There is “no science” connecting a fossil fuel phaseout to holding average global warming to 1.5°C, COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber declared two weeks ago, in a public video that circulated after a flurry of early announcements brought a sense of momentum to UN climate negotiations in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).
“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C,” Al Jaber, who’s also CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), told Mary Robinson, chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change, during a live event November 21.
“The COP President believes there is no science showing that fossil fuels must be phased out to meet 1.5°C. I strongly recommend him asking around for the latest IPCC report,” responded Grantham Institute Director of Research Joeri Rogelj. “That report, approved unanimously by 195 countries including the UAE, shows a variety of ways to limit warming to 1.5°C—all of which indicate a de facto phase out of fossil fuels in the first half of the century.”
In the early days of the COP, Al Jaber and his team had delivered a series of what one veteran observer called “shock and awe” announcements that overshadowed the typically plodding pace and granular focus of COP negotiations.
They bragged about delivering a final, approved agenda at the opening session of the conference—in stark contrast to mid-year negotiations in Bonn, where disagreements on the agenda dragged on for days.
They landed an historic though still drastically underfunded agreement on loss and damage funding for vulnerable countries, announced that 118 countries had signed a pledge to triple renewable energy deployment and double the pace of energy efficiency improvements by 2030, and brought 50 of the world’s biggest fossil producers—including 29 state-owned oil and gas companies—into a voluntary methane reduction agreement.
“What we’ve done already is shown that we deliver action,” when “nobody expected that we’d be able to do that,” COP28 Director General Majid Al Suwaidi told a media conference Saturday. “There is no doubt that there is a lot of work to be done, and as the COP Presidency we have said that from the very beginning.” The 1.5°C target “has been our north star from the very beginning,” he added, “and we’ve taken that in a very systematic way.”
But today’s news was the second time in less than a week that the COP28 secretariat’s own actions or statements undercut its top-line messaging.
Last week, the UK-based Centre for Climate Reporting (CCR) and the British Broadcasting Corporation revealed more than 150 pages of briefing notes, produced by COP28 staff, that targeted nearly 30 countries for possible oil and gas trade deals during Al Jaber’s bilateral diplomatic discussions in the lead-up to the COP. “The COP28 team has quietly planned to use this access as an opportunity to increase exports of ADNOC’s oil and gas,” the news exposé stated, citing the briefing notes and whistleblower reports.
Al Jaber pushed back on the report, insisting he’d never seen or used the briefing notes and that ADNOC wouldn’t have needed the COP’s help promoting its international business dealings.
Then this morning, CCR and the Guardian reported what The Guardian called Al Jaber’s “ill-tempered” responses to Robinson.
“We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone,” Robinson said during a SHE Changes Climate event, “and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel. That is the one decision that COP28 can take and in many ways, because you’re head of ADNOC, you could actually take it with more credibility.”
“I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation,” Al Jaber replied. “I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C”.
He added: “Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phaseout of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
The Guardian has more of the exchange here.
Planetary boundaries specialist Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, had that roadmap at the tip of his fingers later Sunday, during a news conference on the year’s 10 new insights on climate science. Referring to the latest in-depth assessment by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), he cited a family of 115 modelled scenarios that show humanity’s best chance at bringing average warming back to 1.5°C after first overshooting the target.
“The only way to do that is to phase out fossil fuels by 2050,” he said. “That is in all the scenarios.”
Al Jaber’s remarks drew an immediate, fierce response from scientists and civil society participants attending the COP.
“COP28 President Al Jaber’s science-denying statements are alarming and raise deep concerns about the Presidency’s capacity to lead the UN climate talks, at a time when leadership and a clear vision are most needed,” said Romain Ioualalen, global policy lead at Oil Change International. “The latest reports from the [International Energy Agency] and the IPCC show that maintaining a 50% chance of limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires an immediate end to investments in new oil, gas, and coal production and hazardous liquid fossil gas infrastructure.”
With more than 100 countries now calling for a fossil fuel phaseout, he added, “we expect the COP28 President to facilitate an outcome on a full, fast, fair, and funded phaseout of fossil fuels at COP28.”
“Fossil fuels do not equal development. Fossil fuels do not equal energy access. They do not equal jobs or profit to support our economy,” added Thuli Makama, Oil Change’s Africa senior advisor. “Fossil fuels threaten our livelihoods, health, and biodiversity. An equitable, managed phaseout of fossil fuel production provides a much brighter pathway for Africa’s development.”
“It’s an enormous betrayal to invite the health community to the table but ignore all the warnings and science that point to how disastrous the impacts of fossil fuels are on our health and future,” said Lancet Countdown Executive Director Marina Romanello. “An outcome that doesn’t address the phaseout of fossil fuels would be a failed outcome.”
“You can’t expect forests and nature to remove carbon and solve the climate crisis on one hand, and then suggest fossil fuels don’t need to be phased out,” said University of Melbourne research fellow Dr. Kate Dooley. “The very future existence of forests depends upon us ending continued emissions. Without that step, we’ll have no forests to turn to.”
A day earlier, Colombian President Gustavo Petro made similar arguments as he explained his country’s decision to join the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“Some may ask: why would the president of this country want to commit suicide with an economy that relies on fossil fuels?” he said. “Being here [at the COP], we are trying to halt a suicide, the death of everything that is alive, everything that exists. This is not economic suicide. We are avoiding the omnicide of the world, of planet Earth. There is no other formula, no other path. Everything else is an illusion.”
Al Jaber’s COP presidency is a joke that ‘s undercutting many well-intentioned people’s efforts to meaningfully address climate change. One wonders why COP’s presumed brains trust ever even considered making him president – the best presidency money could buy – or holding the conference in a petro state like Dubai. Doing so only encourages moderately green people like me to become even more cynical regarding COP’s ability do do anything except talk.
Many of us now perceive COP conferences as expensive talkfests for well-off-and comfortable climate experts and their lobbyists and hangers on that come with considerable environmental footprints and achieve nothing meaningful as the world slowly cooks. Their lack of action will end badly.
Sultan al Jaber : ” 1.5* is my North Star and a phase-down and a phase- out of fossil-fuels is inevitable and, it is essential” was omitted from “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phaseout of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C,”. Keep in mind that science while peer-reviewed is also constantly shifting with new findings, such as the reporting that the acceleration of climate-change is happening much faster than we thought, even a month ago. Extremely irresponsible, with damaging and distracting consequences, is the ‘Guardian’ omission of the Sultan’s further words that clarify the conversation. Sultan al Jabar,”I respect the science……show me the roadmap…I don’t think Mary will be able to help solve the climate problem or by pointing fingers or by contributing to the polarization and the divide that is already happening in the world. What we need here is solutions. Show me the solutions”.
How refreshing it would be if our world leaders attended this C0P 28 with solutions, and discussed what solutions are the most applicable/where/ how fast could we implement them.
Read the entire transcript available in ‘We Don’t Have Time.org’ to understand what you are commenting about.
Cut the racism and cultural mistrust, hear what was said. It is vitally important for all of us to work on solutions , instead of “contributing to the polarization and the divide” .
Many thanks for this. You make an important and essential point about cultural mistrust and racism, and that’s something we’ve tried to be very careful and deliberate about countering in the two years that the COP has been hosted in Egypt, and now the UAE. I really hope we’ve consistently succeeded.
But the news in Al Jaber’s statement was that he thinks there’s no science for a fossil fuel phaseout. He and the COP28 secretariat have been saying all year that 1.5° is their North Star. But to take that position, then reject a fossil fuel phaseout as the cornerstone of any effort to hit the target, is anti-science greenwashing. Whoever it comes from, whatever their background.