COP 28 - 289

 "The true test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

 F. Scott Fitzgerald

The United Nations Conference of Parties, COP28, ended in Dubai last week. Was the conference a COP OUT or a fantastic feat? The UN climate conferences aim to find ways to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. By doing this, we can slow and eventually stop the rapid rise in global temperatures.

Dubai is one of seven emirates of the United Arab Emirates, UAE. An emirate is simply a little dictatorship nation run by a Sheik.

The UAE borders Saudi Arabia and floats on the world's largest oil reserve from which these countries have accumulated unimaginable wealth or "capital." In a world whose economic rule book is titled "Capitalism," the Arab dictators of the UAE and Saudi Arabia are the biggest winners in history. That is, if we judge success by the accumulation of wealth.

When I heard the Oil Sheik of Dubai was hosting COP 28, I wrote the effort off as a waste of time and money. The idea that anything positive could come out of this place was beyond my imagination. I did not hold onto opposing thoughts well. I tuned out.

Could something positive come out of Dubai? I thought not, and here is why. One way to learn about a place is to read about it; another is to explore it. While working with the Navy's Sealift command, I visited Dubai several times. During this time, I could explore much of the city with fellow pilots and mechanics as we walked and biked down many paths few tourists have trodden. 

From these explorations and shared experiences, I learned many things about the city/state of Dubai.

In Dubai, the Shiek owns nearly all the land and is the political dictator whose goal is to build a city based on consumerism and extravagance that makes Las Vegas look like a dusty one-horse town.

You do not often see Arabs on the street in the UAE. It is too hot, and there are not many of them. Only a little over 10% of the population are native Arab citizens. Of the 10%, half are women. Culturally, it is frowned upon for Arab women to be in public unless a male relative accompanies them. The rules for women vary between the Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but women in America would have a tough time in that part of the world.

Most of the native UAE citizens you see, if any, are robed men getting out of their chauffeured air-conditioned Mercedes within a quick walk to their air-conditioned skyscraper.

The economy generally employs European and American engineers, Asian bureaucrats, and Indian and Pakistani laborers. The laborers live in crowded conditions and work in temperatures I am sure would kill me in short order.

Like here, there is a criminal underworld. The Muslim religion prohibits prostitution, but there is prostitution in Dubai.

Before I flew into Dubai for the first time, I called a friend who had traveled there before. He said you will not believe what you are going to experience.

 If you have ever walked through a red-light district, you know you will probably be propositioned. In Dubai, the whole town was a red-light district. I was propositioned more times in a few hours than in all my other travels. Those first two hours in Dubai make for an entertaining story you may want me to tell. The whole story, though, is only rated PG, if that.

Here is the darker side of this story. A friend of mine struck up a relationship with a Russian prostitute that went a little beyond the normal transactional relationship. Her English was good, and they spent a lot of time chatting. He was curious how she ended up in Dubai.

She said a Russian employment agency recruited her for secretarial work with promises of good pay. In short, she was deceived. The recruiters were Russian mobsters who put her on the streets of Dubai after taking her passport. She was threatened that if she did not perform as told, her family back in Russia would suffer.

There is little in the UAE not tracked. If something makes money the Shiek gets a cut.  The prostitution of non-Arab women (human trafficking), makes money.  

I thought I was worldly. I knew in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, individual rights such as the freedoms of assembly, association, the press, expression, and religion are often severely repressed. But the hypocrisy of trafficking non-Arab women into Dubai for sex work infuriated me. If evil has a multiplier, it is hypocrisy.

COP 28 looked like another evil COP-OUT. The conference president was the CEO of the UAE oil company. He had recently overseen a UAE business plan to expand drilling. Could anything good come of COP28 with a hypocritical conflict of interest like that?

 The young climate activists, especially the AOSIS members who tirelessly petitioned for something meaningful, have my respect. They did not flinch in the face of this hypocrisy. AOSIS is the Alliance of Small Island States. (totaling 39 plus 5 observer nations.) These nations have an unenviable fate. If we do not stop burning fossil fuels, they are going under rising oceans. The young, especially those who live in AOSIS, stepped up as best they could. COP 28, thanks to them, delivered on one issue. Unfortunately, it will not be enough to save the AOSIS nations. 

The AOSIS nations came away from the conference mad as hell but still able to maintain some sense of decorum. Drue Slatter, a Pacific climate campaigner and communications manager for 350.org, said respectfully, "COP 28 is not conducive to our survival."

Climate conferences started 34 years ago in Noordwijk, Netherlands, when 68 countries sent their scientists and political representatives to reach an agreement. In 1989, scientists agreed that to stop the rise in global temperatures, the world must cap and eventually reduce its fossil fuel emissions. Big Oil intervened via their political subversives, and the historic conference collapsed.

Big Oil, narrowly avoiding a threat to their immense profits, has aggressively intervened in climate conferences ever since. In the previous 27 COPs, any language endangering their massive profits was erased by political operatives.  

Based on what I have explained, many observers concluded COP 28 would be a complete failure. The final COP 28 statement contains no binding legislation, no enforcement, and only weak monetary commitments to poor nations on the front lines of the climate crisis. Despite the overwhelming science, only weaselly, unbinding, unquantitative, insincere verbiage emerged with only one exceptional change. For over 30 years, the fossil fuel industry has distracted everyone so effectively that the number one cure demanded by scientists, the reduction in the use of fossil fuels, has never been put into print. However, this year, COP 28 called on countries to begin "transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner."

The ASOSIS members left angry and in tears, as this wording alone will not save their people. Proudly, they are responsible for the first-ever inclusion of the words "fossil fuels." But words alone, they know, will not save their island nations. There was nothing concrete in the agreement that could save them.

If the words they inspired eventually motivate us to act, I hope we remember these people. They will most likely be climate refugees on our borders in search of friendly neighbors. If we are not as hypocritical and manipulative as the Arab Oil Sheiks, we will remember their contribution and treat these people with respect.

I cannot comfortably hold these opposing facts in my mind. For the first time, we have responsible wording in an international climate agreement that identifies the threat. Yet, simultaneously, the larger community of nations cannot muster the courage to act decisively to protect the vulnerable. The most vulnerable are the island nations and our young.

Despite this painful cognitive dissonance, we must continue to function. Never give up.