Welcome to the COP28 soapie

Hi friend,

The first week of COP28 played out like an episode of Days of Our Lives, complete with drama, denial, relationship triangles, and general ridiculousness.

It started when COP President Sultan Al Jaber went off-script, saying:

Now, we expect big players in the oil and gas industry to challenge the HEAPS of science out there, but to flat-out deny its existence when everyone in the world is listening is baffling.

Scientists warned that CO2 emissions from oil, gas, and coal will rise by 1.1% in 2023 to a record 36.8 billion tonnes.

His words hadn’t turned cold when news broke that carbon emissions reached a new high during the first week of COP28, with scientists agreeing that it’s “inevitable” that the world will miss the Paris Agreement target of reducing global warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C.

Temperatures have already risen between 1.1°C and 1.3°C, and Earth set a new monthly record for heat in November – for the sixth month in a row – with 2023 set to be the hottest year on record.

Meanwhile, just 150km away from where Al Jaber was defending the comments that he said the whole world “took out of context”, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman was meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Russia’s oil exports.

That’s right. Putin could not be arsed to attend COP28 – not that he’s welcome there anyway – but the fact that the crown prince did not see a problem hosting world enemy number one to talk business in the same week that his country was hosting the world for the most important climate talks yet is slap in the face.

That wasn’t the only dodgy development to come to light.

An Emirati financial firm that was established just a few months ago by the ruling Abu Dhabi royal family will invest US$30 billion in a new climate fund, in partnership with some of the biggest names in North American finance, including TPG, BlackRock, and Brookfield Asset Management. It was not yet clear what kinds of projects or companies the funds would invest in.

People also questioned the intentions of Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum, another member of the royal family, who heads up carbon offsetting firm Blue Carbon. The company’s potential carbon offsetting deals cover huge swathes of African forest, including a fifth of Zimbabwe, 10% of Liberia, 10% of Zambia, and 8% of Tanzania.

Carbon credits – which are basically worthless greenwashing – are bought and sold by countries hoping to make up their Paris Agreement commitments by paying someone else to remove carbon from somewhere else. Al-Maktoum, who has no previous experience in nature conservation projects, also came under fire in 2021 for selling Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine to African countries at inflated and lucrative premiums.

But wait, the plot thickens.

One of Blue Carbon’s advisors is a convicted fraudster and fugitive with a warrant out for his arrest. He’s also the consul general for Liberia in the UAE. Coincidence? I think not.

In other news, nine countries, including the UAE and the US, have joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance (PPCA), committing to transition from “unabated” coal power generation to clean energy.

This brings to 59 the number of countries that have joined the PPCA. But here’s the thing: There is no agreed-upon definition of “unabated”.

Unabated, when it comes to fossil fuels, means doing nothing to remove carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from oil, natural gas, and coal emissions. It’s all semantics though because it allows nations and fossil fuel companies to continue to burn fossil fuels as long as they “try” to trap and bury the resulting greenhouse gases, another underdeveloped and so far ineffective carbon offsetting approach.

Speaking of hot air, a coalition of 50 oil and gas companies that represent more than 40% of global oil production — including ExxonMobil; Saudi Aramco; Adnoc, the state-owned oil company of the Emirates; ConocoPhillips; and BP — pledged to reduce their methane emissions between 80% to 90% by the end of this decade.

But this is just a pledge and there is nothing legally binding them to this commitment, which means they can change their minds as soon as it becomes inconvenient.

At least UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak popped in for a few hours, although he spent more time in the plane flying to and from the summit than he did on the ground. He was there long enough to reject claims that he has watered down the UK’s net-zero ambitions, assuring the world that he’s ‘doing it for the people’. He stands by his belief that Britain has done more than other countries to get closer to net zero.

It wasn’t all smoke and mirrors though.

It would be remiss of me not to highlight the good news coming from COP28, of which there was a fair amount.

Diplomats from nearly 200 countries approved a draft plan for a Loss and Damage Fund to help vulnerable countries hit by climate disasters. Initial pledges come to about US$549 million, which is enough for about a year of aid.

A coalition of countries, development banks, and nonprofit groups announced a new initiative to help developing nations phase out coal. The partnership, known as the Coal Transition Accelerator, will aim to provide affordable financing for poor countries seeking to build renewable power and repurpose coal infrastructure to support clean energy projects.

Countries also pledged to triple the world’s renewable power capacity by 2030 and triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

And the US announced that, for the first time, it would require oil and gas producers to detect and fix methane leaks. The new regulation, which takes effect next year, would prevent 58 million tons of methane emissions by 2038. That’s about the equivalent of all the carbon dioxide emitted by American coal-fired power plants in a single year.

What happens now?

The second week of COP28 is well underway and it’s now that the real work begins and negotiators knuckle down to agree on a way forward for the planet. They’ll trip over words, bicker about the meaning of “unabated”, and disagree over the difference between “phase down” and “phase out”.

Whatever happens, we must be skeptical of any pledges or commitments made at COP28. If past COPs are anything to go by, there’ll be a lot of bark but no bite, with many pledges made in the past fizzling out.

And because meetings are run by consensus, any one country can block an agreement. This means that whatever the nearly 200 countries at COP28 decide to do to tackle global warming will reflect only the minimum steps that all nations are willing to take.

It’s not good enough.

We need binding legislation with teeth and a mean streak because we can’t trust politicians, corporations, and oil and gas giants to stick to their word.

— Tarryn ✌️

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More news from COP28

🧐 A record number of fossil fuel lobbyists (1,300) are participating in COP28 talks – three times the amount that attended last year’s conference.

🤖 There was a lot of fanfare at COP28 around the potential of AI to help in the fight against climate change. The UN and Microsoft are partnering on an AI-powered tool to track whether countries are meeting their pledges to reduce fossil fuel emissions. Google and the Boston Consulting Group predicted that AI could help mitigate as much as one-tenth of all greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. But researchers also warned that AI could use as much energy as all of Sweden by 2027, which would potentially increase emissions – not to mention the massive amount of water the AI data centres will need. Will the benefits outweigh the financial and environmental costs? Time will tell.

🤥 Russia and China are among the biggest spreaders of climate disinformation, according to a new report. Others include fossil fuel companies and people who are paid to spread false or misleading information.

🥶 Sixty nations committed to improve the efficiency of new air-conditioners by 50% and reduce related greenhouse gas emissions by almost 70%. If current trends hold, 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 could come from air-conditioning and other efforts to keep cool, the UN has warned.

🇦🇺 Australia will sign the Glasgow Statement and will no longer finance international oil, gas, and coal projects. 

Other climate and sustainability news worth noting

🧊 The world’s largest iceberg (about three times the size of New York City) is on the move and drifting past the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, pushed along by strong winds and currents, on its way to the Southern Ocean. Known as A23a, the iceberg calved off West Antarctica's Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986. Scientists say it has probably thinned out since then, giving it more buoyancy to lift off the ocean floor and make a run for it.

👏 The North American wolverine has been listed as a threatened species due to the “ongoing and increasing impacts of climate change” and will gain federal protection under the Endangered Species Act. There are fewer than 300 wolverines in the US but human-driven climate change is shrinking spring snow cover where female wolverines build dens to reproduce.

🥳 A blind mole thought to be extinct since 1936 was recently rediscovered in South African sand dunes using eDNA — a technique that collects skin cells shed by living creatures.

🇳🇿 The kiwi, the national bird of New Zealand, has hatched eggs in the wild in the Wellington area for the first time in living memory, thanks to a multi-year conservation effort.

🤦🏻‍♀️ First there were carbon credits, now there’s plastic credits – tradable units that represent some amount of plastic litter that’s been removed from the environment. Companies can buy these credits instead of reducing the amount of plastic that goes into their products and packaging. Like carbon credits, plastic credits give businesses “permission” to keep polluting while making cleanup someone else’s problem. And guess who runs one of the world’s biggest plastic crediting programs? VERRA! That’s right. The company that sells mostly junk reforestation credits. Already there’s evidence that some plastic credits are funding cleanup programs that were already in operation long before the credits came along. What’s more, many projects in the pipeline from Verra do not involve “additional” waste cleanup, beyond what would have happened in the absence of the plastic credits.

⛏️ Norway will open the Arctic Ocean to commercial deep sea mining despite warnings by environmental groups that it would threaten the biodiversity of the vulnerable ecosystems in the area.

🌀 Wild weather:

• 🇩🇪 Munich records biggest daily snowfall for December.

• 🇸🇨 Flooding kills three in Seychelles.

• 🇦🇺 Cyclone Jasper is heading for Australia’s Queensland coast.

• 🇮🇳 Floods in Chennai, India.

And in business news

❌ The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned Google adverts from Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, and Etihad Airways for giving a "misleading impression" of the airlines' environmental impact.

One small thing you can do

Make the switch gradually.

Replace things like your kitchen cleaner, shampoo, conditioner, and body wash with more eco-friendly options when they run out.

Even better, choose a refillable product to reduce your plastic waste.

Here are some of my favourites:

• 🧻 Who Gives a Crap toilet paper

• 🧽 Zero Co cleaning and laundry products

• 🧴 Ecostore shampoo and conditioner

• 🌯 Great Wrap compostable cling wrap

Because lots of little actions combined can add up to something remarkable.

I'll leave you on this happy note...

Capybara hitches a ride on a crocodile.

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