World climate summit: Trendy vibes ... and an existential threat

If climate change had a festival, sort of a Burning Man meets Dreamforce meets World Cup, but with undercurrents of existential anxiety, it would probably look something like COP. 

That’s the annual United Nations gathering, or Conference of Parties, that is being held this week and next in the United Arab Emirates, an event that has evolved from a buttoned-up meeting of scientists and diplomats into a slick, 70,000-person, world’s fair-like summit. (With, as scientists point out, the ecological future of the world at stake.) 

U.N. representatives and heads of state jostle alongside business executives and activists, journalists and protesters in the ultramodern city of Dubai. Keeping them busy are panel discussions, art exhibits, research presentations, and receptions, not to mention backroom negotiations, all focused on the challenges of – and possible solutions to – a rapidly heating world. 

Despite the buzzy, Davos-in-the-desert feel, with princes and figures like Bill Gates heading sessions in front of high-tech LED screens, the heart of the gathering is still the crucial negotiations among U.N. members about how to respond to climate change. 

And this year, these conversations are taking on even more urgency. Humans are noticing the effects of climate change like never before. And what’s happening here goes far beyond the performative. The cycle of annual summits – all the talks and the commitments that result from them – are viewed by many as the world’s best current mechanism for acting collectively on what’s increasingly seen as a planetary emergency. 

“COP28 is coming at the end of a year that has really been defined by the climate crisis,” said John Podesta, senior adviser to U.S. President Joe Biden for clean energy innovation and implementation, referring to the summit’s acronym and the countries’ 28th such meeting. 

The hottest day on record happened this past July 4, he pointed out. July was the hottest month ever recorded, and 2023 is poised to be the hottest year on record. Climate-related disasters cost the United States billions of dollars this year, he said. Other regions have been equally, if not more, affected, with flooding and fires, storms and droughts. 

“Earth’s vital signs are failing,” warned U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres Friday at the opening of the conference.

In 2015, at the COP gathering in Paris, countries agreed to take measures to keep warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the number scientists say may limit the most catastrophic effects of global warming. But U.N. analyses show that the world is not on track to meet this goal. Diplomats at this year’s COP will participate in what’s known as a “global stocktake,” basically a review of how the world is doing when it comes to climate action and an agreed-upon road map for addressing any gaps. 

But the “how” becomes a big question – and, this year, the cause of quite a bit of drama.

Advocates for climate action have expressed dismay at the growing number of fossil fuel industry representatives attending COP; this year, the president of the conference is Sultan al-Jaber, CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

These advocates worry about efforts to shift the storyline of climate action from the elimination of fossil fuels, which are responsible for about 75% of all greenhouse gas emissions, to decarbonization. That word is increasingly favored by industry to describe a future in which oil and gas production continue, but with new technology to minimize carbon emissions. (This carbon capture technology, while widely considered an essential tool against climate change, has yet to prove its effectiveness.)

Peter Dejong/AP

A person poses for a photo with Vilmar Avelino Nezokemaese, of Brazil, at the COP28 U.N. climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Dec. 4, 2023.

There is also a sense among delegates that this year’s summit has morphed into something slicker, and more elitist, than previous conferences. VIP attendees, from philanthropists to tech moguls to heads of state, announce pledges and then retreat to plush lounges that only the 1% of the 1% can enter. Advocates worry that the highly produced announcements distract from the gritty, necessary efforts to combat and adjust to climate change.

But for all the controversies and inside-baseball maneuvering (watch for heated discussions about a fossil fuel “phasedown” versus a “phaseout,” or about whether the world works to eliminate fossil fuel emissions or “unabated” fossil fuel emissions), the point remains that facing climate change requires global cooperation.

“Addressing climate change is a global collective problem and a global collective challenge,” says Nathan Cogswell, research analyst with the World Resources Institute. “This process is really an opportunity for governments to get together to discuss strategies and plans and tactics and ways that they can collectively work on addressing the challenges.”

And only a few days into COP, there have been points of progress. 

Soon after the conference opened, world leaders agreed to set up a fund to help lower income-countries, which are disproportionately affected by climate change even though they didn’t cause it. 

This weekend, John Kerry, U.S. climate envoy, said the Biden administration would commit to not build any new coal plants and to phase down existing coal operations. COP countries agreed on grant funding of more than $1 billion to reduce emissions of methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas. They also pledged money to climate-friendly agriculture.

“There’s real power in having people, communities, governments come together,” Mr. Cogswell says. “To hear the moral calls from small islands, to hear the calls for greater action, and the need to address this crisis with everything we have, with all of society, and to hear the commitment that so many people and governments and communities have to do just that is extremely powerful.”

Stephanie Hanes reported from Northampton, Massachusetts, and Taylor Luck reported from Dubai.