Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News on COP28

COP28, or the 28th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference, took place recently in the United Arab Emirates. With representation from nearly every country in the world, COP28 is the most important annual climate summit in the world. This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk with Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News who went to Dubai to cover the conference. We discuss the goals of the summit, talk about the irony of holding an environmental conference in one of the world's largest oil producing countries, and look at some of the key takeaways from COP28. Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise. Bob Berwyn (BB) | 00:19 - These are serious people who politically represent island nations, and they're saying, “you know, I'm not gonna sign my own death warrant.” Narrator | 00:29 - COP 28 or the 28th meeting of the conference of the parties to the United Nations Climate Change Conference took place recently in the United Arab Emirates with representation from nearly every country in the world. COP 28 is the most important annual climate summit in the world. This week on Sea Change Radio, we talk with Bob Berwyn of Inside Climate News, who went to Dubai to cover the conference. We discussed the goals of the summit, talk about the irony of holding an environmental conference in one of the world's largest oil producing countries, and look at some of the key takeaways from COP 28. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:37 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Bob Berwyn. Bob is a reporter at Inside Climate News. Bob, welcome to Sea Change Radio. Bob Berwyn (BB) | 01:46 - Hi, Alex. Thanks for having me, and it's nice to be back. Alex Wise (AW) | 01:49 - I wanted to have you on again because you just got back from the COP 28 Climate Summit in Dubai, and I wanted to get your reactions to what it was like being there, and then break down some of the policies that were discussed as well. Why don't you first walk us through what it's like to go to a climate summit in one of the capitals of the fossil fuel industry? BB | 02:13 - Yeah, so it's the annual conference of parties under the United Nations framework on Climate Change Convention, which is not a phrase that really rolls off the tongue very easily. It's really a bunch of jargon, and we've come to to call them cops. And this was the 28th COP and was held in Dubai from November 30th to December 12th, and as you said, in the heart of fossil fuel country. And it's a very interesting and actually disconcerting juxtaposition of concepts, you know, on the one hand of trying to address a climate crisis that's, that's, uh, caused by burning fossil fuels, coal, oil, and gas, primarily, I think 80% or close to 90% of all the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that's heating the planet comes from burning fossil fuels. And so it's clearly at the heart of the problem, yet it's never been mentioned officially in a, in a COP document specifically by the term fossil fuels.  AW | 03:21 - Yes. How did that duck under previous 27 cops, without mentioning the phrase fossil fuels? BB | 03:27 - Well, it's because the, the oil barons and the carbon cowboys have had a big important seed at the table all along. It turns out. Um, but Dubai itself is just, you know, really a, a sort of a symbol of the, of the excess of this fossil fueled extreme capitalism that's based on consumption, that's actually driving the problem. That's what's causing this incredible surge of greenhouse gas emissions. 50% of all greenhouse gases in the air have been emitted since the first COP, um, you know, as compared to 50% in the 150 years before that. So, wait a minute, what's going on here? Um, and, and you have a chief executive of a, of a major oil company as the sort of the presiding officer over the, over the proceedings, you know, and you walk down the street, you could rent Maseratis by the hour,