[It’s difficult to imagine anything much more systemically evil
than this latest spate of bids by the oil companies and oil countries
to keep wrecking the planet. ]
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UAE CORRUPTION BEYOND DESCRIPTION MEANS COP28 IS LIKELY OVER BEFORE
IT STARTS  
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Bill McKibben
November 28, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ It’s difficult to imagine anything much more systemically evil
than this latest spate of bids by the oil companies and oil countries
to keep wrecking the planet. _

A man walks past a COP28 logo ahead of the United Nations climate
summit in Dubai on November 28, 2023. The UN chief urged world leaders
to take decisive action to tackle ever-worsening climate change when
they gather at the COP28 summit in Dubai , Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty
Images

 

We’re still a day or two away from the official start of COP 28 in
Dubai, but in some ways it seems over before it began: revelations
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the host nation had used its official position to leverage new oil and
gas deals around the world were a timely reminder that there are
entire nations that essentially operate as oil companies, with
precisely the same attention to morality as Exxon or Shell.

This is the logical endgame of an immoral group of men quite willing
to sacrifice the planet for their power.

The documents, obtained by the Centre for Climate Reporting in the UK
and first published by the BBC, showed talking points for meetings
between officials like Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, the head of this COP and
also of the UAE’s national oil company, and at least 28 countries
prior to the start of the official talks.

They 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 natural gas] opportunities" in
Mozambique, Canada and Australia.
The documents suggest telling a Colombian minister that Adnoc "stands
ready" to support Colombia to develop its fossil fuel resources.
There are talking points for 13 other countries, including Germany and
Egypt, which suggest telling them Adnoc wants to work with their
governments to develop fossil fuel projects.

Later in the day, another set of Center for Climate Research documents
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emerged that were even more shocking. They showed that the UAE’s
close ally, Saudi Arabia, hard at work on an Oil Development
Sustainability Programme which involved hooking African and Asian
nations on fossil fuels. It is almost cartoonishly villainous:

The investigation obtained detailed information on plans to drive up
the use of fossil fuel-powered cars, buses and planes in Africa
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countries increasingly switch to clean energy.
The ODSP plans to accelerate the development of supersonic air travel,
which it notes uses three times more jet fuel than conventional
planes, and partner with a carmaker to mass produce a cheap combustion
engine vehicle. Further plans promote power ships, which use polluting
heavy fuel oil or gas to provide electricity to coastal communities.

The new documents, which really must be read to be believed
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perform the same essential task as the revelations almost a decade ago
about Exxon’s climate lies. They end any pretense that these
countries are engaged in good-faith efforts to wind down the
industry—instead they’re hooking up with car manufacturers to make
cheap vehicles that would keep demand for their crude pumping on.

As Mohammed Adow, veteran campaigner and head of PowerShift Africa
told the Guardian, “The Saudi government is like a drug dealer
trying to get Africa hooked on its harmful product…The rest of the
world is weaning itself off dirty and polluting fossil fuels and Saudi
Arabia is getting desperate for more customers and is turning its
sights on Africa. It’s repulsive.”

We’re used to the repulsive behavior of Big Oil in this
country—above all its decades-long campaign of lies to delay climate
action even as its own scientists warned of the consequences. And in
fact American oil interests have engaged in just the same behavior.
Here’s a story
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from just three years ago about how they were engaged in an all-out
lobbying effort to flood Africa with plastic. As the Times reported in
2020,

“An industry group representing the world’s largest chemical
makers and fossil fuel companies is lobbying to influence United
States trade negotiations with Kenya, one of Africa’s biggest
economies, to reverse its strict limits on plastics — including a
tough plastic-bag ban. It is also pressing for Kenya to continue
importing foreign plastic garbage, a practice it has pledged to limit.

Plastics makers are looking well beyond Kenya’s borders. “We
anticipate that Kenya could serve in the future as a hub for supplying
U.S.-made chemicals and plastics to other markets in Africa through
this trade agreement,” Ed Brzytwa, the director of international
trade for the American Chemistry Council, wrote in an April 28 letter
to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.

The move, the Times noted, “reflects an oil industry contemplating
its inevitable decline as the world fights climate change. Profits are
plunging amid the coronavirus pandemic, and the industry is fearful
that climate change will force the world to retreat from burning
fossil fuels. Producers are scrambling to find new uses for an
oversupply of oil and gas. Wind and solar power are becoming
increasingly affordable, and governments are weighing new policies to
fight climate change by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.”

It’s difficult, I think, to imagine anything much more systemically
evil than this spate of bids by the oil companies and oil countries to
keep wrecking the planet; it’s akin to the way that tobacco
companies, facing legal losses in the U.S., pivoted to expand their
markets in Asia instead. But this time the second-hand smoke is going
to kill us all. Instead of accepting responsibility for the damage
their products have caused and trying to figure out how to make
amends, the oil world is instead preparing for what the fine
journalists at HeatMap last week called a “lucrative decline.” Big
Oil, they wrote, is

planning to extract the last bit of profits from a declining sector,
while hoping that energy users everywhere remain dependent upon a
volatile, expensive, and polluting – but very profitable – energy
source. If newer sovereign producers try to get into the game late
(such as Barbados, Senegal, and Mozambique) they might well get caught
out by the shrinking oil market. That would leave the cheaper and
better-capitalized producers — Gulf countries, or the U.S. majors
— to continue selling at a comfortable profit, albeit slightly lower
than they’d receive in the pre-peak era.

The head of OPEC, himself a Kuwaiti oil executive, said
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yesterday that any efforts to hold the industry accountable
“unjustly vilifies” it “as being behind the climate crisis.”
The new reporting, he said, is “undiplomatic to say the least.”
Undiplomatic, in this case, means that someone is trying to rip the
veneer off their efforts to use the negotiating process to cover up
and extend their crimes. One feels for UN Secretary General Antonio
Guterres, who made a big trip to Antarctica in the runup to the COP,
trying to bring world attention to the suicide trip we’re taking as
a planet.

I have just returned from Antarctica – the sleeping giant.
A giant being awoken by climate chaos.
Together, Antarctica and Greenland are melting well over three times
faster than they were in the early 1990s.
It is profoundly shocking to stand on the ice of Antarctica and hear
directly from scientists how fast the ice is disappearing.

The only hope, he said, was “a clear and credible commitment to
phase out fossil fuels on a timeframe that aligns with the 1.5-degree
limit.” Which, of course, is the thing that the new documents
showing the UAE and Saudi Arabia doing all in their power to prevent.
The very first question that Guterres got at his press conference came
from Al Jazeera and addressed the new documents:

Can you react to allegations that the UAE (United Arab Emirates) has
been negotiating carbon fuel deals on the sidelines of COP, and that's
their intention? Are you worried about this undermining it?

Guterres swallowed hard and said “I can’t believe it’s true.”

But of course he can, and so can anyone else who’s been paying
attention for the last 35 years. This is the logical endgame of an
immoral group of men quite willing to sacrifice the planet for their
power.

The only hope for this COP—and really for this planet—is that our
revulsion at revelations like these somehow spurs the movements
necessary to break the power of Big Oil.

© 2022 Bill McKibben

 

Bill McKibben is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury
College and co-founder of 350.org and ThirdAct.org. His most recent
book is "Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?." He
also authored "The End of Nature," "Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough
New Planet," and "Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the
Durable Future."
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Contribute to 350.org and ThirdAct.org If you can.

* UN Climate Change Conference 2023; COP28; Phaseout of Fossil Fuels;
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