Annual Climate Talks Hosted By Mideast Oil Kingdom Raises Questions

Is the UAE making big oil deals at a huge annual climate
conference of all things? 

 There's a big international annual meeting going on, this year called COP28, which is meant to negotiate the worldwide policy tangle associated with climate change.  And make tons of political speeches, mostly meant to burnish the reputations of those who attend. 

The thing that raises my eyebrows to the ceiling of the Scottish hotel I'm currently staying at is why an oil kingdom is hosting such a major climate event.

More on that in a minute, but first, let's take a step back and figure out what the big shot meeting is about in the first place. The Washington Post explains it better than I can:

"More than 100 world leaders are scheduled to address the gathering Friday and Saturday. The speakers include French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Sila, according to a list released by the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. 

After the speeches have concluded, the negotiations will begin in earnest. Delegates from nearly 200 countries are expected to haggle over whether to phase out fossil fuels, the primary driver of global warming and whether to provide more money to help developing nations cope with the ravages of climate change."

The whole shindig is taking place at in the United Arab Emirate, not exactly the world's biggest hotbed of EV, protests to stop fossil fuel and climate activism. 

Heading up the talks at this big gathering is Sultan Al Jaber, who is chairman of UAE's renewable energy office. That sounds nice enough. But he's also chief executive of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. 

The annual COP conferences are rotated every year among five global regions, and this year it's Asia-Pacific.  UAE is in that area, but so are lots of other nations. The UAE made an unopposed bid to host this year's big affair, so that's where it's happening. 

UAE hopes to make itself look good by getting everybody agree to a better, more extensive "loss and damage" agreement - that's what the Washington Post referred to up above to aid for developing nations swamped by disasters caused by or made worse by climate change. 

So in a perfect world, UAE makes itself look better by creating an environment that helps nations that really need it. I can't argue with that goal.

But I'm a cynic. So are a lot of other people out there.  I'm not sure everyone is trusting UAE here. 

The Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC obtained documents showing that the UAE planned to use its role in hosting the climate talks to strike oil and gas deals with 15 nations.  Yes, that does seem a bit unseemly, doesn't it?

According to the BBC:

"(The documents) included proposed 'talking points such as one for China which says Adnoc, the UAE's state oil company is 'willing to jointly evaluate international LNG (liquefied nature gas) opportunities in Mozambique, Canada and Australia.

The documents suggest telling a Columbian minister that Adnoc 'stands ready' to support Columbia to develop its fossil fuel resources."

The BBC has lots and lots of details in its report in conjunction with the Centre for Climate Reporting. I won't get into it all here, but it's pretty fascinating to wade through. 

As the Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) writes:

"Prof Michael Jacobs of Sheffield University, who is an expert on climate politics, said the COP28 president's actions look "breathtakingly hypocritical."

Ya THINK?

Anyway, Jacobs goes on: 

"The UAE at the moment is the custodian of the United Nations process aimed at reducing global emissions. And yet, in the very same meetings where it's apparently trying to pursue that goal, it's actually trying to do side deals that will increase global emissions,"

As for the UAE, their response to the CCR was: 

"....a COP28 spokesperson said: 'Dr. Sultan Al Jaber holds a number of positions alongside his role as COP2 President-Designate. That is public knowledge. Private meetings are private, and we do not comment on them."

CCR said former COP presidents and others associated with the event said GOP presidents should never make their nation's commercial interests part of the climate talks. 

"As a COP president you should not represent any national or commercial interest, it is your job to leas the world," said Manuel Pulsar-Vidal, the president of the COP20 summit in Lima in 2014.

'You can't represent the interests of a country or a business because it will undermine confidence and trust in the presidency," he said. 

The annual COP climate conferences have done some real good, of course. 

The third of these meetings, GOP3 in Kyoto, 1997, the first time nations formally agreed to reduce carbon emissions COP21 led to the Paris agreement, in which nations agreed to try limiting the increase in global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and shoot for no more than 1.5 degrees.

That 1.5 degrees is looking less and less realistic, but at least it was a goal that might have helped the process of reducing emissions.

However, I'm not optimistic about this iteration.  Some annual COP meetings fall short. This one might be that way, too. 

I just hope it doesn't do the opposite and ultimately make climate work.