COP 28, Briefly

A 7 p.m. text message on December 13th from the New York Times described it as, “A breakthrough deal on climate change”. Keep that in mind as we move forward.

The great mismatch that characterized COP 28 (The big UN Climate Change Conference) was that expectations were very, very low for what could be accomplished this time around while what was needed from the conference was a major breakthrough to urgently address climate change. Lots of climate change commentators (who I widely consider and panicked, sour, and reactive bunch) wrote off COP 28 months in advance of the conference as a corrupt sham and a failure because the UAE, a fossil fuel producing country, was hosting it.

I thought that was a tad unfair. Yes, there are lots of criticisms to be made of the UAE on environmental and humanitarian grounds. Yes, the President-Designate of the conference, Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Yes, some shady stuff went down on the lead-up to the conference. But my take was: let’s see what actually happens before writing the whole thing off as a failure. While this stance looked naively optimistic during a lot of the proceedings, COP 28 surprised us all by actually being quite successful and showing a major breakthrough in negotiations on confronting climate change as a global civilization. Which is quite the triumph. To be very clear. What was agreed upon was remarkable.

But, back to the beginning. While lots of people howled into the abyss that COP 28 was going to be ‘the fossil fuel COP’, due to its host and lobbyist attendees. I was intrigued to see what oil executives and energy companies would say. After avoiding discussing climate change like the plague for decades, I saw enormous value in hearing fossil fuel companies address and discuss climate change. What would they say? What wouldn’t they say? What solutions would they discuss, if any? What would be off the table? If nothing else, COP 28 was going to outline the fossil fuel companies’ vision of a future with unavoidable climate change, however nonsensical or backwards-thinking it might be.

Amusingly, the first mention of COP 28 in the New York Times was that, gasp, Joe Biden was skipping the conference! Cue additional howls of fury and lamentations that COP 28 was a failure. If the President of the United States was skipping it, then no one was going to take it seriously! We’re doomed!

But, let us remember that Joe Biden is one of the key negotiators trying to resolve the Israel/Hamas War. Joe is tied up at the moment, and skipping COP 28 was understandable, given the circumstances. And I’m not sure people fully grasp this, but world leaders don’t actually do anything of substance at these events. Usually. Obama is the exception that proves the rule. But for the most part, world leaders go up on stage, announce new commitments or bluff that they’re doing a great job solving climate change, they pose for photos, drink a cocktail (or mocktail if the host country forbids alcohol) and they go home. Joe Biden was never going to be furiously typing up notes during a negotiation at 2 A.M. or be pressing foreign diplomats on the exact details of how a carbon pricing mechanism was going to work. In essence, a world leader skipping COP is a bit like forgetting the decorative centerpiece at Thanksgiving dinner. You’ll still get the meat and potatoes, not a big deal. Moving on.

The most interesting thing that came out of COP28 was that when the host was seen on video declaring that transitioning away from fossil fuels had ‘no basis in science‘. A standard fossil fuel talking point. But everyone at COP went completely ballistic and the host threw together a hasty and quite defensive press conference to walk back everything he was recorded saying. This was interesting because his ‘no basis in science’ comment was about as surprising as the Rolling Stones playing ‘Paint it Black’ at a live show. Denying climate change has been the fossil fuel playbook for decades, but what was a surprise is how that climate change denial absolutely does not fly anymore. Denying climate change, once quite trendy, is becoming taboo. That’s encouraging, because the situation is far too urgent for denial or misinformation, and it’s a sign of tremendous progress and growing education on climate change that outrageous falsehoods are not tolerated by the climate community or general public.

Yet, the most telling announcement that came during COP 28 didn’t actually happen at COP. OPEC+, the global oil cartel, announced was cutting oil production by a million barrels a day. Which stacks on top of previous production cuts from earlier this year. This did not happen at COP, but the timing was telling. The demand for oil the world had before the pandemic is simply not coming back, and the dirty little secret of the fossil fuel industry is that oil and gas reserves are getting awfully full and at current supply and demand levels, prices could very well come down soon if demand doesn’t suddenly come roaring back. Hence another production cut. Despite declaring that fossil fuels are not going away any time soon, it certainly looks like the writing is on the wall for oil and gas production, which has very limited opportunities for growth this decade. Another encouraging sign.

But, on to the part we all thought was going to be a disaster. Okay, so the big prize at the end of COP is the binding agreement that every single member needs to sign off on that dictates the world’s next steps in managing climate change. Since every single member nation needs to agree on the text, these agreements tend to be extremely weak and call for a ‘phase down’ of coal instead of a ‘phase out’, or use slippery and vague language to sound like transformative change is encouraged while making sure it isn’t a requirement and offering loopholes to sail an oil tanker through.

This year’s showdown was more acrimonious than usual, as oil-producing nations were looking for a final text as weak as possible, and everyone else wanted a phase-out of fossil fuels with a set timeline. Considering the final text needs unanimous consensus, it looked like the text was going to be extremely weak. But, there was a mass revolt among the delegates and ultimately, a much better agreement was signed calling for a ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels’. Bam.

Now, this is not a binding agreement and it does not have a timeline. But if you don’t follow climate change discourse (don’t blame you, it’s awful. This blog is all you need, right?) this is a quantum leap in how climate change is discussed. The decline of fossil fuels, thought unimaginable a few years ago, is now agreed upon in principal and the world is bracing to undergo a remarkable shift to prevent the worst of climate change. This agreement, while flawed and with some loopholes, to be sure, is tremendous progress.

So yeah, ignore most climate change commentators. Like I said, they’re a sour and reactive bunch. Our struggle with climate change has never been taken so seriously and has never been addressed so clearly as it was at COP 28. Fossil fuel producers have never looked so backwards and pathetic, as a nice bonus. If the required action follows this agreement, still a big if, then in a hundred years or so, climate change may be one of those great challenges in the rearview mirror of humanity, confined to little more than our history books. Which is not to say it will be easy and that there won’t be loss and sacrifice, there will be. But the future has never looked better in terms of climate commitment. Now we just have to do an extraordinary amount of very well-coordinated and hard work to make it happen.