Markets Won't Stop Fossil Fuels

In early January, the United Arab Emirates named Sultan Al Jaber president of COP28, the twenty-eighth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Al Jaber is CEO of the UAE’s state-owned oil company, Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and chair of the board of Masdar, the state-owned renewable energy corporation. He has announced his commitment to bring the private sector’s “business mindset” to bear on “a pragmatic, realistic and solutions-oriented approach that delivers transformative progress for climate and for low-carbon economic growth.” Meanwhile, ADNOC is currently planning to increase production from 4.3 to 5.1 million barrels of oil per day by 2027, and potentially to 6 million or more by 2030—the very same year COP21’s Paris Agreement set as the deadline for a 43 percent reduction in global emissions. The fact that COP28 is being led by an oil company boss is the logical outcome of a distorted and defanged framework. Corporations and several states—the United States most prominently—have worked to undermine the UNFCCC: the negotiation process is cumbersome and manipulable, commitments are easily diluted, objectives remain voluntary, and enforcement is not even on the table. © 2023,University of Pennsylvania Press. All rights reserved.