In Dubai, the annual climate mass has not yet started and we can already hear the criticisms coming out. Eight years after the historic Paris agreement, pessimism reigns, to the point that no one anymore believes in the objective of a maximum of two degrees by the end of the century. It’s true, we could certainly have done better. “Progress; we must redouble our efforts,” notes the weekly The Economist. Because carbon emissions have never been so important, and oil companies remain the bad students of the energy transition, explains to L’Express Fatih Birol, the director of the International Energy Agency… As for the experts in IPCC, they sounded the alarm in their latest report: “The pace and scale of measures taken so far, as well as current projects, are insufficient to tackle climate change.”
One wonders what the COPs are for… “Not much”, said Jean-Marc Jancovici, climate guru, a few months ago. Activist Greta Thunberg assures that they have become communication operations, “greenwashing” machines. In this case, should we run to COP 28? A few days ago, Yamina Saheb, IPCC expert, responded on her X account: “I’m not going there. I think we should all boycott it and work on an alternative COP. A COP for the survival of the ‘humanity.”
In short, to listen to these cassandras, COP28, chaired by Sultan Ahmed al-Jaber, president of the national oil company of the United Arab Emirates, is already off to a bad start even before it has started. This is to forget the immense work accomplished by governments, businesses, scientists, but also by civil society, to document, prepare, invest and finally initiate the energy transition, under the impetus of this major annual meeting. .
Because yes, greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase, but half as fast as in the past. Yes, we have never lived in such a hot world, but, for the first time in a century and a half, the era of fossil fuels (oil, gas and coal) is coming to an end, thanks to the tremendous boom in energy own or electric car. Take the case of China. On the other hand: contrary to Xi Jinping’s promise in 2021, the Middle Kingdom is building ever more coal-fired power stations. But, on the battery side, China has become the world champion in solar and wind turbines.
As for Biden’s IRA program, it will also help finance the transition to renewable energies. Europe – under pressure from the COPs, its green plans, or the war in Ukraine – is also changing.
Changes slower than expected, often the result of diplomatic and technocratic compromises, although too often passed over in silence by the spokesmen of a demagogic and decreasing ecology, who prefer to track the CO2 emissions of billionaires. Our planet is finally organizing itself to control its warming, but we prefer to look elsewhere.