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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

The world’s biggest climate change summit, COP, or the Conference of the Parties, has a bold vision - to bring nations together to negotiate and find solutions for the climate crisis.

This year’s COP, however, has been clouded by controversy, and faced criticisms over becoming a corporate wasteland, filled with influencers and fossil fuel lobbyists.

So, has the summit strayed from its vision?

Today, climate leadership expert from the University of Melbourne, Linh Do, who is in Dubai at COP28, on the goals and the pitfalls of the world’s biggest climate conference.

It’s Monday, December 11.

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ANGE:

Linh, the UAE is one of the world's biggest oil and gas producers, and it's next door to Saudi Arabia, the home of the world's biggest oil company. It seems kind of like an ironic place to host a global climate summit. Has that irony struck you while being there?

LINH:

I think the irony strikes you the moment that you land at the airport and you catch a taxi to your hotel where you're just driving through a lot of desert. You look to your left and you see a huge gas plant. You look to your right and you see a huge shopping mall.

And really, unfortunately, that irony doesn't stop once you're inside the conference centre as well. I've been describing it like Burning Man.

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“Hello and welcome to Dubai and the United Nations Climate Conference COP28.”

LINH:

There are over 300 pavilions here, which is effectively different countries, different organisations effectively hosting their own mini conference within a much larger conference.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“It’s day 1 at the COP28 event…time for us to register. The blue zone is where the register is taking place, it’s a great day to network guys. World leaders, industry players, everyone is in here.”

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“I’m here at COP28 to represent the World of Fashion, it’s one of the most harmful industries in the world to the planet, I don’t think enough people really know that...”

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“purify your intentions, emit an energy of love and empathy and stop overcomplicating the world that we live in.”

LINH:

Technically we're meant to be here for negotiations, following what governments are doing and trying to hold them to account. But at any one point in time you potentially have 200 other events that you could be going to, tens of thousands of people that you could stumble across and have a chance conversation with.

There are a whole bunch of people that are effectively here for the trade show element. And whilst one part of me wants to be really optimistic about that and say, Oh, it's so exciting, so many people are interested in climate change, the deeply cynical part of me says, there's 50 other weeks in the year where you could be committed to climate action or pushing forward some of these other things that businesses are announcing which are equally as important.

ANGE:

COP has obviously evolved over time, you’ve been to a fair few of them yourself. If we compare this year to previous years, how far COP has strayed do you think from its original purpose or vision?

LINH:

What the event now is, is so fundamentally different to what it once was. So I first went to my COP and I'm going to date myself here in 2009. There were 30,000 people who were registered to attend the conference and without a doubt, that was the largest thing that I had ever been to in my life.

And in 2015, with the negotiations in Paris, which saw a really big global agreement, there were 45,000 people there.

This year there are 84,000 people to date that have gone through the conference centre entry points.

So COP stands for the Conference of Parties. And I'm explaining that now because I have had to explain that at least six other times whilst I've been here on the ground, I've had people ask me, Well, when did the negotiation start? And I was like, oh so negotiations officially started on day one of the conference, but actually is the culmination of a year long effort of various other bilateral and multilateral, like, you know, negotiating meetings that people have.

And so once upon a time, COP was a really, it was a realm for the wonky, it was the realm for people interested in policy and getting out their highlighter or their red pen, whereas now COP is to a degree about who can you get a selfie with in terms of the many climate celebrities that are floating around what, you know, free goodies might you be given at any one point in time? And if I'm being generous, what's something new that you could potentially learn, which is, I think, really fundamentally different to the origin of what we're meant to be doing here.

ANGE:

Let's talk about what the point of COP is, because my understanding of it as someone who isn't, you know, there or reporting on it directly is basically a chance for governments around the world to come together in one place and negotiate global solutions to climate change. Right. So what are the big issues at the top of the agenda this time around at COP?

LINH:

So one of the things that happened on the very first day of the conference was that there was a lot of discussion about what would it look like to operationalise a loss and damage fund.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“Rich countries have pledged around half a billion US dollars to help the most vulnerable countries cope with climate change.”

LINH:

Loss and damage is a concept that has been gaining a lot of traction over the last decade.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“A new loss and damage fund will help offset the long term impact of rising sea levels and extreme weather events such as flooding, droughts and wildfires.”

LINH:

And it was last year at the U.N. climate change negotiations where it became an official part of the negotiations. And people agreed to essentially in principle this notion that we need to fund countries to help them deal with the impacts of climate change in recognition of who has been responsible for this issue and who haven’t necessarily contributed to climate change, but are definitely dealing with the consequences.

So I think there's a lot of people that are really happy that on day one, countries agreed to and settled on a structure and a process for that fund, which effectively means starting next year, money can actually get out of the door and on the ground to start implementing various climate adaptation resilience funding.

And Australia is yet to actually make a pledge. We've committed some money to the Pacific Resilience Facility, which provides financial support to our closest neighbours, and also to the Green Climate Fund, which is another mechanism that's been set up. But we haven't yet contributed to the loss and damage fund.

ANGE:

And one of the other major discussions happening is around the future of fossil fuels and whether they should be phased down or phased out. Can you explain what the difference is, and why there's this contention around the language or phrasing of that goal?

LINH:

Everything at the UN is about language and nuance. And what to you and me might sound like. “Surely we're talking about the same thing here” is definitely not the case because it indicates something in the subtext. So one of the really big things that's coming out of this COP is this role of are we phasing out or phasing down fossil fuels? And exactly how do we ensure that we're also addressing the situation that is continuing to make climate change worse as well.

So a phase down in many ways lacks any specificity. So if the language is phase down versus phase out, it means that we're essentially giving countries leeway until 2050 to be phasing down to some undetermined number what their fossil fuel usage is.

Where is the phase out is really clear. There is a clear hard end goal with there phasing out means that we are looking to get to 0% usage of fossil fuels. And that is what a small but growing number of countries are pushing for and advocating for as well.

ANGE:

After the break- the controversial oil CEO in charge of COP28.

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ANGE:

Linh, this year’s COP has been the subject of a lot of criticism, over who’s in charge of it and where it is… Can you explain what those criticisms are and where they’re coming from?

LINH:

So this conference is very controversially being presided over by the CEO of an oil company, Sultan Al Jaber.

Audio excerpt – Sultan Al Jaber:

“Welcome to the United Arab Emirates, to Dubai and to COP28.”

LINH:

This sultan is fairly controversial.

Audio excerpt – Sultan Al Jaber:

“Energy is our friend, it runs everything we rely on. From phones, to factories. It keeps our homes…actually, it keeps your homes warm and our homes cool.”

LINH:

So I think sometimes you wonder, oh, maybe the people working in oil and gas are trying to just, you know, create change from within. Whereas, unfortunately, we have a president overseeing a climate conference saying that there's no science to back up the calls to phase out fossil fuels to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Reported by The Guardian and centre for climate reporting, Sultan Al Jaber made the comments in an online event ahead of the summit.”

Audio excerpt – Sultan Al Jaber:

“I'm not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. I am factual and I respect the science. And 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, 1.5 is minor.”

LINH:

Yet another controversy leading into the conference was some reporting about leaked documents that basically said the UAE, particularly this president, was using this COP to make fossil fuel deals with 15 different nations.

And even though that's been denied we won't know if some of the new fossil fuel projects that we'll hear being announced in the next 18 months if they originated during this conference or not.

But I think it says a lot about the overarching feeling that people have coming into this conference, which is one of just a lot of skepticism and frustration around how can we progress things towards climate action or climate justice when you can't trust the leadership in question?

So in addition to this COP being held in a petrostate. We're surrounded by a whole bunch of people that also work in oil and gas.

Audio excerpt – Amy Goodman (Democracy Now):

“A record 2500 lobbyists are registered to attend this year, nearly 4 times as many as last year.”

LINH:

The presence of fossil fuel lobbyists is not hard to miss when you're on the ground, because these 2,456 individuals that are connected to the oil and gas industries in some way, shape or form.

Audio excerpt – Amy Goodman (Democracy Now):

“They’re from companies like Shell, Total and ExxonMobil, they outnumber the delegations of every country except Brazil.”

LINH:

One of the really effective campaigns that I've actually seen run, an organisation has been handing out these little pins that say not a fossil fuel lobbyist because it almost feels like you need to declare that's not what I'm actually here to do.

ANGE:

And how are these criticisms about the influence of fossil fuel lobbyists at COP being addressed by leaders.. but also by the fossil fuel industry?

Audio excerpt – Al Gore:

“This industry is way more effective at capturing politicians than they are at capturing emissions.”

LINH:

Before the pandemic, I worked for climate reality, which was Al Gore's leadership program in Australia and globally. And one of the things that he always sort of really tried to impress upon people was that everyone has a role to play in addressing climate action, and that included the fossil fuel industry as well.

Audio excerpt – Al Gore:

“They have captured the COP process itself now and overreached, abusing the public's trust by naming the CEO of one of the largest and least responsible oil companies in the world as head of the COP.”

LINH:

One of the things that I think hosting this COP in the UAE and some of the hypocrisy that's come out has seen not just him, but many other leaders and activists and at times even governments really frustrated at that. And I think speaking out much more publicly about the fossil fuel industry than people would have done even five years ago.

Audio excerpt – Unknown:

“I've got to show you this comment that the ABC got from the mining magnate from Australia, Andrew Twiggy Forrest. He wants to have a go at the oil and gas executives. He thinks that they're just making money instead of worrying about the planet.”

Audio excerpt – Andrew Forrest:

“It's their heads which should be put off on spikes because they wilfully ignored and they didn't care. If the COP doesn’t lead to a phase out of fossil fuels, it's basically a flop.”

LINH:

And I think it says a lot when one of Australia’s wealthiest people, one of our largest mining magnates is coming out against the fossil fuel industry as well.

ANGE:

So Linh the Australian Government has been campaigning pretty hard to host COP31 in a few years time, in 2026. But as we've been talking about, being the host country actually opens you up to a lot of scrutiny about your own climate record and dealings. As a country that's still opening up new fossil fuel projects. How ready would Australia be to both handle that scrutiny and deliver on genuine climate solutions?

LINH:

I don't think that the Australian Government is ready for what it means, but I'm really excited by the opportunity that it presents. The Government is going to have to start implementing different policies domestically, but also start engaging with these international processes in a more sort of wholesome enforcement way as well.

Given Australia exports more fossil fuels than the UAE, it's highly unlikely that the world stage will not result in the exposing of things that we currently don't necessarily know is happening. And I think that level of scrutiny means that we can use it as an opportunity to accelerate the pace of change that is currently occurring.

Right now we're doing a lot of very good work in terms of, you know, investing the money in developing new renewable energy projects. And that is fundamentally, really key in addressing and implementing climate action.

But some of what we're not doing, the phasing out of fossil fuels, contributing to the loss and damage fund, means that we don't have a commitment to climate justice. And I don't think Australia can hand on heart honestly host this COP with a commitment to climate action. If we're not also committed to climate justice.

ANGE:

LINH, thanks so much for your time.

LINH:

Thank you.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today,

The Minister for Climate Change and Energy, Chris Bowen, has indicated Australia may support an agreement at COP for a phase out of fossil fuels.

The negotiations over a phase out have not been finalised yet, but Minister Bowen said he wanted Australia to make “a big step forward on the language on phasing out of fossil fuels”.

And

Azerbaijan has been named as the host country for the next conference of the parties, COP29.

Azerbaijan relies heavily on fossil fuels, as gas and oil production makes up nearly half of the country’s GDP.

I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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