The president of the United Nations Cop28 climate change conference, who is also the top energy executive for the United Arab Emirates, says there is no science behind the idea that phasing out fossil fuels will limit global warming to 1.5 degrees celsius.
Trying to eliminate fossil fuels will “take us back to the caves,” said Sultan al Jaber, in an online interview with a “She Changes Climate” moderator that surfaced on Sunday in The Guardian newspaper.
Mary Robinson, a former U.N. special envoy for climate change, challenged al Jaber, saying, “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone… 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.” Adnoc is the UAE’s state oil company.
Al Jaber responded, ‘I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. 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 that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C. Please help me, show me the roadmap for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.”
The interview was said to have taken place Nov. 21, in advance of the Cop28 conference, during which the Biden Administration announced it will crack down on methane emissions in America.
However, former Vice President Al Gore, who is attending the conference, says phasing out fossil fuels would be “one of the most significant events in the history of humanity. and “a welcome surprise” is leaders at the conference call for a complete end to oil as a fuel.
“There is only one measure of success for Cop28: will it include a commitment to phase out fossil fuels or not,” he said. “If it does include such a commitment it will be a smashing success; if it does not it will be a failure,” Gore told The Guardian. He attacked Sultan al Jaber as the head of the climate conference and called Adnoc “one of the dirtiest companies, it’s one of the least responsible companies.”
Gore doubled down on al Jaber: “They made a mistake, let’s be honest, in angling to put a fossil fuel company CEO in charge of this Cop28. I mean it’s absurd. It’s totally ridiculous.”
“The 1.5-degree limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels,” said António Guterres, U.N. secretary general. “Not reduce. Not abate. Phase out. With a clear time frame aligned with 1.5 degrees.”
Later, in damage-control response to The Guardian’s revelations about what he had said, al Jaber tried to walk back his own statements, but actually stuck to the science: “I respect the science in everything I do. I have repeatedly said that it is the science that has guided the principles or strategy as Cop28 president. We have always built everything, every step of the way, on the science, on the facts. I have said over and over that the phase-down and the phaseout of fossil fuels is inevitable.”
