As things stand, the draft conclusions of COP 28 in Dubai doesn’t include any mention of a phase-out of fossil fuels, and is limited to briefly mentioning “a fair, orderly and equitable reduction”, as if that were not the equivalent of the greatest crime ever committed against humanity.
Saudi Arabia’s total opposition, as the most prominent member of OPEC, to signing absolutely anything containing those words, with the complicity of the UAE’s Sultan Al Jaber as director of this year’s climate conference, has produced a decaffeinated draft, which, as Al Gore rightly comments is “of the petrostates, by the petrostates and for the petrostates”.