[News] COP27 Looked More Like a Fossil Fuel Industry Trade Show Than a Climate Summit

[Anti-Imperialist News]

truthout.org
<https://truthout.org/articles/greenwashing-governments-and-oil-companies-turned-cop27-into-a-climate-disaster/>
COP27 Looked More Like a Fossil Fuel Industry Trade Show Than a Climate
Summit
Simon Pirani - November 18, 2022
------------------------------
[image: image.png]

The international climate talks in Egypt — the 27th Conference of Parties
to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP27 — have
become a dystopian nightmare: Oil companies, dictators and greenwashers
captured the process more effectively than ever.

But there is hope: Alliances are taking shape — between civil society,
scientists and labor — that aim to break the fossil fuel companies’ deathly
grip on climate policy.
Corporate Capture

This year’s United Nations climate summit, which ends on November 17 at the
luxury Sharm el-Sheikh resort, is the first
<https://www.ft.com/content/a29c1204-70cf-46c1-b266-780788bfa048> to which
oil and gas companies were invited to participate in the official program
of events. Rachel Rose Jackson of Corporate Accountability commented
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63571610> that “COP27 looks
like a fossil fuel industry trade show.”

At least 636 fossil fuel lobbyists
<https://truthout.org/articles/636-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-swarm-climate-talks-up-25-from-last-years-cop26/>
were there, 25 percent more than at last year’s talks in Glasgow. The
lobbyists outnumbered the combined delegations of the 10 countries most
impacted by climate change, including Pakistan, Bangladesh and Mozambique,
research
<https://corporateeurope.org/en/2022/11/cop27-100-more-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-last-year>
by Corporate Europe Observatory, Corporate Accountability and Global
Witness showed.

The world’s largest oil producers strutted their stuff. Saudi Arabia ran an
event
<https://www.zawya.com/en/press-release/government-news/program-and-speakers-revealed-for-the-saudi-green-initiative-forum-at-cop27-vf7s80n7>
to promote the “circular carbon economy,” under which carbon capture,
hydrogen, and other fossil fuel-based technologies are falsely promoted
<https://cms.law/en/are/publication/cms-green-globe/saudi-arabia> as
“clean.”

Wealth and power were flaunted. Coca-Cola, the world’s top plastic polluter
<https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/brandaudit2021/>, sponsored the
talks. Delegates flew in on private jets: Thirty-six arrived
<https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63544995> at Sharm el-Sheikh as the summit
began, and another 64 flew into Cairo. The Egyptian authorities ignored the
international campaign
<https://copcivicspace.net/ahead-of-cop27-1400-groups-parliamentarians-and-individuals-from-over-80-countries-urge-egypt-to-open-civic-space-and-release-political-prisoners/>
to free dissident Alaa Abd El-Fattah — who is serving a five-year jail
sentence for a social media post — and other political prisoners.

Central to the fossil fuel industry’s PR offensive is the new dash for gas,
kick-started by the Russian war on Ukraine and Moscow’s decision
<https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/10/17/the-limits-of-western-economic-war-with-russia-and-the-failure-of-climate-policy/>
to limit gas supplies to Europe. For the Gas Exporting Countries Forum, an
alliance of 17 big gas producers including Egypt, COP27 was “a great
opportunity
<https://www.theenergymix.com/2022/11/11/dash-for-gas-takes-off-at-cop-27/>
to make a case for gas in the energy transition.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, plans to build 26 new import
terminals for liquefied natural gas (LNG) have been announced in Europe;
the EU has signed a deal
<https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/eu-israel-egypt-sign-deal-boost-east-med-gas-exports-europe-2022-06-15/>
with Egypt and Israel to support gas extraction in the East Mediterranean
Sea; and European politicians have sought
<https://truthout.org/articles/europe-is-trying-to-solve-its-energy-crisis-with-fossil-fuel-projects-in-africa/>
gas project deals with African nations.

Once a gas project is decided on, it can take up to 10 years before
production starts. So Europe’s supply gap this year and next will be filled
<https://www.oxfordenergy.org/publications/the-eu-plan-to-reduce-russian-gas-imports-by-two-thirds-by-the-end-of-2022-practical-realities-and-implications/>,
if at all, by existing producers such as Qatar, the U.S. and Australia, not
by new projects. The danger is that, over the next decade, those projects
will push the world still further from the goal of limiting global heating
to 1.5 degrees Celsius (1.5°C) above pre-industrial levels.

The International Energy Agency says
<https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/radical-change-needed-reach-net-zero-emissions-iea-2021-05-18/>
that, to hit “net zero” targets, there can be no new gas or oil fields, and
that gas demand must be slashed; UN Secretary-General António Guterres said
<https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/un-chief-says-dash-new-fossil-fuels-is-delusional-2022-06-14/>
in June that investing in oil or gas production was “delusional.”

Although natural gas produces only about half the carbon emissions per unit
of energy that coal does, climate science says it must be phased out.
Moreover, leakages of methane (i.e. gas) have been recognized as a
significant climate threat
<https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/methanebudget/20/hl-compact.htm>:
Methane’s greenhouse effect, over a 20-year timespan, is 86 times as
powerful as carbon dioxide’s. And yet in May, the European Commission
classified
<https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=JOIN%3A2022%3A23%3AFIN&qid=1653033264976>
natural gas as a “sustainable” source of energy under its investment
taxonomy rules, and in September the U.K. government offered
<https://www.offshore-technology.com/news/uk-launches-new-north-sea-licensing-round-for-oil-and-gas-companie/#:~:text=The%20UK%20launched%20a%2033rd,authorisation%20for%20over%20100%20licenses.>
new licences for North Sea oil and gas fields. It was these greenwashing,
wealthy country governments that, with oil companies, turned COP27 into a
climate disaster.

At Sharm el-Sheikh, African governments presented gas projects on the
continent as a means of economic development — but they “will not deliver
for African communities,” warned <https://dont-gas-africa.org/cop27-report>
Don’t Gas Africa, an alliance of civil society groups that advocate
large-scale renewables as opposed to export-focused fossil fuel production.

Nigerian climate justice campaigner Nnimmo Bassey, coordinator of Oilwatch
International, denounced
<https://www.context.news/net-zero/opinion/the-colonial-exploitation-of-africas-fossil-fuels-must-stop>
the African governments’ pro-gas stance as “ecocide and intergenerational
crime” that “perpetuates colonialism and ecological irresponsibility.”
Governments’ Inaction and Civil Society Response

The fossil fuel PR circus at Sharm el-Sheikh has obscured the frightful
crisis at the heart of the talks: that the door is closing on the
possibility of keeping global heating to 1.5°C, as Climate Action Tracker
researchers showed in an authoritative report
<https://climateactiontracker.org/publications/massive-gas-expansion-risks-overtaking-positive-climate-policies/>
on climate inaction.

Nations’ current policies will produce global heating of between 2.2°C and
3.4°C by the end of the century, the report showed. Commitments made at
last year’s Glasgow talks to toughen up national targets (Nationally
Determined Contributions, or NDCs) have been broken; commitments made to
exit from coal have been disrupted; and rich countries have again broken
promises to finance the energy transition in the Global South.

In Sharm el-Sheikh, talks about implementing already-inadequate decisions
went at snail’s pace. Delegates from outside the rich world fumed at slow
progress on Loss and Damage
<https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/5-things-to-know-about-climate-reparations/>,
the principle that rich countries should pay for the billions of dollars in
damage already done by climate change — for example, by the floods in
Pakistan this summer. Campaigners urged
<https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/08/rich-countries-climate-crisis-cop27-africa-loss-and-damage>
a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies for this purpose.

The fossil fuel companies’ brazen grandstanding, and governments’
acquiescence, has tested the faith of campaign groups, climate scientists,
and others in the prospect of top-down solutions to the climate crisis.

Swedish activist Greta Thunberg stayed away from Sharm el-Sheikh, describing
<https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/31/greta-thunberg-to-skip-greenwashing-cop27-climate-summit-in-egypt#:~:text=Greta%20Thunberg%20to%20skip%20'greenwashing'%20Cop27%20climate%20summit%20in%20Egypt,-Swedish%20climate%20activist&text=Swedish%20climate%20activist%20Greta%20Thunberg%20has%20said%20she%20will%20skip,a%20forum%20for%20%E2%80%9Cgreenwashing%E2%80>
the negotiations as “an opportunity for leaders and people in power to get
attention, using many different kinds of greenwashing.” Rather than the
COP’s incremental steps, “system-wide transformation” is needed, she said
at a London book launch, infuriating right-wing commentators
<https://unherd.com/thepost/greta-thunberg-throws-her-lot-in-with-the-anti-capitalist-left/>
and techno-utopians
<https://michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/why-elites-like-greta-thunberg-hate>
.

But Thunberg was reflecting deeply felt anger
<https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11112022/cop27-protests-sharm-el-sheikh-egypt/>
among campaign groups, including those who have for years invested hope in
the COP process. More than 450 organizations supported a call
<https://kickbigpollutersout.org/> for a UN Accountability Framework to
“end corporate capture”; throw “big polluters” out of the climate talks;
require delegates publicly to disclose their interests; ban partnership or
sponsorship of talks by the polluters; and ease restrictions on civil
society access.

As the climate talks have lurched towards greenwashing, protests and direct
actions over governments’ failures are gaining momentum again after being
disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Pascoe Sabido, researcher at Corporate
Europe Observatory, said:

There is a movement on the streets [about climate change], but it has not
been translated into political power. The problem is the power of
governments, and their alliance with fossil fuel companies. Until we break
open that relationship, there will not be a transition away from fossil
fuels.

Outside the Talks

So are the climate talks part of the problem, or part of the solution? It
is not only activists who are asking. The authors of the UN Environment
Programme’s latest “Emissions Gap Report
<https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2022>” described their
findings as “testimony to inadequate action on the global climate crisis,
and is a call for the rapid transformation of societies.”

There had been “very little progress” since the 2021 Glasgow talks, and
governments’ current policies are on track to cause 2.8°C rise in
temperature by 2100, the report says. “Multiple major transformations must
be initiated in this decade, simultaneously across all [fossil fuel-based
technological] systems.”

Thirty-plus years of history matters. Prior to the talks in Egypt, climate
scientists shared on social media a graph
<https://twitter.com/tamara_bozovic/status/1508217770386763779> showing the
relentless rise in the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide content, from about 360
parts per million (ppm) when the Rio climate treaty was signed in 1992, to
420 ppm now. The inexorable rise in fossil fuel use is the main cause.

[image: Graph showing trends in atmospheric CO2 vs Global Temperature
Change]

The alliance of the world’s most powerful states, who negotiated the
climate agreements, is not only unwilling, but also unable, to do what is
needed. To prevent dangerous global heating, systems must change — not only
technological systems, but economic and social ones. And those governments’
function is to defend and manage those systems, not transform them. Society
as a whole will have to deal with climate change, in defiance of those
governments.
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