Matt Ridley: Hypocrisy is too feeble a word for the gulf between what world leaders preach at Cop28 and how much they still rely on fossil fuels

By Paul Homewood

 

As for predictable, do they take us for fools? After 27 previous Cop conferences we knew how this pantomime in Dubai would go.

Breakthrough! Deep into their umpteenth sleepless night of hard bargaining, the delegates at the Cop28 meeting in Dubai managed to upgrade a verb in their final deal.

Instead of saying nations ‘could’ take action, the agreement ‘calls on’ them to take action. Incredible! Cue rapturous applause and a standing ovation as representatives from 197 countries approved the historic ‘UAE Consensus’ on climate change.

‘There’s stronger verb forms but I think it does send a strong signal nonetheless,’ crowed a delegate from the World Resources Institute.

This verb miracle — alongside language about ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems [electricity, heating, transport and industry] in a just, orderly and equitable manner’ — is as futile as it was predictable. It’s futile because it will lead to the cancellation of precisely zero coal-fired power stations or oil-exploration plans.

China and India, despite spouting the Cop catechism, are between them approving the equivalent of a new coal plant every two or three days.

In America, which led calls to transition away from fossil fuels, oil and gas production has never been higher: it now produces far more oil than Saudi Arabia. Brazil — while demanding the phasing out of fossil fuels — plans to become the world’s largest oil producer by 2030.

Hypocrisy is too feeble a word for this gap between preaching and practice.

As for predictable, do they take us for fools? After 27 previous Cop conferences we knew how this pantomime in Dubai would go.

As surely as night follows day, 98,000 gas-guzzling delegates, many of them arriving by private jet, would engage in a fortnight-long ordeal of hotel room service and then issue dire warnings of a breakdown. As expected, Saudi Arabia and other oil-producing nations would be reluctant to commit to the phase-out of fossil fuels. Yet, after a long night of haggling, a bleary-eyed announcement of a triumph would be greeted with hyperbole by an emotional BBC reporter. For the 28th time.

Remember that at Cop17 in Durban 12 years ago, world leaders agreed that by 2015 they would sign a legally binding treaty — not a voluntary one — to reduce emissions, which would apply to the whole world and come into force by 2020. Yet, at Cop21 in 2015 in Paris they decided instead to present as a great breakthrough a series of entirely voluntary and empty national promises, few of which have ever been implemented.

At the time I pointed this failure out in the House of Lords, saying that Paris therefore represented the end of a 20-year attempt to get agreement to legally binding emissions targets, leaving Britain as the only country with such a target.

For this sin of criticising the agreement, thereby raining on his parade, the minister — a colleague from my own party — chose to liken me to North Korea, the only state to stand apart from the Cop deal. Eight years on, the statistics on continually rising emissions show I was right and he was wrong.

So yesterday I celebrated the news of the breakthrough on verbs in Dubai by choosing a second-hand diesel car to replace my existing one. No, I am not being cynical: the data is clear that my emissions of carbon dioxide will be lower that way than if I had chosen a battery-electric vehicle.

According to Volkswagen’s calculations, in a typical European country such is the up-front carbon footprint of batteries and electricity that I would have to drive an electric car 80,000 miles before I would even start to save emissions, compared with an existing diesel — let alone one of the more efficient new ones. And I tend to trade in cars at 50,000 miles. So I am doing my bit by not buying electric.

In the year 2000, according to the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy, 84 per cent of the world’s primary energy came from fossil fuels. Last year, after 23 years of transitioning away from fossil fuels — and 27 interminable Cop conferences since 1995 — that number was… 82 per cent. At this rate it will take us till the year 3909AD to give up fossil fuels. No wonder a large chunk of the population thinks these talks are futile nonsense.

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