Editorial | Sultan Al Jaber’s obligation

Hopefully, the United Nations climate conference, COP28, hasn’t been irreparably damaged and will still be able to reach agreements, based on credible science, to divert the earth from its spiralling towards becoming catastrophically hot.

For this to happen, the conference’s chairman, Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber – who, incongruously, is the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ national oil company, Adnoc – has to demonstrate not only that he believes that greenhouse gases from fossil fuels cause global warming, but is willing to lead the conference to action to aggressively phase-down, and eventually phase out, the use of oil and gas as the planet’s source of energy.

Mr Al-Jaber’s leadership of the climate conference was controversial from the beginning.

Many people saw a conflict of interest in an oil man leading a climate conference, where the issue of the future of fossil fuels was bound to be touchy. Matters worsened last weekend when leaked documents suggested that the Emiratis intended to use COP28 as a post-conference launching pad to drum up business for Adnoc.

What has now seriously unsettled matters is Mr Al-Jaber’s remarks at a pre-COP online discussion in which he questioned the science that dramatically cutting back the use of fossil fuels was critical to keeping Earth’s temperature to below 1.5 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

CREDIBLE SCIENCE

In the forum Mary Robinson, the former Irish president and climate activist, had pressured Mr Al-Jaber about leading the conference towards lowering, and ultimately ending, the burning of fossil fuels. His response, based on a video produced by the Guardian newspaper in the UK, was to accuse Ms Robinson of being an alarmist and to question the science.

“There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase out of fossil fuels is what’s going to achieve 1.5,” Mr Al-Jaber said.

He added: “Please, help me, show me a road map for a phase out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

Credible scientists and their science, of course, insist that Mr Al-Jaber is wrong. Indeed, using 2019 as the benchmark, the United Nations climate panel has said that countries must, by the end of the decade, reduce greenhouse emissions from fossil fuels by 43 per cent to have a decent shot of limiting the warming of Earth to under 1.5 degrees.

At the opening of COP28 on Friday, Antonio Guterres, the UN’s secretary general, said: “The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out. With a clear time frame aligned with 1.5 degrees.”

Not surprisingly, Mr Al-Jaber faced a barrage of criticism for his revisionist science.

Al Gore, the former US vice president and prominent climate activist, suggested that Mr Al-Jaber’s “preposterous disguise” had fallen off, insisting that “the world needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible”.

HUMAN EXISTENCE ON EARTH IN PERIL

On Monday, Mr Al-Jaber back-pedalled a bit, even as he claimed, without offering evidence of how, that his words had been “taken out of context with misrepresentation and misinterpretation that gets maximum coverage”.

“I respect the science in everything I do,” said the engineer and economist. “I have said over and over that the phase-down and the phase out of fossil fuels is inevitable.”

Believing that something is inevitable is one thing; it is quite another to do something to accelerate that inevitability. Or to make the process slower than necessary.

Global warming has meant rising sea levels, longer droughts and more frequent, and unpredictable, storms and floods. It puts human existence on Earth in peril.

Small, poor island states like Jamaica feel the brunt of these disruptions. They are, however, without the economic resources to adapt fast enough to the changing environment. Burning less fossil fuels and transitioning to renewable energy is, ultimately, in the interest of countries like our own. So, insisting that Mr Al-Jaber keep the conference on track is crucial.

Yet, even after all that is done, poor countries still have to bear the consequences of, and adapt to, a crisis to whose creation they contributed little.

COP28, therefore, also has an obligation to fulfil, and expand on, the developed world’s promises of financial support for poor countries. That, too, is part of Mr Al-Jaber’s mandate.