Tangle - The climate change conference in Dubai.

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

COP28. The United Nations 28th Climate Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties, features a record 70,000 registered attendees. The two-week-long conference is under way in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with a laundry list of presidents, prime ministers, royals, and industry leaders in attendance.You can read today's podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story here, and today’s “Have a nice day” story here. You can also check out our latest video, a look at what a potential second term for Donald Trump could look like, here.Today’s clickables: New YouTube video announcement (0:52), Quick hits (1:31), Today’s story (3:15), Right’s take (7:00), Left’s take (11:21), Isaac’s take (15:47), Under the Radar (21:50), Numbers (22:58), Have a nice day (24:23)You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the poll. Do you think COP28 is worthwhile? Let us know!Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning. Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. From executive producer Isaac Saul, This is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul,

and on today's episode, we're going to be talking about COP28, that is the Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties, the 28th edition of this that is happening in Dubai right now. We're going to talk about what to take away from it, some of the controversy around it, and where we are on the fight against climate change. Before we jump in, though, I want to give a quick heads up. We have a new video up on our YouTube channel. It's titled Donald Trump Part 2. It's about what might happen if Donald Trump is re-elected as president and what a second Donald Trump term might look like. We break down what people on the left and the right are saying about that prospect, and then I share some of my own view. That video is up, brand new, fresh on our YouTube channel right now if you want to go

check it out. All right, with that out of the way, we're going to jump in with some quick hits. to jump in with some quick hits. First up, Israel has pushed further into southern Gaza, ordering residents to move west toward the Mediterranean coast or south toward Egypt's border. Separately, the White House condemned a pro-Palestine demonstration that targeted a restaurant in Philadelphia owned by a Jewish Israeli. Number two, a former American diplomat was charged with serving as a secret agent for Cuba. Number three, Spotify, the music streaming giant, cut 17% of its workforce in a third round of layoffs this year. Number four, the remains of five crew members who died in the U.S. military aircraft crash off the coast

of Japan were recovered. And number five, Russia's President Vladimir Putin will visit Saudi Arabia and the UAE on Wednesday. Diplomats from nearly 200 countries will gather in Dubai this week for the United Nations annual climate talks. A conference known as COP28 begins Thursday and will go until December 12th. It will feature world leaders, business officials, scientists and activists discussing ways to address and combat climate change. Who won't be featured this year? President Biden. He's not planning to attend

in order to focus on domestic affairs in the Israel-Hamas war. United States Climate Envoy John Kerry will instead lead the American delegation. So this is the annual opportunity for world leaders to all be in one place to really address the climate crisis, to try to come up with new plans to kind of offset the worst impacts of climate change. The United Nations 28th Climate

Change Conference, or Conference of the Parties, also known as COP, features a record 84,000 registered attendees this year. The two-week-long conference is underway in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with a laundry list of presidents, prime ministers, royals, and industry leaders in attendance. Dozens of world leaders have spoken in the first few days of the summit, which began on Friday, saying they believe the planet is becoming dangerously hot and pledging to keep it from getting worse. Roughly 150 leaders from across the world are present but notably absent are the leaders of two of the world's biggest emitters, President Joe Biden and China's President Xi Jinping, who recently announced a bilateral agreement to cut down on methane emissions.

Vice President Kamala Harris and China's first vice premier Ding Xiaoshan are attending in their absences. During their public commitments, global leaders insisted that their words must be followed by tangible commitments, including deals to reduce emissions across the globe. United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres, who criticized oil and coal use, said the only way to hit the climate change goal of limiting warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit was to eliminate oil, coal, and gas use. Not reduce, not abate, phase out, he said. 106 nations signed a statement calling for a full exit from fossil fuels. However, Sultan Ahmad al-Jabir, the Emirati leading the summit, used his time on stage to

criticize media coverage of his contradictory remarks about phasing out fossil fuel. Despite previously calling for drastically slashing the world's emissions, al-Jabir heads a state-run coverage of his contradictory remarks about phasing out fossil fuel. Despite previously calling for drastically slashing the world's emissions, Al-Jubeir heads a state-run energy company that is planning to ramp up production of crude oil and natural gas. On Sunday, the Guardian published a video from a recorded video conference Al-Jubeir attended a few weeks ago in which the Emirati pleaded with a group of reporters to explain to him how the world could phase out fossil fuels. You're asking for a phase out of fossil fuel, Al-Jubeir said. Please, help me. Show me the roadmap for a phase out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable

socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5 degrees Celsius. 1.5 is my north star, he said, 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, end quote. Emissaries began the conference by signing on to a slew of non-binding agreements, which already include promises to triple renewable energy and nuclear power capacity globally, speed up the shift away from coal, and to work to help farmers improve soil quality.

The United Arab Emirates has pledged $30 billion to help the global south with a clean energy transition, and close to $400 million has already been pledged to help nations facing climate emergencies. However, some pledges have already become more contentious, with oil and gas companies saying they would decarbonize their operations but refusing to reduce production of fossil fuels more broadly. The conference has also been interrupted by a rare sight in the UAE, public protests. Activists are being allowed to protest inside the summit under strict guidelines, and over a hundred have used the opportunity to gather in solidarity with Palestinians. Others have gathered to call for an end to fossil fuel use. Today, we're going to explore some

commentary about the summit, some of the commitments, and the state of climate change from the left and the right, then my take. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. First up, we'll start with what the right is saying. The right dismisses the conference as a meaningless gathering of global elites. Some suggest the COP28 leaders have no intention of pursuing their stated goals or grappling with the economic implications of them. Others say the cost of enacting certain proposed policies would be greater than the risk of climate change itself. In the Wall Street Journal, Gerard Baker wrote that we can expect an ambitious goal that still won't be enough to save the planet. The climate propaganda is so well-rooted now in the West's media that we are given to understand

that everything is the result of global warming, Baker said. This isn't to suggest that a cold winter is enough to prove the mendacity of the climate change thesis and its proponents. I am well aware that global temperatures have on average risen and that there is a plausible case that man's carbon dioxide emissions are a significant factor. But the awkward persistence of normal weather continues to remind us how at odds with realities the extremism of the global climate lobby is. The conference attendees flew the several thousand miles in their private jets, turning more carbon into the air in a week than the average American,

who may like to lecture about his evil ways, does in a year, Baker added. Meanwhile, the real work, developing a technology that runs on more sustainable energy, continues to cut the carbon footprint of traditional energy production and mitigates the effects of climate change, will get done by the capitalists, whose economic system many in this crowd like to denounce as incompatible with a sustainable environment. In the Daily Caller, Gage Klipper said global elites take climate propaganda to a whole new level at COP28. After seemingly endless administrative nonsense, the world will hear from technocrats hellbent on fast-tracking the energy transition and slashing emissions before 2030 to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, that's 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, above pre-industrial levels. This won't be cheap.

Delivering on finance means keeping old promises to developing countries. In other words, a massive wealth transfer from America to the rest of the world. And of course, gender and inclusivity must be taken into account, Clipper wrote. What's meant to be a very serious convention of experts and global leaders is, in reality, a veritable schmooze fest of who's who. Leaders throughout the West will all show their faces. John Kerry will represent the U.S., while billionaires, activists, and spiritual leaders will all make appearances of their own. Middle Eastern royalty enjoying home court advantage are set to turn out in force, and naturally the list would be incomplete without the real stars, the Hollywood actors who inevitably pop up at every event every year. Does anyone

really believe that most of the attendees care about climate change as anything more than just a vanity project? In the New York Post, Bjorn Lomberg argued that COP28 will again push multi-trillion dollar cures that are worse than climate change. Underpinning the climate summit farce is one big lie repeated over and over, that green energy is on the verge of replacing fossil fuels in every aspect of our lives, Lomberg said. The claim ignores the fact that any transition away from fossil fuels is occurring only with enormous taxpayer-funded subsidies. And while major energy players like Exxon and Chevron are moving back to investment in fossil fuel, big bets on green energy have failed spectacularly.

Over the past 15 years, alternative energy stocks have plummeted in value, thus sending the pensions of ordinary workers tumbling due to virtue-signaling finance companies while general stocks have increased more than fourfold. What won't be acknowledged in the United Arab Emirates because it has never been acknowledged at a global climate summit is the awkward reality that while climate change has real costs, climate policy does too, Lomborg said. A study from the Climate Change Economics Journal found that the annual costs of net zero carbon emissions policies range between $10 and $43 trillion. That's 4 to 18% of global GDP. The only thing that could avoid this summit being a retread of 27 other failures is if politicians acknowledge the real costs of net zero policy and instead of making more

carbon cut promises, vow to dramatically increase green energy research and development. All right, that is it for what the right is saying, which brings us to what the left is saying. The left is skeptical that significant change will come out of COP28 and say that world leaders are shirking their responsibility to the planet. Some criticize the presence of lobbyists representing industries the conference is supposed to be reining in, such as energy and agriculture. Others bemoan the gathering's voting structure, which creates too high a barrier for meaningful resolutions. In the New York Times, Earl C. Ellis said 1.5 degrees is not the problem. As leaders around the world meet for the 28th time to address

the climate crisis, this time in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world's largest oil producers, they need to rethink this threat and some of the other central challenges of our time, Ellis said. Those other challenges include devastating losses of biodiversity and plastic pollution so widespread it is now found on the world's tallest mountain, in its deepest ocean trench, and in our veins. In the long history of this planet, our current time, the human age known as the Anthropocene, is the first in which a single species will so rapidly reshape the future of Earth's climate and all the other conditions that make life as we know it livable. These crises are not about the planet going haywire. They're crises caused by failures to assign and enforce social

responsibilities. And the wealthiest, most powerful, and most capable societies that have ever existed on this planet are behaving as if they owe nothing for what they have gained at the expense of imperiling life on Earth. Such behavior is not only unethical, it is precisely the opposite of what deep history tells us has enabled societies to avoid collapse in the face of severe environmental challenges, Ellis said. The ultimate solution to major societal challenges is clear, leadership by those most responsible to invest in the solutions and restitutions required to mitigate the damage. Breaking news happens anywhere, anytime. Police have warned the protesters repeatedly, get back. CBC News brings the story to you as it happens. Hundreds of wildfires are burning.

Be the first to know what's going on and what that means for you and for Canadians. This situation has changed very quickly. Helping make sense of the world when it matters most. Stay in the know. CBC News. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The Guardian's editorial board wrote,

energy companies are not the only ones with a carbon addiction. While the ostensible purpose is to safeguard the planet for the future, the fear is that the COP process has been captured by the short-term interest of carbon-emitting industries that will do anything to protect their wealth, the board said. In petro-states such as the UAE, the economic interests of rulers and fossil fuel businesses are the same, but other rich nations with more mixed economies are also culpable. So far, the COP process has failed to reduce the amount of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere, although the rate of increase has slowed. The remaining carbon budget, the amount that can

be emitted while holding on to a 50% chance of staying within the 1.5C limit, stands at 250 billion tons. One key question for negotiators in Dubai is how that budget is allocated. Another is how the people and ecosystems most harmed by global heating will be helped. On the latter, there has been some progress with the establishment of a loss and damage fund. But the battle over the continued production of fossil fuels and the future of carbon-intensive industries such as animal agriculture and aviation is raging. In Bloomberg, Lara Williams suggested we already know what will happen at COP28. There will be a big fight over some words on fossil

fuels, particularly over whether we ought to phase out or phase down their use. Plenty of concessions will be made at the behest of powerful polluters, and the culmination will be a series of political statements and perhaps an operational loss and damage fund, but none of it will be enough to save the planet, Williams wrote. We've had nearly three decades of summits, yet emissions continue to climb. There are clear problems. The voting structure means that all decisions must be made by consensus, meaning that all 198 countries who are members of the UNFCCC must agree. That ensures that the lowest common denominator wins out. I think there's probably still a role for a big annual gathering. There's nothing like in-person networking to foster new partnerships and international collaboration, which will need

to move the needle on many clean technologies and financing, Williams said. Still, it's clear the current format isn't producing what we need. So as you keep track of the barrage of news set to come out of Dubai for the next fortnight, just think, wouldn't COP be so much more exciting, so much more hopeful, if we were talking about concrete action plans rather than, in Greta Thunberg's famous words, blah, blah, blah. All right, that is it for the left and the rightist thing, which brings us to my take. So, to me, events like COP28 certainly have their fair share of hypocrisy, but that doesn't mean they're completely useless. Is it significant for world leaders from across the globe to gather at

a single event and pledge their support for a unifying vision about the planet? Yes, actually, I think it is. Is it in part a gigantic vanity project where hypocrisy abounds? Yes, it is. These things can coexist. The vanity is real, but so are the actual international pledges, binding and non-binding, that will have real, tangible impacts for countries across the globe. It's worth remembering that while the United States has seen historic heat waves and other natural disasters in the last decade that have contentiously been linked to climate change, there are dozens of nations across the planet who are seeing far less ambiguous impacts. Sea level rise flooding out coastal towns

and whole countries, droughts that last for decades, once-in-a-lifetime floods happening every year or two, and so on. So while COP28 might feel less relevant for us, there are plenty of places where hearing about multi-hundred-billion-dollar pledges to bring on new energy sources or climate emergency funding is incredibly important. As for the actual state of the global effort to reduce emissions and address climate change, there is a lot to say. Anyone who has been reading Tangle for some time should know where I stand on the issue of climate change. I think the science is very clear that climate change is happening and that it needs to be addressed. I think climate nihilism is very bad, whether you are lighting yourself on fire or pledging not to have children. And I think there are sincerely held disagreements

about the best way to go about addressing climate change, especially when considering how to allow the developing world access to cheap and reliable energy sources. Personally, I've long advocated for an all-of-the-above energy approach. I've also cautioned people about renewable energies and the ways in which sources like solar power are not actually renewable in the way people think. and the ways in which sources like solar power are not actually renewable in the way people think. It will take a combination of solar, wind, nuclear, and natural gas development, while also just seeing general use go down, for us to come close to the goals laid out in the conferences like this. And, of course, we should assuredly still be using, but also reducing, oil and coal as energy sources. The only way to describe where we are now is that there is good

news and there is bad news. Here's the bad news. There are plenty of climate change scientists who are convinced that we have entered a new era of danger. Dr. Zeke Hausfather recently made this case in the New York Times, saying that the latest data was staggering, unnerving, mind-boggling, absolutely gobsmackingly bananas. Hausfather explained that there is increasing evidence that global warming has accelerated over the past 15 years rather than continued at a gradual steady pace, and that things like extreme heat waves, wildfires, rainfall, and sea level rise are all going to grow more severe in the coming years. If Hausfather is right, the picture is grim. On top of that, there are a lot of climate

scientists who continue to be understandably skeptical and cynical about events like COP28 and the commitments global leaders make to addressing climate change. And yet, the good news abounds. Even if you are someone who does not believe climate change is a genuine threat, or someone who thinks people worried about climate change or brainwashed lefties, you should still celebrate much of this good news. First, even Housefather concedes some encouraging signals. The world has made real progress in slowing down the growth of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, he wrote in his piece about the gobsmackingly bad data. Housefather also notes something many people ignore, that some

of the warming we are seeing right now is actually the result of a positive trend, which is the reduction of air pollution. That pollution has had a temporary cooling effect on the air around us, and as nations across the globe clean up our air, we are seeing that cooling effect drop. Perhaps most importantly, the shocking data Housefather points to is also, as he notes, pretty much what our climate models have predicted. Put differently, as the years go on, we are getting more and more reliable predictions from our models, which is critical for charting the best path forward. There's more direct good news, too. The most apocalyptic projections about what climate change would look like this century, the ones that dominated so many news stories for so long, are now fading into the background. As David Wallace-Wells put it last year,

thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future, and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years. Energy all across the globe is getting cheaper because electricity from solar, wind, and batteries are getting cheaper. And whether you are a red-blooded free market capitalist who wants to drill, burn, and frack as much as we need to, or a tree-hugging hippie praying for a green new deal, it's just straightforwardly good that energy is getting cheaper because there are more options to get energy. In fact, it's great news, whether it is happening organically or with

assistance from governments across the world. Or, as Noah Smith recently wrote, our debates about climate change are stuck in 2010. Decarbonizing our global economy no longer requires huge cutbacks in standard of living, nor is it prohibitively expensive. Solar power and batteries are driving a genuine technological revolution, and that revolution is happening right under our noses. Given all this context, COP28 is just hard to care about. It's neither an important story about climate, nor is it meaningless? But the real action is happening in the real, everyday world, where so many of us can see and feel an energy revolution that is going to dramatically change our economy and the planet, hopefully for the better. We'll be right back after this quick break. break. All right, that is it for my take. We are skipping today's reader question because the main story took up quite a bit of space, but we do have a fascinating under-the-radar story.

Researchers are flagging a suspicious surge in the short-selling of Israeli stocks the day before the Hamas attacks. A new draft paper posits that a trader or traders were informed of Hamas's plans to attack and potentially made millions of dollars by betting against the market. Authors to the paper include a former SEC commissioner who analyzed spikes in short selling on the principal Israeli company exchange traded fund the day before the attack. There was a similar buildup in short positions in early April, just before Hamas planned to attack Israel on Passover. The papers present a compelling case for further investigation, but the researchers concede they are unable to link particular market participants to the pre-attack developments we see in securities markets, to say nothing of the

underlying sources of information that produce the trades we study. Axios has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The approximate number of attendees at COP2 in 1996 was 1,600. The approximate number of attendees at COP25 in 2019 was 22,400. The approximate number of attendees at COP25 in 2019 was 22,400. The approximate number of attendees at COP28 this year is 70,000. Global CO2 emissions measured in gross tonnage in 1996 was 22.8 billion. Global CO2 emissions in gross tonnage in 2022 was 36.8 billion. The amount in tons of CO2 remaining in the quote-unquote carbon budget, a guideline for maintaining a 50% chance of staying within a

1.5 degree Celsius limit for global temperature increases, is $250 billion. There were two days in 2023 that the planet exceeded a global average surface temperature more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, the first time this threshold was breached since the beginning of instrument records. The rank in global oil production of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, whose CEO, Sultan al-Jabir, is president-designate of COP28, is 12th. The number of fossil fuel projects approved by the Biden administration that are projected to create more emissions in 2030 than will be eliminated by White House climate policies is 17. That's according to a study by the Center for Biological Diversity.

All right, that is it for our numbers section, which brings us to our have a nice day story. I'm probably going to butcher this name, but I'm going to try anyway. Arisbeth Dionisio Ambrosio has earned a well-deserved promotion after her exceptional display of compassion in the aftermath of Hurricane Otis in Acapulco following the devastating Category 5 storm on October 25th. That's when Dionisio was deployed there in the recovery effort. The 33-year-old mother soon encountered a four-month-old baby crying from hunger and went above and beyond the call of duty to help. The baby's mother was too distressed to feed him, so the officer, understanding the situation, offered to nurse the hungry infant herself.

The moment was captured in a moving photograph later posted on social media. self. The moment was captured in a moving photograph later posted on social media. Mexico City Security Minister Pablo Vázquez Camacho praised Dionisio's dedication to service and compassionate response, declaring her promotion on TwitterX. In recognition of her extraordinary act of compassion, Dionisio was promoted from policia primero to suboficial. Sunny Skies has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to retangle.com and consider becoming a member.

Also, a quick reminder, again, we have a brand new video up on our YouTube channel, Donald Trump Part 2. What's it going to look like? We break it down. I think people are going to be pretty interested in this one. Please go give it a look and don't forget to subscribe to the channel. We'll be right back here same time tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Law. Peace. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, Thanks for watching!