Today, Explained - An oily climate deal

Episode Date: December 14, 2023

Semafor’s Tim McDonnell says what made COP28 successful was the same thing that made climate activists skeptical about the conference: its host was an oil executive. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin and Isabel Angell, edited by Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by David Herman, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's easy to look at a climate conference being held in an oil-rich country, being run by oil-rich people, and think cynical thoughts. I think history records will show that in 2023, for COP28, we let a mosquito lead the fight against malaria. But then they actually pulled something off. For the first time ever in 30 years, almost 28 years to be exact, of doing these climate negotiations, every country in the world agreed to transition away from fossil fuels. History has been made at COP28 in Dubai. This is the first time the final agreement actually uses the words fossil fuels. Tim McDonnell was in Dubai covering the big moment for Semaphore, where he's their climate

editor. This is really unprecedented. And, you know, there's certainly plenty of things in the agreement that people can quibble with and we can talk about those. We will. The hard part comes in making this reality. What do you have to do to implement that? We're going right back. your favorite player, or your style. There's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM. Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk and authorized gaming partner of the NBA. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager.

Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Explained. Okay, so before we get to a historic step forward and the realities of implementation, which I know are plenty complex in their own right, I want to talk about just all of the drama going into this conference. How is that

particular drama different from, say, climate conferences past? Yeah, well, you did have a really interesting and certainly controversial setting of United Arab Emirates hosting this summit. This is a big oil and gas producing nation. You had a person, Sultan al-Jabr, who was the chairman of the national oil company, ADNOC, as the summit president. The president of an energy company was in charge of the climate conference. Yes, that's right. To address this question right, let me first introduce myself to you. I'm an engineer by background.

It's the science and my respect to the science and my passion about the science, and it's about my conviction to the science that have enabled me to progress in my career. And that certainly has been something that's got a lot in overreaching and naming the ceo of one of the largest and one of the dirtiest by many measures oil companies in the world as the president of the cop a lot of people had a lot of questions about this for obvious reasons about his credibility coming into this process and there was a know, there's been some minor scandals along the way. There was some leaked documents that came out near the beginning of the summit from his marketing team about potentially trying to use side meetings during the COP conference to sign oil and gas deals.

Leaked documents obtained by the BBC and the Centre for Climate Reporting show that in meetings with at least 27 foreign governments arranged as part of the climate process, Dr. Jabbar was briefed to discuss business deals for these state firms. Which, that's the kind of thing that could, like, make people want to pull out their hair when they read reporting that says, at the climate conference on which the whole world is staking the future of the planet, they're making oil and gas deals. But you're a climate reporter. How beyond the pale is that really? Obviously, it sounds ridiculous. Although I will say, and I mean, to be fair, this is one of the world's biggest national oil companies. I don't think they don't need to host a COP summit to

take meetings with, you know, counterparties that they want to do oil and gas deals with. You know, this guy can call any of these people anytime and have whatever meeting to do deals that he wants. You know, my read from having been here the last couple of weeks, and this may be a controversial opinion, is that I think that Al-Jabr has actually done quite a good job of organizing things here. And I think that his position as an oil executive, this is, you know, is counterintuitively may have been in a way just the thing that was needed at this particular moment in time. Wow. One thing that is really interesting and challenging about these COP summits, and which makes them different from a lot of processes in geopolitics, is that they require unanimous consent from every country for decisions to move forward.

That means you have to get agreement from the U.S., China, India, Saudi Arabia, island developing states, African countries, everything. They all have to agree on the same stuff. Saudi Arabia, island developing states, African countries, everything, right? They all have to agree on the same stuff. That's really, really hard to do on any subject, especially on energy and climate, where everybody has very, very different vested interests and expectations for what the outcome is going to be. And predictably, it is often the big oil and gas exporting countries that are intransigent on trying to get something out of this process that's, you know, ambitious enough to kind of rise to the level that science dictates we need to pursue action at. Why might African countries feel different from Asian countries, feel different from North American countries, Western European countries, what have you. You have a huge range of diversity between these countries in the level in which they produce or consume fossil fuels. And that's what we're talking about here. So you have

countries like the US that do both, the world's biggest oil and gas producer and one of the biggest consumers. China, biggest consumer. You have emerging economies like Brazil or India that are massively ramping up consumption of fossil fuels. On the opposite side of that, you have the very poorest countries, the most climate-vulnerable countries, small island states, who have not been the cause of climate change, but are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of it. It's an existential crisis for them. And they are often the ones, you know,

leading the call for the most ambitious kind of outcome to come out of this sort of thing. I mean, this is like really, really a crisis. We have come to the conclusion that the cost correction that is needed has not been secured. We have made an incremental advancement over business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential step change in our actions and support. And getting them to all agree on something is really challenging. And I actually think that

the fact that you had an oil executive leading that conversation, especially an oil executive who, to be fair, the UAE has done more than most other Gulf oil exporting nations to diversify its economy away from oil and gas into other things, finance and real was able to make a compelling pitch to the kind of Saudi Arabia's and similar countries of the world about why this transition, this energy transition, is not going to leave them in the dust. Because that's the problem we've had with all these previous cops. They come in, they don't see what's in it for them. I have said over and over that the phase down and the phase out of fossil fuel is inevitable. In fact, it is essential. And this transition is in fact essential, and it needs to be orderly, fair, just, and responsible. That's the sort of calculus that I think he was able to pull off here in a way that was probably more credible with the most intransigent players than just about any other person I think probably could have done. looks really bad. There are PowerPoint presentations that suggest that they were overtly trying to like broker oil and gas deals on the side of this climate summit. This Sultan al-Jabr has come out apparently according to reporting and said explicitly that he thinks that there is no science indicating that a phase out of fossil fuels is needed to

restrict global heating to 1.5 degrees Celsius. And yet, you're saying here that he might have been one of the most ideal people to broker an agreement in this wildly diverse group of players. That's right. I know that it sounds kind of counterintuitive, and I'm sure that people listening to this are going to send me angry emails and tweets after they hear me say these things. But again, this is a, it's a diplomatic role that he has. He's not really there to sort of advance the UAE's own political position. But I think the elements of this agreement that sort of fall short of people's expectations for the most part have to do with encouraging the richest countries to provide more climate finance for the poorer ones,

not setting very rigorous or specific goals for climate adaptation. People are upset about that. But the fossil fuel language specifically in that one sentence. Transitioning away from fossil fuels and energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science. Which is really the kind of main, decisive sentence that was going to shape the narrative around whether this was sort of a success or a failure, I think was quite strong. And I don't think that you would have gotten there with a lot of other people in that seat.

Tim McDonald, Semaphore, he's going to tell us what exactly is in this deal and how it's going to be enforced or whether it's going to be enforced at all when we're back on Today Explained. Support for Today Explained comes from Ramp. Ramp is the corporate card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your pocket. Ramp says they give finance teams unprecedented control and insight into company spend.

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We're concerned your call to phase down fossil fuels is being watered down by a cause to end only emissions. Will the U.S. hold a line on phasing down fossil fuels by 2030 with no abatement loopholes? Climate activist Alice Hu tracked down special presidential envoy for climate and brand new 80-year-old John Kerry at COP28. Well, we're going to do the best we can. Great. And on behalf of low-income communities of color like the ones I organize in, that is really, really great to hear. Alice Hughes' activist work is funded in part by a group called the Climate Emergency Fund, which gives grants to what it calls disruptive climate activists.

Margaret Klein Salomon is the group's executive director. We asked her what she thought of the big COP28 deal. I mean, including the phrase fossil fuels in the agreement, a phase down of fossil fuels, is some kind of step forward. But you have to ask the question, would this agreement, if fully implemented, protect humanity and the living world from apocalyptic destruction? And the answer is very clearly no. So this is a non-binding agreement that even if it were implemented fully would still not protect us. So yeah,

I can't get excited about this. The reason Margaret can't get excited is because she's been psychoanalyzing the people who made this deal. No joke. As a clinical psychologist by training, I like to look at this in terms of normal mode versus emergency mode. Emergency mode is when an individual, group, or even entire country treats a situation like an actual existential risk. If we don't solve this, we will perish. And that is clearly not happening. Activist Margaret, not impressed. Climate editor Tim, kind of impressed.

We've never had a COP agreement that specifically targets all fossil fuels and calls to transition away from them. That's totally unprecedented. The same sentence, by the way, gives this sort of caveat of doing this transition in a just, orderly, and equitable manner, which I think is going to become a really important phrase for certainly for climate activists, but also for developing countries to sort of leverage in their continued call for climate finance from the rich countries to help them in this transition, and also to kind of set some expectations about the different pace that different countries need to go on in that transition. We don't need Togo to shut down all of its fossil fuels in the same month that the U.S. does. So everybody's going to kind of move at different paces. And this is a, you know, it's an equity issue because obviously there are many countries in the world for whom, you know, energy access, energy poverty are big issues. And they may need to increase their use

of fossil fuels in the near term as part of their development, economic development. So anyway, that's all kind of included in here. You know, we also have not actually seen a COP text that specifically puts this sort of deadline on 2050. We also have not actually seen a COP text that specifically puts this sort of deadline on 2050. Usually they talk about mid-century. It's just sort of like a legal term. So having 2050 as a hard deadline in there is quite important to reach net zero. Some caveats here about transitional fuels, about carbon capture, but a lot of groundbreaking stuff, at least for a COP summit. You got fossil fuels in there. You got equity in there. You got a hard deadline in there of 2050. Did everyone sign on to this? Is this a

unanimous decision, a unanimous agreement? It is. Yeah. I mean, that was the gavel came down and that was it. Everybody signed on. So that's pretty remarkable. Hearing no objection, it is so decided. And this includes big old polluters like the United States, like China, like India, like Russia. Everybody. Everybody. All of them. So then I guess the multi-trillion dollar question is, how do you keep everyone accountable? Countries are supposed to come away from this process and implement their own national policies. So, you know, putting in place new laws

or policies in their own countries that allow them to meet the goals that are laid out in this agreement. And then there's a kind of process for like how countries kind of report those policies to each other and they're supposed to ratchet them up over time. And there's a kind of process for like how countries kind of report those policies to each other and they're supposed to ratchet them up over time. And there's a sort of naming and shaming transparency kind of element to this. You can't take somebody into the ICC or, you know, sue them or something if they don't a country, if they don't stand up to the commitment that they make here.

Right. And you're also like reminding us that countries like, let's say, China aren't the most transparent about what's going on in China. Yeah, I mean, of course, there's going to be monitoring issues that go into this. Although one interesting side note from this conference was that you did see a lot of interesting developments or just sort of momentum or attention on satellite monitoring of emissions and remote sensing. This morning, we're learning about a new way to find and reduce greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. Methane gas, which is usually invisible, can actually be seen in these infrared images. I think we're quickly arriving to a world where hidden greenhouse gas emissions are not going to be possible anymore.

That's here already, actually, to a large extent. So this all just basically boils down to what do countries do on their own to make this happen? So for the US, examples are the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure laws that came out in the US to subsidize renewable energy and other parts of the energy transition, support the building of clean energy infrastructure. You know, at the beginning of COP, you also saw the U.S. announce new regulations on oil and gas methane emissions. Methane is a super potent greenhouse gas that's kind of gone unchecked, flown under the radar, so to speak, for a while. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its final rule to prevent an estimated 58 million tons of methane emissions from 2024 to 2038. That's nearly 80 percent of our current output.

So we have new legally binding regulations in the U.S. on that. The U.S. is also going to have new regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector coming probably in the first quarter of next year. So those are the sort of examples of the types of national policies that actually kind of make this transition away from fossil fuels more likely to happen. I think a lot of people were betting against COP28, not only because of the fossil fuel energy stakeholders in the mix, but also because this summit is happening at a time where countries are experiencing crippling inflation. And a lot of countries like the United States and even the United Kingdom that have set a lot of climate goals are rolling back on what they've said they do and turning back to fossil fuels. How did they get everyone on board in such a

precarious moment economically. I do think the macroeconomic context here is a sort of headwind or a challenge. Although it's worth noting that the costs of renewable energy and energy storage and batteries, a lot of these other technologies are plummeting every year. And we're also seeing the costs of climate change. People are realizing if there's some cost associated with making this type of transition, that it's well worth it because the costs of doing nothing are far, far, far, far higher. So that's the kind of reality that we're in. Now, I think one thing that's interesting here is to see how oil and gas companies navigate the sort of political signal that comes out of

this COP. The reality, and this kind of goes back as well to your question about accountability and implementation for this, the reality is that oil demand is rising. What we need to kind of see is what else governments can do to intervene on the demand front. Because until we bend that demand curve, we're not going to really see the acceleration of the transition that we want to see. And what happens when governments change? I mean, you're talking about the United States being an important player in setting these goals and following through. But of course, there's a presidential election coming in the United States, and the leading Republican contender doesn't have so much of an interest

in these kinds of policies. I never understood wind, and I know windmills very much. I've studied it better than anybody. I know it's very expensive. They're made in China and Germany, mostly. Very few made here, almost none. But they're manufactured tremendous, if you're into this, tremendous fumes, gases are spewing into the atmosphere. You know, we have a world, right? So the world is tiny compared to the universe. I think that the election in the U.S. is definitely a risk to this process. And, you know, if Donald Trump gets elected president and, you know, acts in any way like he did in his first term, pulling out of the Paris Agreement, stripping away pollution regulation, trying to roll back tax credits for clean energy, that sort of thing. I mean, that certainly is not going to help the U.S. get to these goals. I would add, though, that compared even to Trump's last term in office, that the economic conditions

of this energy transition are very different. The cost of renewables is much lower. And I think at this point, there's just enough momentum behind this that any company sees the direction that the global economy is going. And there's no rolling back from here. We're seeing EVs more every day. Good to know there's one that can still make people say, You don't see that every day because it's the only EV. That's an F-150. So to that extent, that makes me feel like the U.S. election, for example, is less important in this process because this stuff is going to move ahead either way. So perhaps even more counterintuitively, you're saying if you don't have faith in governments, have faith in capitalism. I do. Yeah. I mean, I think that

companies that are in this energy transition space see the direction of travel and don't want to be left behind and want to figure out a way to survive there. And I think one thing you're going to potentially see as a result of that, which, you know, may be also challenging for climate politics, is that there could be some more kind of energy price volatility in the near term. I mean, you know, there's going to be some bumps along the road in all of this still going forward. I think it's easy to read about all these COP summits and sort of despair because it never seems like enough is happening. It never feels like everyone's fully on board. But here we have COP28 and you've got a historic agreement.

You've got everyone, unanimous decision to regulate fossil fuels, to do it by a deadline, to make it equitable. It sounds good, but then you're telling us people still want gas, people still want oil. There's economic factors. It's sensitive to industry. It's sensitive to politics. You were there. I mean, should people despair or should people feel hopeful? Well, I've been covering climate change for almost 15 years. So this question looms large over my life as a climate journalist. I think that people should feel hopeful, honestly. That is not to say that there are not challenges ahead or that there are not climate impacts ahead

because there definitely are. And we have not seen the worst of this. It's going to get worse from here. That is unavoidable. So that is scary. And that's the world that we live in. But I do think that there is momentum building around the transition and the solutions that are needed. We have it within our ability as a kind of global society or global

economy to take actions that really have a dramatic impact on what the future is going to look like. And we can do those things and we're doing some of them now. So I do take hope from that. Tim McDonald, hopeful. He's awaiting your angry emails and tweets at Semaphore. This is Today Explained from Vox. Our show was produced by Isabel Angel and Victoria Chamberlain. We were edited by Miranda Kennedy,

fact-checked by Laura Bullard and mixed by David Herman. We'll have more for you tomorrow.