Climate advocate and former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday called into question the decision to hold the COP28 climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, a leading producer of the world’s oil.
Gore also criticized the appointment of Sultan Al Jaber, CEO of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, as the conference’s president, given that countries gathered in Dubai for the annual climate conference are discussing ways to reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels.
“It’s not so much that it’s in a country that produces oil; it’s the appointment of the CEO of one the biggest and least responsible oil companies on the planet to be the head of the conference,” Gore said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” characterizing Al Jaber’s role as a “direct conflict of interest” and arguing the fossil fuel industry has “gone too far.”
But Gore remained optimistic, saying that the UN-backed summit’s controversial location and leader could be a “blessing in disguise” that “has awakened a lot of people to how absurd this situation is.”
“I think there’s a chance that we could see a surprisingly good outcome here if the majority of the countries there hold on to their convictions and demand a phaseout of fossil fuels,” he said.
Al Jaber, in a late November panel discussion, said there is “no science” behind the demand to phase out fossil fuel to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius – the goal of the Paris climate agreement. After those comments came to light last week, Al Jaber fiercely defended his commitment to climate science and said phasing out fossil fuels is “inevitable” and “essential.”
US climate envoy John Kerry has publicly supported Al Jaber’s COP presidency several times but chose not to wade into it at a news conference last week.
The first week of COP28 came to…
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