COP28 is much more than governments hammering out commitments to deal with climate change. What surrounds that is more like a giant trade show, on the giant site of Dubai’s Expo2020.
COP feels like a world’s fair for climate solutions, with dozens of side conferences. The climate crisis is so bad and the range of actions we must take so multifaceted that all sorts of people are here to meet and strategize. I’ve been to Bloomberg Green, The World Climate Summit, and The COP28 Business and Philanthropy Forum, among others. I’ve visited the booths of Ukraine, Microsoft, NASA, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the World Trade Organization, and many others. I’m typing this at a Clean Energy Accelerator event, hosted by Amazon Web Services.
The alarm I wrote about earlier remains much in evidence. President Biden’s Climate Ambassador John Kerry spoke at Bloomberg Green. “The dangers we face now are just monumental, and even scary,” he said, his voice shaking a little. “It’s alarming. Terrifying, even.”
But I’m also encountering a huge variety of ideas about technologies, policies, and strategies for how society, investors, and ordinary people can more effectively - and quickly - act. The range of tech innovations on display here is kaleidoscopic - everything from microbes you put in soil to increase its ability to capture carbon to fusion nuclear power. I do believe we’ll see more breakthroughs in climate tech than most realize.
There are almost 2500 fossil fuel lobbyists on the ground here – four times more than at last year’s COP in Egypt. If they don’t pivot to new activities, their business will truly disappear – and fast. For now, the world can’t live without these companies. But we must radically and quickly reduce how much we burn.
“It’s entirely likely we’ll exceed 1.5 degrees,” said a dispirited Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered, at Bloomberg Green. (His bank manages over $800 billion.) He added that while we need to spend billions now in many areas, if we don’t, we’ll end up spending orders of magnitude more to adapt to a radically hotter world. Winters appeared with Shemara Wikramanayake, CEO of Macquarie Group, an Australian bank that manages almost $600 billion. Their urgency and alarm shows that at least some top financial leaders have gotten religion. “We need to make climate action the default choice of rational actors,” said Wikramanayake as their session ended. If only.
At another event, I had a chance to ask three top American environmentalists how they assessed this COP so far. It was a mixed bag. Replied Manish Bapna, President of the Natural Resources Defense Council: “The COP started off on a very strong positive note with the loss and damage fund…Quite impressive was the immediate capitalization of the fund with $650 million. I can’t remember that kind of thing before.” EDF President Fred Krupp echoed Bapna, saying the past six COPs had tried and failed to create such a fund. He credited the “incredible diplomacy” of the UAE in making it happen.
Krupp then turned to the critical “stocktake” that must be agreed by all governments here. It’s essentially the roadmap for future action. “The initial draft…was very strong in a lot of ways,” he said. “It calls for a worldwide reduction in methane by 2035, along with an actual goal - it’s the first time methane has even been mentioned. It would be great if it stays in there. But lots of things announced at the COP never come true.”
Then it was the turn of Armond Cohen of the Clean Air Task Force, who I’ve written about in previous dispatches. “I just look at it as a glass half empty,” he said, taking the air out of the room. “There are kind of two COPs going on - a celebration of the good things that have happened, but along the side there’s also a recognition that we’ve essentially failed. Since COP1 we’re up 70% in emissions. There’s a conventional narrative that we’re about on the right track and fossil fuels are about to peak and we just have to kill fossil fuel production and we’re good. That’s a simplistic black-and-white narrative.
"But a few realities are dawning on people. Energy demand will increase considerably. We won’t conserve our way out. Fossil fuels will be around a long time. We better find a way to abate. Third, renewables are great, and they’re supplying 5% of global energy, but we’re still 80% fossil fuels, exactly where we were 30 years ago.” (On Cohen’s increasing demand point, at a different event I heard Pedro Pizarro, CEO of Edison International, parent of Southern California Edison, predict that California’s electricity usage is expected to rise 80% in coming years.)
Towards the end of his interview at Bloomberg’s event, Kerry summarized: “This will be the biggest transformation in human history. It’s bigger than the industrial revolution, and it’s going to happen. I just don’t know if we’re going to get there in time to avoid the worst consequences.”
David Kirkpatrick - Senior Editor
