As the United Nations’ annual climate summit COP28 continues, controversial comments by Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, the head of the conference, are roiling the event and raising questions about how substantive any new fossil fuel agreement emerging from the gathering will be.
In a meeting one week before the conference, Jaber — who is the United Arab Emirates minister of industry and advanced technology as well as the chairman of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company — told a panel he believed there was no science to suggest eliminating fossil fuels would help keep global temperature increases below the key threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“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,” Jaber said during a late November climate panel hosted by the climate nonprofit She Changes Climate as first reported by the Guardian. Additionally, he seemed to push back against a fossil fuel phase-out entirely: “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.” (He did later call a phase-out “inevitable” and “essential.”)
As Vox’s Umair Irfan has explained, a vast majority of countries previously agreed to try to limit the average global temperature to 1.5°C more than what the average Earth temperature was prior to the Industrial Revolution. The idea is that limiting the increase to 1.5°C is the most realistic strategy for minimizing extreme weather events and other climate catastrophes. Because of the number’s international importance, Jaber’s critics took his statement as undermining research regarding the causes of climate change, and as a threat to COP’s goals.
Climate scientists have emphasized that Jaber’s statements are inaccurate, with some noting that they’re reminiscent of arguments the fossil fuel industry is…
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