The Man In Charge uses words as a planet-wrecking weapon
We’re in the thick of it now: a few days into COP, hosted into the United Arab Emirates. The host nation has planned to use the event to pester countries to hurry along with oil and gas partnerships. Distrust is thick in the air everyone is breathing, in those air-conditioned domes and humid, maze-like outdoor pavilions.
There’s one reason for this. The producers of fossil fuels – countries and companies – use rhetorical tricks to confuse and befuddle critics. It boils down to a belief: solving climate change doesn’t mean changing anything about the fossil fuel economy.
They fill the gulf between fantasy and reality by grabbing both ends of solutions that should only be used for a sliver of the final few percent of emissions and grotesquely stretching them out to cover the entire fossil fuel economy. Machines and markets, stretched thin to the point of absurdity.
Machines that remove carbon where it’s combusted or from the atmosphere; carbon offset programs that fraudulently claim the climate impacts of “carbon neutral” (shudder) coal, oil and gas are zero. Hydrogen conversion that buries climate damage in a supply chain soup. Synthetic fossil fuels made using fossil-fuelled power. All packed into a single phrase: “unabated fossil fuels”.
It is a powerful word: calling only for the phase-out of “unabated” fossil fuels creates a planet-sized loophole: promising to slap an ineffective and power-greedy carbon capture facility onto your next coal power plant or gas field slips you into the loophole, despite the climate impacts of your fossil fuel project being nearly as bad (and in many cases worse) than before.
Here’s a little demo: the UAE’s state-owned fossil fuel company (helmed by the current COP president) ADNOC announced they were doubling their projected CCS capacity in 2030. For fun, I put that doubling against their planned production rise in 2030 (from Global Witness):
You can see here why the language matters so much: single words carry the weight of billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions, and billions of dollars in potential profit.
Living in caves
Today, the Guardian highlighted an exchange between former Irish President Mary Robinson and COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, and it’s worth highlighting much of it, just to illustrate how language gets used by the fossil fuel industry to befuddle, confuse and misdirect
Al Jaber:
“We can always play with words here. You are a good politician, and you know how to use words better than I do. I’m a businessman, I am centered around delivery and actions”
Robinson and Al Jaber are debating using “fast track” or “urgent” to describe action to stop burning fossil fuels. Al Jaber insinuates that businessmen are rational and focused on outcomes and performance, suggesting that Robinson is trained at deception. It’s a weird one, because Robinson has a point: “fast track” is a phrase I see get used to describe a delivery option for my light bulbs, not for dealing with an immediate and gut-wrenching physical threat to my existence.
The tone, though, is set pretty clearly: a bitter, acidic overreaction to a factual statement, but framed explicitly as if a reproachful insult is clear-headed and rational.
Al Jaber:
“I accepted to come to this, to this meeting to have a sober and a mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist”
“Alarmist” is a pejorative being used here to describe statements from Robison that are in no way exaggerated or false. This is a common tactic that exudes a false sense of seriousness and reasonableness, and fossil fuel guys mostly pull this one out when they’re talking to women, activists or young people. It definitely shows a rattled Al Jaber showing his true feelings much more than usual.
Al Jaber:
“I am here factual and I respect the science. And there is no science out there or no scenario out there that says that the phase out of fossil fuels is what’s going to achieve 1.5.
1.5 is my North Star and a phase down and a phase out of fossil fuel in my view is inevitable, it is essential. But we need to be real serious and pragmatic about it”
Oh god, okay. First of all: even the skeeziest, most shamelessly massaged fossil-funded models of limiting the heating of Earth to 1.5 cannot achieve the goal without modelling a cliff-like plummet in the extraction and burning of coal, oil and gas. Nitpicking over the language around the final few percent is a conscious decision: it distracts from the plummet.
In the next breath, Al Jaber is saying that phasing out fossil fuels cannot be stopped. This looks like a contradiction but it is not. To hit 1.5c, you need to take action **very quickly**. If you have no climate goal in mind, you can float down the curve over the next few centuries and try to put being killed by your own atmosphere out of your mind.
Yes, the eventual elimination of fossil fuels is inevitable. Maybe it’ll take until the year 5,000, but it sure is inevitable. The goal of ADNOC is to maximise oil and gas product sales in the next fifteen years. This isn’t about CCS or “unabated” or carbon removal: Al Jaber’s scientific falsehood here is the idea that it doesn’t matter whether we go fast or slow – but it does. The hard reality is that there are no cheats. No way out: ADNOC is incompatible with a safe, livable world.
That tense, existential realisation is what is driving COP28’s president to make scientifically false remarks.
Finally, the “real, serious and pragmatic” bit is there to light up brain sections of technocrats, centrists and wonks who love this self-image and will happily disable any critical faculties if they can align themselves with it.
Robinson:
“We’ve got to peak by 2025 in fossil fuels. And your company is investing in a lot more new fossil fuels. And that’s that’s that’s going to hurt women”
Al -Jaber:
“Ma’am, you’ve you’ve just accused me of something that isn’t correct. I’m sorry. I don’t take it. Now. I asked you to prove it. Ma’am. You’re reading you’re reading your own media, which is biased and wrong. I am telling you I am the man in charge. And it is wrong. Ma’am. You need to listen to me, please. It is wrong. You guys write, and you believe it? I’m sorry. Not acceptable. I’m not accepting it. Sorry. I’m sorry. I respect you. And I do not accept any false accusations. I’ve been very clear about my position. This is wrong”
Um, okay: let’s put aside that Al Jaber dropped “I am the man in charge” at an event about women in climate action.
Robinson’s comment that ADNOC is “investing in a lot more new fossil fuels” draws the strongest response from Al Jaber in the whole clip. He throws out a huge number of outraged “ma’ams”, like he’s a cashier at a department store dealing with a just-out-of-date discount voucher scenario.
But Robinson is right: ADNOC is planning to explode its supply of planet-heating products.
Yesterday, Global Witness published a new analysis based on Rystad data showing that ADNOC plans to become the second largest oil producer on Earth.
“ADNOC plans to produce more oil than any of the “Big 5” supermajors – ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies. In fact, its projected output will positively dwarf that of the European majors; ADNOC’s 35.9 billion barrels is 49 percent higher alone than the projected 24.1 billion barrels production of Shell, BP and Total combined”
Even out to 2035, ADNOC plans to massively ramp up its production:
Later in the interview, Al Jaber seems to suggest he’d heard Robinson having said ADNOC was “doubling capacity” (she didn’t say that), which he claims is untrue. Rystad’s data shows that ADNOC will expand its production by 41.5% by 2030.
His angry rush of faux-offended righteousness here seems to be because his company is only engaging in very aggressive fossil fuel expansion, rather than very very very aggressive fossil fuel expansion.
Al Jaber:
“And you’re asking for a phase out of fossil fuel. Please help me show me the roadmap for a phase of the fossil fuel that will allow that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development. Unless you want to take the world back into caves. Show me?”
On the map of climate delay tactics, this is the “fake appeal to social justice”. ‘I think we should keep using fossil fuels! Not because I sell a lot of them, but because I don’t want people to get hurt when we try to decouple from them’ (Climate action = ‘living in caves’ is another long-running trope of deniers and fossil advocates).
The simple reality is that there is no simple and obvious recipe for a just transition – you have to work at it. And that works requires honesty and trust. Companies like ADNOC do not care about protecting human life and wellbeing during energy transitions: if they did, they wouldn’t be aggressively trying to expand their supply of a harmful product. The more ADNOCs are involved in the energy transition, the lower the chances it will be sustainable, or fair. He’s right to care about potential harm from decarbonisation and wrong to suggest his corporation is the cure.
Al Jaber:
“The world will continue to need energy sources. We are the only ones in the world today that have been decarbonising the oil and gas resources. We have the lowest carbon intensity. We are seven kilograms. I have not heard you talk to the Norwegians or others the way you talk to us”
I don’t know what metric he’s using here, but the emissions intensity of the UAE’s countrywide oil and gas production is certainly lower than the rest of the pack.
It is unsurprising that flaring is such a large proportion of their production emissions: a BBC Article recently reported that “the UAE banned routine flaring 20 years ago, but satellite images show it is continuing, despite the potential health consequences for its inhabitants and those in neighbouring countries”. And an ‘intensity’ metric masks the massive absolute impact of oil and gas production: according to the IEA, 15% (!!) of total global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions come from digging up, transporting and processing oil and gas.
Anyway – it’s not the point. It is weird to celebrate that your weapons manufacturing facility has a very low rate of gun deaths inside the building. The majority of the harm is caused by supplying fossil fuels into the world – something which we know leads to a greater quantity of them being burned, and to worse delays in efforts to reduce that demand.
That Robinson is on record calling out Norway specifically for its fossil fuel production (and again a few days after this event) seems essentially inevitable at this point: Al Jaber’s outrage at incorrect accusations increases in direct proportion to him saying things that are incorrect.
Al Jaber:
“I don’t think Mary will be able to help solve the climate problem by pointing fingers or contributing to the polarisation and the divide that is already happening in the world. What we need here is solutions. Show me the solutions. Stop pointing fingers, show me solutions. Show me what you can do. Show me your own contributions. And I will salute you for it. Stop the pointing of fingers. Stop it”
One of the solutions to climate change is pushing back against the people whose sole purpose is profiting from making it worse – including the pointing of fingers when they’re falsely trying to present their actions as helping.
“Show me what you could do” – ADNOC could do plenty. It could align its business with a harm-minimised future, not a hellish and unlivable one. It could ditch its obsession with technologies and markets that prolong the extraction and use of fossil fuels. It could use COP28 to change course, rather than righteously and pompously feigning offence when it gets called out for its hypocrisy. Most of all, it could stop using words as weapons when we gather to fight about language.
Ketan Joshi 
why was COP not held over Zoom there would have been huge carbon savings?
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Love this xD So true
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