COP 28: we can’t be surprised at the outcome, but at least we now know where we stand
As things stand, the draft conclusions of COP 28 in Dubai doesn’t include any mention of a phase-out of fossil fuels, and is limited to briefly mentioning “a fair, orderly and equitable reduction”, as if that were not the equivalent of the greatest crime ever committed against humanity.
Saudi Arabia’s total opposition, as the most prominent member of OPEC, to signing absolutely anything containing those words, with the complicity of the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber as director of this year’s climate conference, has produced a decaffeinated draft, which, as Al Gore rightly comments is “of the petrostates, by the petrostates and for the petrostates”.
There is nothing left to be done: the climate summit and any other forum in which petrostates participate can now be dismissed as a right-off. Now, it’s them against us: if we can’t phase out fossil fuels with them, we will have to do it without them. If they don’t want to work jointly on an orderly phasing out of fossil fuels and instead lie about a supposed transition to modern diversified economies, then fossil fuels will have to be phased out over their heads, simply by preventing our governments from subsidizing them and buying them out as quickly as possible. Transition without them. Let them continue to produce what they want, and…
