Last week, Sultan al Jaber, the president of the UN’s COP28 climate summit, insisted that there is “no science” behind calls to phase-out fossil fuels, before getting in a hilarious eco-fight with three leading women from the conference over climate change and gender.
“You’re asking for a phase-out of fossil fuel,” al-Jaber said.
“Please, help me, show me for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
Responding to the remark, U.N. Environment Program Executive Director Inger Andersen said she lives in Kenya with solar power and clean electricity from the local utility.
“I’m not living in a cave,” she added.
“That’s all I can say.”
The remarks from al Jaber draw criticism from scientists and are in contrast with the view of Antonio Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, who said at the climate summit on Friday,
“The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”
Fast forward to Monday, with the Financial Times reporting that a draft agreement from the summit has dropped all references to the phaseout of fossil fuels, following opposition from oil and gas-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia.
The document — which will have to be agreed by almost 200 countries at the summit in Dubai — sets out an optional range of actions that countries “could” take to cut emissions to net zero by 2050.
This includes reducing “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner so as to achieve net zero [carbon emissions] by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science”. -FT
The climate Karens, however, want the text to go further by committing to a phase out of fossil fuels – which any honest idiot could tell you would have extreme repercussions in terms of both energy price inflation (which of course hurts the poor the most), and the logistics of shifting developed nations onto unreliable primary energy sources.
“We have made progress, but we still have a lot to do . . . including on fossil fuel language,” said a Jaber, adding “We should not allow anything to get between the fact we have all decided to keep our focus on our north star . . . of keeping 1.5[C] in reach.”
The 1.5c target was set during the landmark 2015 Paris climate accord, as countries agreed to limit temperature increases to well below 2C and, ideally, 1.5C, as if that’s even possible, and even if it were, assumes China and India would give a rat’s ass and play ball in this completely academic exercise.
“It is our very survival that is at stake. That is why in every room our negotiators have been pushing tirelessly for decisions that align with staying under 1.5[C] degrees,” said Samoa’s minister of natural resources Toeolesulusulu Cedric Schuster, speaking on behalf of a group of small island countries vulnerable to climate change.
Marshall Islands minister of natural resources, John Silk, said the country “did not come here to sign our death warrant,” calling for a fossil fuel phaseout.
“We will not go silently to our watery graves. We will not accept an outcome that will lead to the devastation for our country.”
Watery Graves!? he told the room full of elites with beachfront homes.
Perhaps the biggest climate Karen, Al Gore, wrote a lengthy screed on X, slamming COP28 as being “on the verge of complete failure” due to the elimination of the phase-out language.
COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure. The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word. It is even worse than many had feared. It is “Of the Petrostates, By the Petrostates…
— Al Gore (@algore) December 11, 2023
Here’s what the current draft agreement entails (via FT).
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Triple renewable energy capacity globally and double the global average annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030
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Rapid phasedown of unabated coal and limits on permitting new and unabated coal power generation
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Accelerated efforts globally towards net zero emissions energy systems, using zero and low carbon fuels well before or by around mid-century
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Accelerating zero and low emissions technologies, including renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies, including such as carbon capture and utilisation and storage, and low carbon hydrogen production, to enhance efforts in substitution of unabated fossil fuels
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Reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by, before, or around 2050 in keeping with the science
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Accelerating and substantially reducing non-CO₂ emissions, including, in particular, methane emissions globally by 2030
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Accelerating emissions reductions from road transport through a range of pathways, including development of infrastructure and rapid deployment of zero and low-emission vehicles
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Phaseout of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption and do not address energy poverty or just transitions, as soon as possible
Know who else can’t wait for the green revolution?
Tyler Durden
Mon, 12/11/2023 – 11:45
