Category: COP28_CN NEWS_NEWS

Global heat has seared to new extremes in recent months, and devastating climate disasters are providing powerful reminders of the costs of climate change, as governments around the world prepare for the 2023 United Nations climate summit that starts on Nov. 30. While a small window of hope remains for meeting the goals of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the world’s greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.

Tens of thousands of people from around the world will descend on Dubai this week for the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. The United Arab Emirates, a major oil producer, is hosting this year’s summit, known as COP28. It comes as top scientists warn the world is far off track from meeting its climate goals.

President Biden will not attend a major United Nations climate summit that begins Thursday in Dubai, skipping an event expected to be attended by King Charles III, Pope Francis and leaders from nearly 200 countries, a White House official said Sunday. The official, who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, did not give a reason Mr. Biden will not make an appearance at the two-week summit, known as COP28.

Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber is the President-Designate of the upcoming United Nations climate summit in Dubai, or COP28. He’s also head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company. Recently he said “we have to change course to address climate change,” a familiar mantra for a fossil fuel industry that’s expressed solidarity with net-zero goals.

Even before visitors leave the baggage claim here, they have a sense of the vision the United Arab Emirates wants to project: A billboard-sized image shows rows of solar panels extending across the desert. The country’s leaders tout a “groundbreaking” transition to a green economy. Even the UAE’s oil company frames itself as a climate-conscious pioneer, with a plan to be net zero by 2045.

Climate change lawsuits have now joined the ranks of impact litigation. Just as claims against the tobacco industry led to a major transformation in the way cigarette sellers were required to do business, and claims against opioid manufacturers have led to multimillion-dollar settlements, an emerging run of success in climate change litigation has fueled hopes that Big Oil will soon be called to account—and, perhaps, change or die. In short, a number of cases stand to shake up the climate crisis debate in unprecedented ways.

The planet marked an ominous milestone Friday: The first day global warmth crossed a threshold, if only briefly, that climate scientists have warned could have calamitous consequences. Preliminary data show global temperatures averaged more than 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above a historic norm, from a time before humans started consuming fossil fuels and emitting planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The hurricanes keep coming, and the people, too: The fastest-growing places along the Atlantic coast this century are also among the most hurricane-prone. Between 2016 and 2022, the five hurricanes that hit the Carolinas cost the two states over $33 billion in damages in current dollars, displaced hundreds of thousands of people and led to the deaths of more than 90, government data shows.

Yesterday, Nov. 18, 2023, the planet’s temperature went past the 2.0 degree Celsius barrier for the first time. It’s temporary—but it’s a terrible reminder that we’re now in the desperate end game for global warming. And yet no one noticed because—unavoidably—the world’s attention is riveted on the horrors in Gaza.

The history of climate denial is such a gripping story, isn’t it? Some distinct group of people knew that society was on a collision course with nature, had the information needed to course-correct and instead chose to drive society toward collapse. There are good guys and bad guys, absolutely clownish villains, outrageous lies and a horrible, murderous outcome…a crime, as I’ve been saying for several years. I caught the bug too, that’s why the first season of Drilled was about climate denial. But pretty quickly I realized that this strategy would never have worked, or at least never have worked so quickly and so well, had it been the first PR strategy the industry embraced.