there, and misrepresentation and misinterpretation,” he said, adding, “I have said over and over that the phase down and the phase out of fossil fuel is inevitable. In fact, it is essential … it needs to be orderly, fair, just and responsible.”
A spokesperson for the COP28 team told CNN in a statement on Sunday “this story is just another attempt to undermine the Presidency’s agenda, which has been clear and transparent and backed by tangible achievements by the COP President and his team.”
“The COP President is clear that phasing down and out of fossil fuels is inevitable and that we must keep 1.5C within reach,” adding, “we are excited with the progress we have made so far and for the delivery of an ambitious (global stocktake) decision. Attempts to undermine this will not soften our resolve.”
Fossil fuels are the main driver of the climate crisis and as the world continues to burn oil, coal and gas, global temperatures are soaring to unprecedented levels. This year has seen record global heat, which has driven deadly extreme weather events.
Fossil fuel production in 2030 is expected to be more than double what would be necessary to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees, a recent report from several scientific institutions, including the UN Environment Programme, found. That report used scenarios laid out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the International Energy Agency (IEA) to reach its conclusion.
“If the IPCC and IEA do not count as science then I don’t know what does,” said Ploy Achakulwisut, climate researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute and one of the authors on the report. She told CNN it concluded “that all fossil fuels have to be phased out especially if carbon dioxide removal and carbon capture and storage measures fail to scale.”
Carbon capture refers to a set of techniques that aim to remove carbon pollution from the the air and to capture what’s being produced from power plants and other polluting facilities. While some argue carbon capture will be an important tool for reducing planet-heating pollution, others argue these technologies are expensive, unproven at scale and a distraction from policies to cut fossil fuel use.
Scientists and climate groups heavily criticized Al Jaber’s comments.
Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at non-profit Oil Change International, said in a statement Al Jaber’s statements during the panel discussion were “alarming,” “science-denying” and “raise deep concerns about the Presidency’s capacity to lead the UN climate talks.”
Joeri Rogelj, a climate professor at Imperial College London, said he strongly recommended Al Jaber revisit the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“That report, approved unanimously by 195 countries including the UAE, shows a variety of ways to limit warming to 1.5°C — all of which indicate a de facto phase out of fossil fuels in the first half of the century. Will that take the world back to the caves? Absolutely not,” he said in a statement.
Mohamed Adow, director of climate think tank Power Shift Africa, said Al Jaber’s remarks were a “wake up call” to the world and COP28 negotiators. “They are not going to get any help from the COP Presidency in delivering a strong outcome on a fossil fuel phase out,” he said in a statement.
This COP summit will conclude the first global stocktake, where countries will assess their progress on climate action progress and work out how to get the world on track to limiting catastrophic global warming.
This story has been updated with additional information.
CNN’s Angela Dewan and Rachel Ramirez contributed reporting.
Opinion: What do you expect when an oil executive runs the climate talks?
Opinion by John D. Sutter
Tue, 5 December 2023 at 9:45 am GMT-7·4-min read
Editor’s Note: John D. Sutter is a climate journalist and nonfiction filmmaker. He is the Ted Turner Visiting Professor of Environmental Media at the George Washington University. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. Read more CNN Opinion.
As someone who’s been reporting on the climate crisis for more than a decade, I can say that the most insidious threat to climate action isn’t denial or apathy.
John D. Sutter - Beth Mickalonis
It’s doubt and confusion.
That’s why the news from COP28 in Dubai is so infuriating.
The COP — an international peer-pressure meeting meant to avert disastrous global warming — is supposed to be a moment of resounding clarity, when world leaders come together to re-up their commitments to abandon fossil fuels and promote a future that’s, you know, livable.
The message should be clear: The world can and should abandon fossil fuels as quickly as possible in favor of cleaner energy sources like wind and solar.
We have the technology and the political levers we need to succeed.
Instead, the COP28 talks have been mired in controversy and confusion.
The United Arab Emirates, a petrostate, is hosting the talks. The COP president is Sultan Al Jaber, the head of a renewable energy company and also the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.
Appointing an oil exec to run global climate negotiations is not unlike letting the NRA facilitate a symposium on gun control.
No surprise, then, that Al Jaber made some, well, stupefying comments, including that abandoning fossil fuels — which, again, should be the point of these talks — risks putting us “back into caves.” He also claimed, falsely, that there is “no science” supporting a total phase-out of fossil fuels in order to meet temperature goals that are the center of the negotiations.
“Please, help me, show me a roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves,” he said on November 21, in the days leading up to the COP28 summit. The remarks were part of a conversation with Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and UN special climate envoy, and were first reported by The Guardian, which posted a video of the discussion.
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C,” he said, referencing a temperature target from the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
A report issued Sunday during COP28 by the UN Environment Programme and others states that “a rapid and managed fossil fuel phase-out is required” to meet global climate goals.
Al Jaber tried to walk back the comments at a press conference on Monday, saying that he respects science and that the comments were subject to “misrepresentation.” “I have said over and over that the phase-down and the phase-out of fossil fuels is inevitable,” he said.
By then, however, the damage had been done.
Observers are right to question Al Jaber’s intentions and the intent of this entire process. And the public could understandably be confused about whether these efforts are even worthwhile.
That’s tragic, especially in light of the long and frustrating history of fossil fuel interests injecting doubt into policy conversations about the climate crisis. The broad strokes of climate science have been well understood for several decades now.
But starting in the 1970s, fossil fuel companies took a page from the tobacco industry’s playbook and started injecting doubt and confusion into well-settled science. The fallout of that doubt still haunts political conversations about the climate crisis today. It leads to years and decades of stalled or flimsy action.
It’s also frustrating given that the public has few opportunities to focus on global warming — and the annual COP meeting tends to be one such moment when the world pays attention.
In the United States, only 35% of adults talk about the climate crisis at least occasionally, according to a 2021 survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
Slightly less — 33% — hear about it at least once a week in the media.
Not quite what you’d expect given that the habitability of our planet is in jeopardy. We are living with the consequences of a world we’ve warmed today — in the form of wildfires, extreme weather, searing drought and a burgeoning extinction crisis in the natural world.
If there’s a silver lining to the fact that Al Jaber’s comments have been wildly distracting, and disruptive, it’s that there is some benefit to plainly observing the predicament we are in.
Heat-trapping pollution from fossil fuels continues to go up year after year.
There are plenty of people and companies who profit from it.
Perhaps calling for Al Jaber to resign is part of a short-term solution to restore the credibility of COP28 and all the COP meetings still to come. But there’s a bigger point on which there must be absolute clarity in the public mind: We must demand a total phase-out of fossil fuels.
World leaders at COP28 can and should deliver on that promise.
And the public must hold them to account.
No comments:
Post a Comment