The Cop26 meeting in Glasgow two years ago was described at the time by Swedish climate activist, Greta Thunberg, as just “more blah, blah blah”. Since then, we have more of the same.
There has been no reduction in global carbon emissions and no large-scale shift to renewable investments. Indeed, expenditure on new coal, oil and gas exploration and extraction is going ahead as before. It is no wonder that 2023 is already on track to be the hottest year ever recorded by human beings.
Although the delegates at the Cop28 conference, which opened this week, heartily cheered themselves for having come to an agreement for the rich countries to ‘commit’ to giving aid to poorer countries, to cope with climate change, similar promises made in the past have not been kept. There is not the slightest reason to think that these new commitments will be honoured any more than previous ones.
Cop28 is meeting, of all places, in the United Arab Emirates, a country made rich by the extraction and sale of oil and gas. The stink of hypocrisy around the event can be gauged by the fact that it will be chaired by none other than Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the Chief Executive of the UAE national oil company, Adnoc. Not one to waste a gathering of the good and the great, Al Jaber, the Guardian reported a few days ago, is going to use the conference to network with business and political leaders, to promote oil deals for Adnoc with 15 different countries.
Grandstanding in a vast PR exercise
As circuses go, this is a big one, and it uses more air miles and is responsible for more carbon emissions than any other similar world gathering. There will be an estimated 70,000 delegates, including politicians, scientists, coal, oil and gas industry representatives, and thousands of their lobbyists.
The presence of ‘world leaders’ like the Pope, King Charles III, Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen – all, no doubt, flying into the UAE in gas-guzzling jets – are only there to give themselves huge pats on the back and give the impression that they are all ‘on board’ for a serious fight against climate change. In fact, they are all grandstanding, polishing their eco-medals, and nothing more. As a vast PR operation, an exercise in ‘greenwashing’, nothing comes remotely close to it.
Having the Cop28 conference chaired by an oil executive planning to do more deals would be funny, if the issue wasn’t so serious. The more sober journals of capitalism, like the Financial Times, have noted the contradiction. “That the UAE would exploit its position as host to boost sales of the fossil fuels responsible for the climate problem that Cop28 is aiming to fix”, the Financial Times editorial complained, “beggars belief”. (November 29).
Oil and gas giants continue to pump profits
The only ‘commitment’ made at previous Cop conferences which has been met, is the agreement to hold these annual jamborees. More blah, blah, blah, as Thunberg said. From one Cop meeting to another, the main producers of fossil fuels, those responsible for trashing the planet, have done little or nothing to wean economies off carbon dependency. That includes big privately-owned companies, as well as state-owned corporations like the UAE’s Adnoc.
Each of the giant oil and gas giants will make noises about climate change and the need for green technology, but they each continue to pump profits to their shareholders or state coffers, while waiting for ‘everyone else’ to cut back extraction. It is a global case of “after you…”, while the planet goes to Hell in a handcart.
The editorial writers of the FT note that “Overall, ALMOST NO OIL OR GAS GROUP is doing enough to advance a greener global economy, despite what many claim. Oil and gas producers account for a mere 1 per cent of total clean energy investment globally…” (Upper case added)
All the politicians, like Rishi Sunak for example, will issue pious pledges to tackle this serious climate emergency, but back home they encourage – and even subsidise – oil producers to find more fields for extraction.
Meanwhile, the carbon emissions just from the companies themselves, from their operations, and through gas flaring and leaks, are responsible for around a seventh of all global greenhouse gas emissions – as much as the whole of the US economy.
Carbon emissions continue to rise
According to the UN, the world is currently on track for a temperature rise of 2.9oC above pre-industrial levels – and that is even assuming that governments stick to the pledges they made at the 2015 COP conference in Paris. But unfortunately, in most cases, those pledges are far from being met.
The UN report noted that carbon emissions are higher than they were in 2022 and that year was higher than 2021. There is no slackening off, in other words. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, has argued that keeping to the Paris goal would require “tearing out the poisoned root of the climate crisis: fossil fuels.”
Guterres is right, but the big fossils fuel producers have huge economic power and it is also reflected in their enormous political clout. The oil companies and political ‘leaders’ are in each others’ pockets, and are intrinsically incapable of changing their practices, much less saving the planet.
They are not capable of the 28% cut in emissions that would be required by 2030, to keep within 2oC of warming, or the 40% reduction for the 1.5oC limit to be a realistic possiblity. According to a report in the Washington Post (November 19), the world temperature average “briefly” (because temperatures fluctuate) actually did reach the figure of 2oC of warming last month.
The Earth is a ‘Hot Mess’
Working out the probabilities of climate change, the UN report suggests that we have only a 1 in 7 chance of limiting warming to 1.5oC by the end of the century. That 1.5oC ‘target’ that came out of the Paris confernce eight years ago, was chosen because it was felt that it was the limit above which there would be irreversible changes to the planet’s climate. Unfortunately, it looks highly likely that carbon emissions will produce an average temperature increase much greater than that.
October was a particularly warm month, around 0.85oC warmer than the historical average, and this year is easily on track to be the hottest year ever. “Laid out so starkly,” a climate scientist told the Financial Times, “the 2023 numbers on air temperatures, sea temperatures, sea ice and the rest look like something out of a Hollywood movie. If our current global efforts to tackle climate change were a film it would be called Hot Mess.” (Financial Times, November 8)
Grim though the scenario is, we have to recognise that global warming is now a foregone conclusion. It is affecting the world economy and life on the planet now, in terms of the costs of wild-fires, floods and other weather anomalies, as well as damage to crop production. But what we are experiencing now will be like nothing compared to the damage that will be coming down the line, impacting on our children and grandchildren.
History will judge those responsible for trashing the planet
History will judge that the big fossil fuel companies, their chief executives and shareholders, as well as all the politicians they have bought and paid for, will have been responsible for the greatest damage to human civilisation in millenia and for putting a question mark against the veropsurvival of the human species.
Cop28 is a circus of all the vanities, but as far as climate change is concerned, it is an irrelevance. For socialists and labour movement activists, it is understood that to be ‘green’ one has to be ‘red’ and vice versa. Society needs revolutionary change in the way in which the global economy is owned, controlled and managed, not so much to prevent climate change – because that ship has sailed – but to mitigate the worst of its effects and to protect future generations.
Industry, the main levers of the economy – and in this particular case, the energy production and distribution industries – should be taken out of the hands of the narrow clique of shareholders and sheiks who represent a vanishingly small percentage of the population. Instead, it should be owned and managed democratically in the interests of the whole population. That is the only way to save the planet and it is the real lesson coming out of Cop28.
