COP28 and the Limits of Eco Modernism

Source: COP28 and the Limits of Eco Modernism

by Amy Westervelt….

Lately I’ve been looking through old emails from when I reported a lot on cleantech. It’s disorienting to see press releases from summer 2023 echo the same promises people made about markets and tech back in 2006. Bigger story on this coming soon, but it’s particularly stark in the case of the United Arab Emirates and its renewable energy company, Masdar. Which of course is worth taking a look at in the context of COP28 being hosted by UAE and presided over by Dr. Sultan Al Jaber, the former head (and current board chair) of Masdar, who is now the CEO of the country’s national oil company, Adnoc.

Al Jaber’s appointment as COP president has been something of a flashpoint—the cilantro of the climate movement as it were, with people like John Kerry, Mike Bloomberg and Bill Gates proclaiming him a terrific choice, while Senators Whitehouse and Markey, along with a long list of climate advocates, agitating for his removal from the position given the clear conflict of interest inherent to an oil CEO presiding over a climate conference. Christiana Figueres’ mea culpa thrown into the mix after decades of promoting oil CEOs as climate allies has served to underscore a turning point for international climate negotiations: either continue to allow the fossil fuel industry to dictate terms on climate action or chart a new path. But it’s hard to know what that new path would even be; the fossil fuel industry has been shaping and influencing not only COP but also the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since their inception. The story of Masdar is quite helpful for thinking through this thorny question