How Big Oil is Taking Us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride - TomDispatch.com

How Big Oil is Taking Us for a Fossil-Fuelized Ride - TomDispatch.com Juan Cole, Greenwashing the Planet December 19, 2023 [Note to TomDispatch Readers: I’ve been moved by the generosity of so many of you in response to my recent all-too-desperate winter letter laying out the crisis this website faces, having lost a key source of its funding. Yet when it comes to contributions, in these days before I shut the site briefly for the end of the year, life here always means needing more and TD does indeed need more of your $$$ to get through 2024! As ever, should you decide to help us navigate another strange year on this endangered planet of ours, just go to our donation page and do your damnedest, knowing that I truly will be forever grateful. Tom] Yes, "the world" just gathered in the United Arab Emirates, a major oil producer, to decide the fate of our planet. And among those attending COP28 were at least 1,300 fossil-fuel lobbyists (three times the number at the previous year's climate summit), and possibly as many as 2,500 of them, along with the Saudis, the U.S., and other oil-producing states. Oh, and don't forget those "at least 166 climate deniers and fossil fuel public relations professionals" that, according to the Guardian, were also lending a helping hand. The lead-up to this climate summit was, of course, the hottest six straight months in human history. Still, those lobbyists, climate-change deniers, fossil-fuel company representatives, and oil, coal, and natural gas states represent a world in which fossil-fuel production is still expanding. Meanwhile, China, the largest user of coal on the planet, continues to build new coal-fired power plants at a record rate. In the end, the climate conference agreed not to agree on "phasing out" fossil fuels but all too vaguely on “transitioning away" from them. That's more like deciding to phase down humanity. But perhaps John Silk, the minister of natural resources for the Marshall Islands, those atolls in the Pacific that are likely to be early victims of climate-change-driven rising sea levels, should have the last word in this introduction -- before the remarkable Juan Cole of the must-read Informed Comment website offers his views on just how Big Energy of every sort is greenwashing this planet. At COP28, Silk said, "The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant. What we have seen today is totally unacceptable. We will not go silently to our watery graves." Nor should the rest of us. Tom