COP fest: ‘Oil’-Jaber the hutt & headmaster Guterres

The annual COP fest is underway again – this time with 70,000 participants and unlimited gyaan in Dubai. Already there’s been a good kerfuffle. The Guardian reported last week that in an online event in November, COP president and head of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, Ahmed Al Jaber, had stated there is ‘no science out there’ that says that a phase-out of fossil fuels will achieve restricting global heating to 1.5° C. The Guardian doesn’t like rich people. So, it was up to Al Jaber to explain that his words had been taken out of context. It’s another matter that the requisite level of fossil fuel fade-out seems to be as much on track as India has of reaching the football World Cup finals. Perhaps breakthrough tech was what ‘oil’-Jaber was hinting at.

And there’s UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and his curse of the gab. On Monday, he reminded developed countries to show how they plan to double adaptation finance to $40 billion a year by 2025, and clarify how they would deliver on the promised $100 billion. These two questions have been hanging in the air COP after COP like a koala on the eucalyptus tree. Guterres sounds like a headmaster in an assembly of impatient kids on the last day of school before holiday sets in. No one’s replying, tipping points and Guardian reporters wearing ‘The End is Nigh’ sandwich boards be damned.