Sultan
Ahmed Al Jaber
is a 50 year old Emirati
politician with a undergraduate
degree in Chemical Engineering, a Master in Business Administration
and a PhD in Business and Economics.
His studies appear to have been
funded by the Abu
Dhabi National Oil Company
(ADNOC) - a state-owned multinational corporation of which he
is currently
Director-General & Chief
Executive Officer.
ADNOC
is considered
one
of the world's largest energy companies measured by both fossil
fuel
reserves and production.
Critics
tend to characterise ADNOC under his guidance as a corporation which
focuses on 'greenwashing' rather than genuine greenhouse gas
emissions reduction/climate
change mitigation.
Al
Jaber is
currently
the United Arab Emirates
(UAE)
Minister
of Industry and Advanced Technology.
He
is also President of the 28th
Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change
(COP28) which
is being hosted by oil-rich UAE and
therein lies an
immense conflict of interest which has the potential to fatally
weaken the UN
Framework Convention on Climate Change.
COP28 was convened for thirteen days with around 199 nations participating and concludes on Tuesday 12 December 2023.
AlJazeera,
8 December 2023:
The
head of OPEC has urged members to reject any COP28 agreement that
“targets” fossil fuels, highlighting deep divisions as the UN
climate conference in Dubai enters its final week.
A
new draft of the final agreement published on Friday includes a range
of options, from agreeing to a “phase out of fossil fuels in line
with best available science”, to phasing out “unabated fossil
fuels”, to including no language on them at all....
The
nearly 200 nations gathered in Dubai are now expected to focus on the
issue of fossil fuels in the hope of reaching a consensus before the
gathering’s scheduled end......
The
most vocal holdout to calls to end fossil fuels is Saudi Arabia,
which like summit host United Arab Emirates, is a major oil
producer.....
TheGuardian,
3 December 2023:
The
president of Cop28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no
science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to
restrict global heating to 1.5C, the Guardian and the Centre for
Climate Reporting can reveal.
Al
Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow
sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back
into caves”.
The
comments were “incredibly concerning” and “verging on climate
denial”, scientists said, and they were at odds with the position
of the UN secretary general, António Guterres.
Al
Jaber made the comments in ill-tempered responses to questions from
Mary Robinson, the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special
envoy for climate change, during a live online event on 21 November.
As well as running Cop28 in Dubai, Al Jaber is also the CEO of the
United Arab Emirates’s state oil company, Adnoc, which many
observers see as a serious conflict of interest.
More
than 100 countries already support a phase-out of fossil fuels and
whether the final Cop28 agreement calls for this or uses weaker
language such as “phase-down” is one of the most fiercely fought
issues at the summit and may be the key determinant of its success.
Deep and rapid cuts are needed to bring fossil fuel emissions to zero
and limit fast-worsening climate impacts.....
Guterres
told Cop28 delegates 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.”.......
Newsweek,
1 December 2023:
The
annual United Nations climate summit started yesterday. We're up to
the 28th edition: "COP28." Past UN summits have obviously
failed us, but this is a new low. Everyone on Earth needs to know
that the meeting has been overrun by fossil fuel executives, making
it a sick, planet-destroying joke. There's no real hope of stopping
catastrophic global heating until we fix this.
The
primary cause of global heating is fossil fuels; and global heating
is what's driving all the crazy heat, fire, smoke, storms, flooding,
drought, crop yield losses, and ecosystem death that is intensifying
everywhere as Earth breaks down. This is basic physics and it's
merciless. If left unchecked, every year on average will be hotter
than the last, and at some point—no one knows exactly when or how
it will unfold—global heating will take down civilization as we
know it. Billions of lives are at risk, and the damage to Earth's
habitability will last for so long that it will be essentially
permanent as far as humans are concerned.
Since
fossil fuels are the cause, the only way out of this emergency is to
ramp down and ultimately end the fossil fuel industry. Recycling and
composting aren't bad things in and of themselves, but they will not
stop global heating. The cause is fossil fuels. The only real
solution is ending fossil fuels. If you want to help, and you should,
forget recycling. Instead, fight the fossil fuel industry every way
you can.
It's
easy to imagine an alternate universe in which fossil fuel executives
were like, "We already have more money than we know what to do
with, so let's not destroy the planet." In this alternate
universe, the fossil fuel industry uses its vast power and resources
to accelerate humanity's transition to clean energy, so we can all
have a planet to live on. Makes sense.
In
reality of course, fossil fuel executives made the opposite choice:
to spend billions to hire the best and brightest to spread
disinformation and block action. Which is sad, and horrible, and
nightmarish. They've been doing this for half a century. And they recently promised to keep doing
it.
In
2021, six fossil fuel executives testified before congress. They were Darren Woods, CEO of ExxonMobil;
Michael Wirth, CEO of Chevron; David Lawler, CEO of BP America;
Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell Oil; Mike Sommers, president of
the American Petroleum Institute; and Suzanne Clark, president and
CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. When asked in several instances
by Congress if they would agree to stop spending to spread
disinformation and block climate action, these fossil fuel executives
refused. They clearly signaled to the world that they plan to
blithely continue dishonestly destroying Earth's habitability for the
sake of corporate greed. They are literal supervillains, stealing our future.
This
year, 2023, is the hottest in recorded human history. This should surprise no one: global
heating is driven inexorably by trending accumulation of fossil fuel
carbon dioxide and methane emissions. In this hottest year in human
history, the climate summit is being held in the United Arab Emirates
and presided over by a fossil fuel chief executive named Sultan Ahmed
Al-Jaber. It's hard to imagine anything more cynical or more evil.
And yet, things did get more cynical and more evil, with recent
revelations that the U.A.E. has been abusing its host role to strike side deals to expand fossil fuels......
Read
the full article by Dr. Peter Kalmus, a climate
scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory at:
https://www.newsweek.com/climate-summit-sick-joke-you-should-angry-afraid-opinion-1848719
The New York Times (Late
Edition), 29 November 2023:
A
leaked document has talking points for the president of the United
Nations climate conference, who is an oil executive in the United
Arab Emirates, to advance oil and gas deals.
As
the host of global climate talks that begin this week, the United
Arab Emirates is expected to play a central role in forging an
agreement to move the world more rapidly away from coal, oil and gas.
But
behind the scenes, the Emirates has sought to use its position as
host to pursue a contradictory goal: to lobby on oil and gas deals
around the world, according to an internal document made public by a
whistle-blower.
In
one example, the document offers guidance for Emirati climate
officials to use meetings with Brazil's environment minister to
enlist her help with a local petrochemical deal by the Abu Dhabi
National Oil Company, the Emirates' state-run oil and gas company,
known as Adnoc.
Emirati
officials should also inform their Chinese counterparts that Adnoc
was "willing to jointly evaluate international LNG
opportunities" in Mozambique, Canada and Australia, the document
indicates. LNG stands for liquefied natural gas, which is a fossil
fuel and a driver of global warming.
These
and other details in the nearly 50-page document -- obtained by the
Centre for Climate Reporting and the BBC -- have cast a pall over the
climate summit, which begins on Thursday. They are indications,
experts said, that the U.A.E. is blurring the boundary between its
powerful standing as host of the United Nations climate conference,
and U.A.E.'s position as one of the world's largest oil and gas
exporters.
"I
can't believe it," António Guterres, the United Nations
Secretary General, said at a news conference Monday. The U.A.E. had
been "caught red-handed," Christiana Figueres, a former
United Nations diplomat posted on X. Ms. Figueres led the
negotiations that yielded the 2015 Paris Agreement, the pact among
nations of the world to work to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"At
this point we might as well meet inside an actual oil refinery,"
said Joseph Moeono-Kolio, lead adviser to the campaign for a Fossil
Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty, an advocacy network.
Members
of Emirates' climate delegation didn't respond to requests for
comment.....
