COP 28: we can’t be surprised at the outcome, but at least we now know where we stand

Enrique Dans

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Enrique Dans

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3 min read

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10 hours ago

IMAGE: Modified from Gino Crescoli — Pixabay

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 let them sell it where they can while they see how civilized countries are dispensing with it faster and faster. The only way to save this planet is to dispense with petrostates and subject them as much as possible to the harshest possible international isolation.

COP 28 has produced a pathetic draft that talks about using absurd technologies to capture carbon dioxide so the petrostates and the oil industry can continue burning fossil fuels. “Sustainable oil”… what a joke. What we have to do cannot be done with the participation of petrostates that have clearly chosen the wrong side of history. This COP28 should put an end to any possibility of negotiation with petrostates, and start considering them for what they really are, the enemy.

For the island nations, the most threatened by the climate emergency and at risk, in many cases, of disappearing altogether, the conference has been a huge betrayal: they went to a climate summit to…