The UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) is turning into a circus with the excuse of saving the climate. It is celebrated these days in the United Arab Emirates, one of the largest oil producers in the world and which has also been increasing its production over the years.
To the accusations of wanting to take advantage of the summit to close oil and gas agreements with at least 15 countries is added to the fact that the president of COP28 is an oil magnate and that, as already happened at COP26, the use of jets private has been the norm.
These days Dubai airport does not stop receiving planes, mainly private jets. It is estimated that around 400,000 attendees will attend COP28. This includes 97,000 official delegates, more than double the Cop26 in Glasgow, the second largest summit, which generated emissions equivalent to the annual carbon footprint of around 8,000 British residents, according to The Telegraph.
Among those attending are prominent leaders such as King Charles III, the United States envoy, his Vice President Kamala Harris, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of Japan, Fumio Kishida or Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, president of Brazil, just to name a few, but many more arrived, because no one wants to miss the event.
It is fine that heads of state and prime ministers travel by private jet, but what about the rest? Is traveling with an airline a problem or a demerit for them?
The image above taken from a tweet explains it all to us. A horde of jets descends on Dubai. The majority are private jets, which according to the organization Carbon Brief, it is estimated that there will be around 800 private planes that land in Dubai, emitting between them around 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide. The Telegraph states that with this figure the record can be reached for being the Summit that exceeds the carbon emissions of all of them. Doubling the figures from the Glasgow Summit.
Taking into account that the planes used by billionaires are up to 14 times more polluting per passenger than commercial planes and 50 times more polluting than trains, according to a study by the pressure group Transport & Environment, it is difficult to understand why they do not seek means less polluting to travel to a Summit in which we will discuss how pollution is reduced, so I ask myself the following question: If they do not contribute by example when it comes to traveling in a more sustainable way? How are they going to demand it from us?
He is not going any further, is the most recent statement from Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, head of the public oil company of the United Arab Emirates and president of COP28, who has declared that there is “no science or any scenario that says that the elimination progressive reduction of fossil fuels is what will allow us to reach 1.5 degrees”. He may not have seen the graph above.
They are playing with the future of humanity, and it is intolerable. I don’t know what these elites believe, who deprive themselves of nothing, but who squeeze others, squeezing us as if it were a lemon to fatten their wallets and their pride.
This summit is a complete comic operetta, sung, but with horrendous music, adorned by the roar of the engines of private jets. I think it is time to demand from those attending these Summits that the next one will be by videoconference. At least this way, we save a lot of unnecessary emissions.
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