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<p><font size="+2"><font face="Calibri"><i><b>December </b></i></font></font><font
size="+2" face="Calibri"><i><b>7, 2023</b></i></font></p>
<i>[ António Guterres @antonioguterres ]</i><br>
<b>We cannot forget about climate change, because of other crises.</b><br>
As we continue addressing the very serious wars happening in the
world, we must also remember that the climate emergency remains an
existential threat that we must tackle at the same time.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://twitter.com/antonioguterres/status/1732358836336373881">https://twitter.com/antonioguterres/status/1732358836336373881</a>
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[ COP showdown - ExxonKnews ]<br>
<b>Exxon crashes COP28 to “fight for its life”</b><br>
ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods is on a mission to defend fossil fuels
and deny science during his debut at the UN climate conference.<br>
EXXONKNEWS<br>
DEC 6, 2023<br>
- -<br>
This year is Exxon’s CEO Darren Woods’ first at COP, and he has been
on quite the press tour. Woods’ mission is like those of other major
oil company representatives at the conference: to defend the
continued expansion of fossil fuel production against the
irrefutable scientific consensus calling for its end. <br>
<br>
“This is a desperate attempt to prolong his company’s destructive,
fossil fuel-dependent business model,” said Kathy Mulvey,
accountability campaign director for the Climate & Energy Team
at the Union of Concerned Scientists...<br>
- -<br>
International scientific bodies agree. “The uncomfortable truth that
the industry needs to come to terms with is that successful clean
energy transitions require much lower demand for oil and gas, which
means scaling back oil and gas operations over time – not expanding
them,” International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol
wrote in the foreword to a report the agency published just before
COP.<br>
<br>
As has been its pattern for decades, Exxon is well aware of the
science demanding the phase-out of its products — it’s just doing
everything in its power to stop that science from leading to action,
critics say. <br>
<br>
“This is what they do: confuse and corrupt, deny and delay,” said
Supran...<br>
- -<br>
“It means having your fingers in all the pies, anticipating future
threats to your business and neutralizing them through decades of
360-degree public affairs strategies,” he said.<br>
<br>
Exxon has been working to shift the narrative outside of COP, too.
“On November 30, the first day of COP 28, The New York Times
included a full-page greenwashing ad from ExxonMobil,” Brad Johnson
documented in Hill Heat on Monday. “Reuters coverage of Al Gore’s
criticism of ExxonMobil’s presence at COP 28 was smothered by
greenwashing ads from ExxonMobil. The Punchbowl News political
newsletter today is Presented by ExxonMobil.” Yesterday’s Power
Switch newsletter from Politico was Presented by ExxonMobil, too. <br>
<br>
While the oil giant’s greenwashing may have ramped up around COP,
it’s also a years-long affair — aided in large part by many of the
same media outlets interviewing Woods at the conference. A major
analysis of Big Oil’s advertising between October 2020 and October
2023 found that “many of the world’s most trusted English-language
news publications help fossil fuel companies mislead readers about
topics like the promise of carbon capture, the potential of
‘renewable biogas,’ and how much the industry contributes to the
energy transition,” according to Amy Westervelt and Matthew Green.
The analysis, published by Drilled and DeSmog this week, found that
Bloomberg Media Studios last year created a video for Exxon
promoting carbon capture and hydrogen; Politico organized 37 e-mail
campaigns for Exxon; and Exxon sponsored more than 100 editions of
Washington Post newsletters in 2022 alone, as just a few examples.<br>
Ultimately, it’s up to the media, policymakers, and other major
institutions to determine whether the oil companies still
responsible for fueling climate catastrophe are allowed to have a
platform to stand on — or whether, like Big Tobacco, their time to
influence the debate about their products’ harm is finally up.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.exxonknews.org/p/exxon-crashes-cop28-to-fight-for">https://www.exxonknews.org/p/exxon-crashes-cop28-to-fight-for</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ Understanding the long term strategy behind COP28 ]</i><br>
<b>Mongabay: Climate loss & damage fund ‘the furthest thing
imaginable from a success’</b><br>
Planet: Critical<br>
On this episode, I interview Brandon Wu of ActionAid USA about the
Loss and Damages negotiations that took place ahead of COP28—and how
the USA used its political weight to bully developing nations into
accepting a deal unrecognisable from the premise of L&D. <br>
<br>
Loss and Damages is, in effect, climate reparations—a fund paid into
by developed nations, who are historically responsible for the
emissions causing global warming, which developing nations can then
use to respond to the chaos caused by climate change: floods,
storms, crop failures, displaced populations. However, it was the
vulnerable nations who were forced to concede at the negotiating
table, walking away with a deal which serves the interests of the
world’s most powerful.<br>
<br>
Brandon gives an excellent overview and analysis of the situation,
revealing how the USA used its muscle to twist the arms of
developing nations at the final hour. I then discuss these details
with my wonderful cohost, Mike DiGirolamo. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epgaJvUatFk">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epgaJvUatFk</a><br>
also <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs9VxMUtA8g">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs9VxMUtA8g</a>
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<p><i>[ Understand following the money ]</i><br>
<b>Climate Change's Controversial Policy: Loss & Damage</b><br>
ClimateAdam<br>
Oct 13, 2022 #cop27 #ClimateChange #LossAndDamage<br>
There's a climate change policy that governments have been
debating for decades. The USA recently even tried (and failed) to
have the words removed from the latest IPCC report (AR6 WGII).
This policy is: "Loss & Damage".<br>
<br>
Also called "Climate Reparations", Loss & Damage is a way of
seeking climate justice in the face of disasters, and will be a
major talking point at this year's climate negotiations - COP27 in
Egypt. So what is Loss & Damage, why is it so important for
climate action, and why have countries been arguing about it for
so long?<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpxrXk6l_hc">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpxrXk6l_hc</a><br>
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<p>- -</p>
[ Understanding Loss and Damage ]<br>
INTERNATIONAL POLICY 28 September 2022 <br>
<b>Loss and damage: What happens when climate change destroys lives
and cultures?</b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/loss-and-damage-what-happens-when-climate-change-destroys-lives-and-cultures/">https://www.carbonbrief.org/loss-and-damage-what-happens-when-climate-change-destroys-lives-and-cultures/</a><br>
<p>- -</p>
<i>[ Intangible loss and damage ]</i><br>
<b>Non-economic loss and damage is often also referred to as
“intangible” loss and damage. </b>According to a scientific
review published in 2019, the term “intangible” is used because
non-economic losses “cannot and perhaps should not be quantified”.<br>
<br>
This review offers a much broader definition of what constitutes
intangible loss and damage from climate change.<br>
<br>
It says that intangible loss and damage can result from
climate-induced harm to:<br>
<blockquote>Biodiversity and species<br>
Culture, traditions and heritage<br>
Human dignity<br>
Ecosystem services or habitat<br>
Human life<br>
Human mobility<br>
Human identity<br>
Knowledge and ways of knowing<br>
Mental and emotional wellbeing<br>
Order in the world<br>
Physical health<br>
Productive land<br>
Self-determination and influence<br>
Sense of place<br>
Social fabric<br>
Sovereignty<br>
Territory<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/loss-and-damage-what-happens-when-climate-change-destroys-lives-and-cultures/">https://www.carbonbrief.org/loss-and-damage-what-happens-when-climate-change-destroys-lives-and-cultures/</a><br>
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<i>[ Instead, how about "by 2PM today"? ]</i><br>
<b>The UN climate change conference in Dubai is close to a big
breakthrough on reducing the gases heating our planet, its United
Arab Emirates hosts believe.</b><br>
BBC report<br>
Expressing "cautious optimism", the UAE negotiating team believes
COP28 is gearing up to commit to phasing down fossil fuels over
coming decades.<br>
Maybe even ditching them altogether.<br>
Hosting a climate conference in a petrostate sounds like the
beginning of a bad joke, but there are signs that it could deliver
real progress on climate.<br>
Surely working out how to get rid of fossil fuels is what this UN
climate conference is all about, you are probably thinking...<br>
The first formal debate about their future was at COP26 in Glasgow
in 2021 and the only commitment made there was a promise to "phase
down" the dirtiest one of the lot, coal.<br>
Let's be clear, a pledge now will not mean the world will stop using
fossil fuels completely.<br>
We are very unlikely to get any commitment on an expiry date, that
would be far too controversial.<br>
And "abated" fossil fuels will still be allowed. That is when the
atmosphere-heating carbon dioxide they emit is captured to stop it
causing climate change...<br>
In short, the UAE has recognised the world has to kick its addiction
to unabated fossil fuels and has decided to put itself decisively on
the right side of history by trying to own the decision.<br>
But yes, at the same time it is planning to increase capacity and
sell even more oil.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67566443">https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-67566443</a><br>
<br>
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<i>[ An easy win should not be ignored ]</i><br>
<b>Vast scale of methane leaks from fossil fuel production and
landfill sites exposed</b><br>
Sky News<br>
Dec 5, 2023 #climate #methane #cop28<br>
The vast scale of methane leaks from fossil fuel production and
landfill sites has been exposed by analysis carried out exclusively
for Sky News.<br>
<br>
Around 1,300 "super-emitters" of the potent greenhouse gas have been
identified so far in 2023 by the monitoring company Kayrros, which
uses satellites to detect plumes of the gas.<br>
Read more -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://news.sky.com/story/vast-scale-of-methane-leaks-from-fossil-fuel-production-and-landfill-sites-exposed-13023354">https://news.sky.com/story/vast-scale-of-methane-leaks-from-fossil-fuel-production-and-landfill-sites-exposed-13023354</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs823eQN4To">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs823eQN4To</a>
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<br>
<i>[ careful words - audio ]</i><br>
<b>Oil firms are out in force at the climate talks. Here's how to
decode their language</b><br>
DECEMBER 5, 2023<br>
By Camila Domonoske, Julia Simon<br>
Just a few years ago, oil companies said they felt unwelcome at
United Nations climate talks. Not this year.<br>
<br>
This year's climate conference is taking place in the United Arab
Emirates, a major oil and gas producing country that's looking to
increase its oil production. And the oil industry has a big platform
at the talks.<br>
<br>
The oil cartel OPEC has its own pavilion at this meeting, known as
COP28, and giant oil companies are playing a prominent role, to the
dismay of climate activists.<br>
<br>
So what are oil producers saying in their pledges and statements
about climate change? And what does it actually mean?<br>
Most oil companies acknowledge that climate change is real. Yet they
also argue strongly for the world's continued use of massive
quantities of fossil fuels, which power both the global economy and
their profits.<br>
<br>
But climate scientists say it's crucial to cut fossil fuel use
sharply to avoid some of the worst effects of global warming.<br>
"It's important to consider what these companies are committing to,
what policies they support," says Paasha Mahdavi, associate
professor of political science at the University of California,
Santa Barbara, noting that oil companies' language can make it into
policy. "Language is very revealing."<br>
<br>
But this language isn't always straightforward. Here are five key,
but sometimes confusing, phrases about climate change commonly used
by oil companies — and why they matter.<br>
<br>
Low carbon and lower carbon<br>
"Carbon," short for carbon dioxide, is at the heart of climate
talks. Most carbon dioxide emissions come from burning oil, gas and
coal — and they heat the planet.<br>
<br>
Many oil companies talk about their support for "low carbon energy"
and "lower carbon energy."<br>
<br>
"We believe the future of energy is lower carbon," Chevron, an NPR
sponsor, frequently emphasizes in ads and speeches.<br>
<br>
Mahdavi says the focus should be on the words "low" or "lower." It
doesn't mean no carbon emissions, he says.<br>
He says when companies push for more "lower carbon energy," it
typically means continuing to produce and use oil and gas — but with
somewhat cleaner extraction and processing methods. "You're just
doing it with fewer emissions, but the end product still can have a
lot of carbon in it," Mahdavi says.<br>
For Chevron and other companies investing in "lower carbon"
initiatives, the phrase sometimes refers to cleaner alternatives to
fossil fuels, like getting energy from heat inside the Earth. More
often, it describes cleaning up the production and use of fossil
fuels. That includes reducing emissions of methane, a potent
greenhouse gas, during fossil fuel extraction.<br>
<br>
This past weekend, a group of oil companies (though not Chevron)
announced a pledge to reduce their methane emissions — but
scientists say that is only accounting for a small fraction of
overall emissions from oil and gas.<br>
<br>
Or another key technology in the "low carbon" energy bucket is
called "carbon capture and storage." That refers to capturing carbon
pollution from fossil fuel production and industry, injecting it
underground, and storing it before it reaches the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
But experts say carbon capture technology isn't fully proven:
projects often haven't reduced as much emissions as they said they
would and are often over budget. Climate scientists say that carbon
capture can't reduce the bulk of emissions, and really reducing
carbon requires using less fossil fuels.<br>
<b>Unabated fossil fuels</b><br>
"Unabated fossil fuels." It's a wonky phrase that will come up a lot
at this year's climate talks. That's because much of the conference
involves a big push from countries to reduce or get rid of "unabated
fossil fuels." This past weekend, the U.S. joined other nations in a
pledge to phase out "unabated" coal.<br>
<br>
That might sound a lot like eliminating fossil fuels.<br>
<br>
But, again, notice the word "unabated." It describes emissions from
coal, oil or gas that go straight into the atmosphere and heat up
the planet.<br>
Oil companies instead focus on "abating" emissions from producing
and using fossil fuels, which means stopping at least some of the
emissions from entering the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
The industry argues that carbon capture and storage — that
"low-carbon" technology with a poor track record of success — could
accomplish this. Experts have major concerns...<br>
ExxonMobil, which is also a sponsor of NPR, has promos on NPR
programming that tout carbon capture. (NPR has strict separations
between the news division and its sponsorship unit. When asked about
these sponsorships, an NPR spokesperson noted that "NPR has no list
of sources from which funding will be refused. However, conflicts of
interest or similar concerns are considered.")<br>
<br>
What the world decides around these words — abated or unabated — has
huge implications for oil and gas producers.<br>
<br>
If the world's leaders decide to only phase out "unabated" fossil
fuels, that would theoretically allow for oil production to continue
indefinitely, if combined with new pollution trapping and storage
technology.<br>
Net zero<br>
Many oil companies have spotlighted something called a "net zero"
ambition. The whole world, in fact, set a "net zero" target at the
climate talks in Paris eight years ago.<br>
<br>
What "net zero emissions" means is that the pollution humans produce
that is heating the planet would get canceled out by removing the
same amount of emissions from the atmosphere.<br>
<br>
That can be done by planting trees or building giant machines to
pull carbon from the sky. But those can compensate for only a small
fraction of the carbon dioxide people emit today.<br>
<br>
Reaching true "net zero" requires cutting global emissions
enormously, scientists say.<br>
But "net zero" can be a slippery phrase. Some oil companies setting
"net zero" targets are referring only to the emissions in their
operations — not to the emissions from the oil they sell.<br>
<br>
So they might use solar panels and wind turbines to power oil
drilling rigs and consider their "net zero" goals met, even as the
oil they produce releases vast quantities of carbon pollution when
it's burned as gasoline or jet fuel.<br>
<br>
Reducing emissions from oil production is an important part of the
climate fight, and more companies need to focus on this, climate
experts say. But it's not enough to meet the world's net zero goals
– which are the objective of the U.N.'s climate talks happening now.<br>
<br>
That will require using far less oil in the first place, according
to these experts.<br>
<br>
<b>Reliable and affordable energy</b><br>
Fossil fuel companies often mention "reliable and affordable energy"
in ads and speeches.<br>
<br>
They're not normally referring to cleaner energies like wind and
solar, however. In fact, it's usually shorthand for oil and gas,
says Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group, an energy
consultancy with clients that include big oil companies. "The reason
that we're 80% dependent on fossil fuels is because it is reliable,
it's affordable, and it's secure," he says.<br>
<br>
"Reliable," "affordable" and "secure" often work as digs at
renewable energy.<br>
<br>
Reliable: A common talking point among fossil fuel supporters is
that the sun doesn't always shine, and the wind doesn't always blow.
Climate groups say this is being addressed with huge power storage
batteries and a better electric grid.<br>
Affordable: That's often an oil industry reference to the high costs
of transitioning to a new technology. Climate groups argue that the
costs of renewables have been falling sharply, and failing to stop
climate change will also carry tremendous costs.<br>
<br>
Secure: The industry points to the scramble for fossil fuels after
Russia invaded Ukraine as proof of how much the world still depends
on these energy sources. And they say renewable energy relies on
materials and manufacturing from abroad, while the U.S. has lots of
oil and gas here. Supporters of renewable energy argue that they're
actually more "secure" than oil, which is constantly fluctuating in
price.<br>
The oil industry also says that fossil fuels are a reliable and
cheap way to help developing economies expand electricity access,
given that 745 million around the world are without it, according to
the International Energy Agency.<br>
<br>
Reached for comment about this story, an ExxonMobil spokesperson
called NPR's analysis "simplistic," arguing that more oil and gas
production is necessary to maintain and raise global living
standards. The company also referred NPR to a recent speech from its
CEO, Darren Woods, where he said, in part: "The societal benefits of
oil and gas are unmatched in human history. ... No country has ever
joined the developed world without access to oil and gas."<br>
Similarly, in an online panel before the climate talks, the
president of COP28, Sultan al-Jaber — who is also the CEO of the
UAE's state-run oil company — said: "Show me a roadmap for a
phase-out of fossil fuels that will allow for sustainable
socio-economic development, unless you want to take the world back
into caves."<br>
In fact, such roadmaps exist, and many experts say renewable energy
can be used to fuel development.<br>
<br>
<b>Paris-aligned</b><br>
Eight years ago, the world set a shared target of holding global
warming below 2 degrees Celsius, and ideally below 1.5 degrees
Celsius. That's called the Paris Agreement. But the world did not
agree on how to get there.<br>
<br>
Working out the how is what these climate talks are all about. And
as they join the conversations, many oil producers will say they
support the Paris Agreement, and talk about "Paris-aligned
scenarios."<br>
<br>
Chevron, for instance, responded to NPR's request for comment on
this story, in part, by saying: "There are many potential pathways
to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement, the vast majority of
which include the continued use of oil and gas for the foreseeable
future."<br>
<br>
But how much oil? Scientists have found that every pathway for
meeting Paris targets includes reducing the use of oil and gas.<br>
<br>
This is what's at stake at the U.N.'s climate talks. The world is
trying to figure out how exactly to meet the Paris goals — which
experts say is difficult, but doable, if the world cuts the use of
fossil fuels.<br>
<br>
And the oil industry is at the talks to openly argue that the world
will not and should not switch away from oil and gas.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2023/12/05/1215499778/cop28-uae-climate-talks-oil-exxon-mobil-chevron-climate-change-net-zero-unabated">https://www.npr.org/2023/12/05/1215499778/cop28-uae-climate-talks-oil-exxon-mobil-chevron-climate-change-net-zero-unabated</a><br>
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<i>[ Cynical of COP ]</i><br>
<b>What Is Anyone Really Doing at COP?</b><br>
The UN climate summit is the one place the countries suffering most
from climate change can face down the countries causing it.<br>
By Zoë Schlanger<br>
DECEMBER 5, 2023,<br>
<br>
The size of COP28 is hard to comprehend, even from the ground. More
than 97,000 people have registered, according to the massive
spreadsheet of expected participants, enough to populate a small
city. The campus and its temporary denizens feel like a city too.
Meetings are spread out across nearly 100 buildings, all with the
freshly built feeling one expects from Dubai. During the day and
into sunset, the main promenades look like the sidewalks of Midtown
Manhattan at rush hour; they spoke outward from a giant geodesic
dome that emits spa-like tone sounds and glows different colors at
night.<br>
<br>
Thousands of the people here are country delegates, and thousands
more are climate experts in various capacities—representatives from
Indigenous communities in full traditional regalia, policy people,
activists, nonprofits, journalists. At least 2,400 of them are
fossil-fuel lobbyists, according to one estimate. Milk lobbyists are
evidently also here, because two dairy-trade organizations held a
side event on Tuesday to extoll the virtues of animal-sourced food.
The aviation industry, the banking industry, the computer industry,
and surely many others are also present. Only a fraction of those
gathered here will be in the closed-door negotiating rooms where the
international agreements are born. The rest will jostle at the
sidelines, hold panels, and raise topics that will perhaps slither
onto the official agenda at some future COP.<br>
<br>
And so it has gone, since the very first, much smaller COP. The 28
years of COPing have produced a culture and acronym-heavy language
specific to this gathering, an ecosystem that arises fully formed
each year, like a crisp-dried resurrection fern doused in water. “Is
this your first COP?” “I’ve been doing this since Madrid.” “Ah, I’ve
been here since Marrakech” is a common way of starting
conversations. Most people here have devoted their life and career
to climate policy, and the overwhelming sense is that the efforts of
this ephemeral city are in absolute earnest. People sit in groups of
two or five on the carpeted floors, drinking coffee and talking
intensely. Tiny, cash-strapped nations have sprung for official
pavilions. The mood is serious and concentrated, the days long and
exhausting.<br>
<br>
Yet all of this earnestness has gotten the world very little. After
a couple of days of watching tens of thousands of people go about
this business, one might feel like shouting: What is everyone doing
here? After nearly 30 years of COPs, we are globally in our worst
position ever. The collective impetus toward self-preservation has
been at least partly eclipsed by other interests. Emissions and
fossil-fuel use are still going up. The United Nations declared this
year the hottest on record as the meeting began. This COP in
particular risks being overshadowed by its incongruous host: a
national-oil-company executive in a petrostate who called an
emergency press briefing on the meeting’s fifth day to explain away
his two-week-old comment that phasing out fossil fuels would not get
the world to its stated goal of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees
Celsius. (Climate science disagrees.) A few buildings down from that
auditorium, the OPEC pavilion—housed in the same building as the
Indigenous People’s Pavilion—gave out the organization’s monthly
oil-market report to passersby. “Global oil market fundamentals
remain strong despite exaggerated negative sentiments,” the cover
read. Sunday was “Health Day” at COP, and at the pavilion’s
entrance, someone had propped a small chalkboard on an art easel,
with the words health and oil written in childlike block letters. I
wondered about the art direction: Was it suggesting a connection
between children’s health and oil, and, if so, what? A scathing
article in the medical journal The Lancet had just called any COP28
agreement that did not include the phaseout of fossil fuels
“health-washing” and “an act of negligence.”<br>
<br>
Getting language about phasing out all fossil fuels into this year’s
final agreement would be a major coup, but the bigwig countries are
leaning against that outcome—or at least they were when negotiations
began this week. But the people cloistered in the negotiating rooms
still have seven days to work that out. I was reminded why we were
all still doing this at a press conference on Monday with the
Association of Small Island States, or AOSIS, an important
negotiating bloc at COP that was instrumental in pushing for the
loss-and-damage fund, which was launched on the first day of this
meeting. The fund can be understood as a form of reparations,
infusing the countries suffering the worst consequences of climate
change with cash from those most responsible. Researchers estimate
that losses and damages so far in 55 of the most climate-vulnerable
economies total more than $500 billion; initial pledges into the
fund were in the hundreds of millions. The U.S. said that it intends
to give $17.5 million.<br>
<br>
Michai Robertson, one of the lead negotiators for AOSIS and an
environmental official for Antigua and Barbuda, told reporters that
someone—he didn’t say who—had asked about his feelings on the fund;
he replied that he was still waiting for follow-through. “That
doesn’t sound like you’re being grateful,” the person replied. This
was in a “diplomatic setting,” so Robertson gave a diplomatic
answer, he said. But he was shocked enough that he spent the next
two days thinking about the exchange and what it meant—that inside
negotiating rooms, larger and wealthier countries were now tacitly
saying to small islands and the least-developed states: “You got
what you want. Now be quiet.”<br>
<br>
But, he said, “we don’t want a loss-and-damage fund”; it is just
simply necessary. In places such as Antigua and Barbuda, life is
becoming more expensive and treacherous due to damage from
climate-juiced storms, flooding, and drought. Robertson spent seven
years of his career pushing for the creation of the fund, a
depressing job at best. “No one chooses this out of wanting to do
it,” he said. You just don’t have any other choice when you’re
representing a place that may cease to be livable if the world
breaches 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming. “And then to be told that
you should be grateful for it?”<br>
<br>
“At this COP the message has to be not that we’re grateful, not that
we’re going to be quiet, but that we’re going to ramp up the fight,
because we absolutely cannot give up now,” Robertson said. For the
many low-lying islands that make up AOSIS, the threat is truly
existential, about basic survival. It’s also a preview of what the
rest of the world is likely to face, only much later.<br>
<br>
COP is the only venue where the tiniest nations can sit beside the
world’s giants—the U.S., China, and the European Union—and be taken
seriously on climate change. “The current process is not perfect,
but is the only one available for us,” Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr
Pa’olelei Luteru, the permanent representative of Samoa to the UN
and the chair of the alliance, told me after the press conference.
At the same time, he finds it ridiculous that issues are constantly
pushed to the next COP, to the next year, when the threats that
island states face are time-limited and always getting worse. “We
always seem to be talking,” he said. “When you go home they say,
‘What the hell did you do there?’” he added. “Sometimes you feel
embarrassed.”<br>
This COP may be the last chance for the world to make commitments to
keep warming at a threshold where many of these island states could
survive. Already, some islands are planning to need to relocate
people. Tuvalu made a deal with Australia to accept 280 Tuvaluans a
year. The Marshall Islands surveyed its citizens and found that very
few of them had any interest in leaving; the country released a
national adaptation plan at COP today and is asking for $35 billion
to give people a chance at being able to stay. If warming is
permitted to accelerate, plans like these would only become more
expensive. And, eventually, the people living in these places would
all have to go somewhere else.<br>
<br>
On Tuesday, a draft text of a document that will guide all
countries’ climate policies for the next several years was released
from inside those same negotiating rooms that Robertson was
referring to. In its section on fossil fuels, it listed three
options:<br>
<blockquote>Option 1: An orderly and just phase out of fossil fuels;<br>
<br>
Option 2: Accelerating efforts towards phasing out unabated fossil
fuels and to rapidly reducing their use so as to achieve net-zero
CO2 in energy systems by or around mid-century;<br>
<br>
Option 3: no text</blockquote>
Arguably, only the first option, which the U.S. and several other
major oil-producing countries currently oppose, offers any measure
of protection for small island states. Saudi Arabia has said it
would “absolutely not” accept that language, and that stance alone
would block it, given COP’s requirement for consensus. The oil
producers generally prefer the second option, which is understood to
codify abatement technologies such as carbon capture and storage to
be essentially attached to oil and gas drilling. That technology has
yet to be proven to work at scale and would deal with only a small
portion of emissions from fossil fuels, even if it could be scaled
up to its maximum potential. Over the next week and a half, the
final text will be hammered out. That’s why this conference exists,
in the end—not for the panels, not for the side discussions, but for
the talks happening in the closed rooms, where Samoa or Palau or
Vanuatu or the Marshall Islands can make a case that they not be
collateral damage in a world seemingly intent on ensuring the
opposite.<br>
<br>
Zoë Schlanger is a staff writer at The Atlantic.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/12/un-cop28-climate-summit-fossil-fuel-industry/676240/">https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/12/un-cop28-climate-summit-fossil-fuel-industry/676240/</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[The news archive - the obvious structure of lobbying changed ]<br>
<font face="Calibri"><font size="+2"><i><b>December 7, 1999 </b></i></font>
</font><br>
<font face="Calibri"> </font> December 7, 1999: The New York Times
reports:<br>
<blockquote>
"In a concession to environmentalists, the Ford Motor Company said
today that it would pull out of the Global Climate Coalition, a
group of big manufacturers and oil and mining companies that
lobbies against restrictions on emissions of gases linked to
global warming.<br>
<br>
"Ford's decision is the latest sign of divisions within heavy
industry over how to respond to global warming. British Petroleum
and Shell pulled out of the coalition two years ago following
criticisms from environmental groups in Europe, where there has
been more public concern than in the United States. Most
scientists believe that emissions from automobiles, power plants
and other man-made sources are warming the Earth's atmosphere.<br>
<br>
"British Petroleum and Shell were so-called general, or junior,
members of the lobbying group. Ford is the first company belonging
to the board that has withdrawn, and the first American company to
leave the coalition, said Frank Maisano, a spokesman for the
coalition."</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/business/ford-announces-its-withdrawal-from-global-climate-coalition.html">http://www.nytimes.com/1999/12/07/business/ford-announces-its-withdrawal-from-global-climate-coalition.html</a>
<p><br>
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