Saudi Arabia Is Trying to Block a Global Deal to End Fossil Fuels, Negotiators Say
Saudi Arabia Is Trying to Block a Global Deal to End Fossil Fuels, Negotiators Say
The world’s leading oil exporter has become the most forceful opponent of a new agreement at the U.N. climate summit, according to people inside the talks.
The Saudi delegation has flatly opposed any language in a deal that would even mention fossil fuels — the oil, gas and coal that, when burned, create emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. Saudi negotiators have also objected to a provision, endorsed by at least 118 countries, aimed at tripling global renewable energy capacity by 2030.
Is there a legitimate reason why « we » globally care about their opinion ?
The Saudis own entire economies. They aren't even listed on the world's richest people because they own the mechanism that those people operate in.
They produce a lot of oil, they can easily influence oil prices, and thereby influence elections.
Piss off the Saudis, they reduce output, prices go up, idiots everywhere vote for the other guy who's willing to suck their dick.
Eg. 2022 US midterms they used oil as a weapon against the democrats, losing them the house.
One more reason for renewables so sucking the dicks of dictators can't help you win elections as easy as that
The rules on the talks require consensus, and the president of the talks is an oil executive from another petrostate and likely to interpret a requirement for consensus as a requirement for unanimity
Stop including SA in climate talks. Diversify or die.
When your economy is made of 1 sector.
I mean, the world economy moving away from petroleum-based fuels would make them mostly geopolitically irrelevant (the exception being that Mecca is (currently) in Saudi Arabia), so this isn’t terribly surprising.
You're right about their motivations, but I think geopolitics gives absolutely zero shits about Mecca. Just like with Israel, religion is sometimes used as rhetorical justification, but ultimately it's about power. Invoking religion is another political move as a shield against their cynicism.
Like just look at how these sentiments tend go: "we are fighting for our holy land because we are righteous; they are fighting over their holy land because they are simpleminded and superstitious". It's just flag waving. It's such easily manipulated rhetoric that it can work to any end, so of course it gets deployed.
It's no more meaningful to the people in power than any other culture war issue. They care about it exactly as much as they care about the green M&M.
Edit: I mentioned Israel, and I realise a lot of people still don't understand this, but when the US invokes religious duty as their reasons for supporting Israel, it's cynical. Biden made the real reason abundantly clear decades ago, and he has not walked this back: https://youtube.com/shorts/2HZs-v0PR44?si=vBjdkrzWB5xAWJ7u
He literally says it's about "values", then immediately says they'd have to invent an Israel. He made it clear decades ago that was purely for US geopolitics.
I don't understand why a unanimous final statement is so important for the COP. Making big compromises to appease OPEC will send a devastating signal to the people in Europe, America and so on. This will accelerate the loss of trust in politics in these countries. Why not let the talks fail and announce a big multilateral agreement the next day uniting the Americas, Europe and China? This will send a strong message and will bring us forward in climate politics.
Saudi Arabia is taking the fall for the other oil-producing nations (or the corporations that own those nations), allowing them all to ignore climate change entirely. This way they can all point to Saudi Arabia and say, "Blame them, not us! We did everything we could, but Saudi Arabia just wouldn't let us come to an agreement. Oh, well. Too bad. Maybe next time."
COP28 is a fake climate conference led by oil billionaires and fossil fuel execs. Their only goal is to exert control on the global messaging around climate change. They will never agree to meaningful change. We need to be calling it out as the charade it is and demand a legitimate conference that excludes fossil fuel execs and billionaires entirely. There is no "self-regulation". They need to be regulated by force of laws, not empty promises and fake climate summits.
COP28 is a fake climate conference led by oil billionaires and fossil fuel execs.
That's my point, just let it fail and prepare an agreement without the oil execs. Multilateral agreements happen all the time, why should COP be the only possibility to make climate politics happen?
It makes sense that they would take the position. It is just odd that the effects of global warming hasn't hit their populations either.
How long could they insulate their populations from the worst of it?
For as long as the rest of the world is subsidizing their public works
They don't need to insulate the population, just the ruling house and the oil sector. The rest of the country is basically disposable, that's the nature of the resource curse.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading exporter of oil, has become the biggest obstacle to an agreement at the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where countries are debating whether to call for a phaseout of fossil fuels in order to fight global warming, negotiators and other officials said.
A group of nations led by small islands, whose countries are most vulnerable to sea level rise and other climate-fueled extreme weather events, want the summit to adopt a formal statement that the era of coal, oil and natural gas should soon come to an end.
In particular, oil- and gas-rich nations in the Persian Gulf appear to view the challenge to the future of fossil fuels, a resource that has brought their governments and royal families extraordinary wealth, as a threat as existential as climate change itself.
Frustrated Saudis often point out that oil production in the United States is surging and that, during the energy crisis brought on by the war in Ukraine, some European countries turned to coal-fired power plants.
Despite decades of trying to break the so-called “resource curse,” Saudi Arabia remains highly dependent on revenue from fossil fuels to sustain its economy, its government budget and its political stability.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is spending tens of billions of dollars to try to diversify the Saudi economy, investing in industries like renewable energy, tourism, entertainment and artificial intelligence.
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