Dave5

The hosting of the recent COP28 climate summit by the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s leading petroleum exporters, exemplified exactly this puffery and, sadly enough, it’s just one instance of this greenwashing world of ours. Everywhere you look, you’ll note other versions, but it certainly was a classic example. Emirati businessman Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber served as president of the Dubai-based 28th Conference of Parties — countries that had signed onto the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. While his green bona fides include his role as chairman of the board of the UAE’s green energy firm Masdar, controversy swirled around him because he’s also the CEO of ADNOC, the UAE’s national petroleum company. Worse yet, he’s committed to expanding the oil and gas production of his postage-stamp-sized nation of one million citizens (and eight million guest workers) in a big-time fashion. He wants ADNOC to increase its daily oil production from its present four million barrels a day to five million by 2027, even though climate scientists stress that global fossil-fuel production must be reduced by 3% annually through 2050 if the world is to avoid the most devastating consequences of climate change.