Cop28, an oilman cannot save us from the climate crisis

What is the capstone for the world’s largest meeting on climate? Be presided over by an oilman. It’s not some old joke book joke, it’s the sad reality. The next Cop – the Conference of the parties, the global assembly that led to the Kyoto and Paris agreements, now in its 28th edition in 2023 – will be held in December in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. And the president, appointed on Thursday, is the sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who by profession is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, the Arab state’s oil giant. He will be the one to lead the negotiations, to set the agenda, to finalize the agreements. It will be the first time that a COP in 30 years of history has been chaired by a businessman.

For decades, the Cop has been striving to find solutions to the climate change caused by our disproportionate use of fossil fuels: it is now being handed over to an oilman. There is to go crazy. It is as if at an assembly to save all the Beep Beeps in the world from extinction we put Willy the coyote in charge. It’s like delivering the ring directly to Sauron, the bad guy from Lord of the Rings, hoping he’ll put it to good use. The parallels go on and on, but here’s a far more serious one: it’s like inviting the cigarette industry to coordinate the work at a lung cancer conference.

Admittedly, Al Jaber’s resume isn’t completely oil-black. He has embraced the idea of ​​decarbonisation and wants to lead the UAE towards climate neutrality by 2050. In addition to being the head of ADNOC, where he has invested 15 billion in decarbonisation, and president of Masdar, the second largest company dedicated to renewable energy, he is also minister of industry and technological innovation for his country. The UAE is the first Arab country to ratify the 2015 Paris Accords and the government has assured that its approach will be “pragmatic and inclusive”.

But doubts remain. Because we know the precedents of recent years: the last COP, number 27, was held in Egypt, one of the least free countries in the world. A catwalk for the Al-Sisi regime, which has conceded nothing to the opposition. Not only that: Egypt and the UNFCCC, the UN platform that assigns the event every year (without any ethical criteria, this is the real problem) have accepted the worst sponsor: Coca Cola, which is the company that generates the most waste in the world. That wasn’t enough: what were the two largest delegations present in Sharm-el-Sheikh? In first place is the United Arab Emirates, oil producers, with 1,060 people. And in second place not a state but a category: 636 lobbyists of oil companies. And how did the assembly end? Saving the status quo and doing little or nothing to eliminate coal, gas and oil from our lives.

There were many reactions to the news. Global Witness speaks of a “hard blow” to the credibility of the next COP. Action Aid argues that now big oil is taking control of the decision-making process of the assembly. Greenpeace says it is “alarmed” because “there should be no place for fossil fuels within the negotiations”. And Fridays for future commented caustically: “What do we create memes for?” as if to say that reality is, in fact, better than possible jokes.

For many years the Cops have been an opportunity to try to change the world. Now they are turning into farce. How to endlessly repeat a word until it is devoid of meaning and without remembering why you started pronouncing it. We call the problem Apocalypse, or crisis, or even just climate change. Let’s call it what we want, but certainly an oilman won’t save us from all this.