The fossil gasoline business’s presence at this 12 months’s UN local weather negotiations in Baku, Azerbaijan has been concurrently heavy-handed and covert. Greater than 1,770 lobbyists—together with the heads of some main oil and fuel companies—have been granted entry to the talks, many as friends of the host nation. The numbers dwarf these of just about each nation delegation and threaten to drown out the voices of International South nations—to not point out Indigenous peoples, youth, girls, and others who disproportionately bear the brunt of local weather impacts.
The business’s shut entry to the leaders of the negotiations raises questions on how COP29 will keep on monitor towards the objectives of accelerating much-needed local weather finance and following by on a quick, honest transition away from fossil fuels.
Much more alarming, the fossil gasoline business’s affect at COPs is deeply entrenched and goes past lobbying. We’ve seen it at COP29 with greenwashing by companies and commerce associations, misrepresentations of what science deems crucial to handle the local weather disaster, and a widening ambition hole as a result of insidious results of fossil gasoline affect.
To assist events break away from the grip of fossil gasoline pursuits, right here’s a information precisely how the fossil gasoline business is making an attempt to co-opt local weather talks—and a name to world leaders to withstand them.
1. Exhibiting energy in numbers
Late final week, the Kick Big Polluters Out coalition revealed that not less than 1,773 fossil gasoline lobbyists have been granted entry to COP29, outnumbering practically each nationwide delegation attending the talks in Azerbaijan. It is a main presence for the business primarily liable for driving harmful and lethal local weather change and greater than all of the delegates from the ten most climate-vulnerable international locations mixed (1,033 individuals badged).
In response to the provisional list of registered on-site individuals, main fossil gasoline companies BP, Chevron, Eni, ExxonMobil, Shell, and TotalEnergies introduced a complete of 44 lobbyists to COP29. Taking part in and influencing COPs has been a part of ExxonMobil’s playbook for many years. Darren Woods, the company’s chair and CEO, is considered one of 12 ExxonMobil lobbyists in Baku. By comparability, Guyana—a rustic susceptible to floods, droughts, sea-level rise, and different local weather impacts (and the place ExxonMobil is being sued over its offshore oil extraction initiatives)—additionally has 12 representatives at COP29.
2. Acquiring high-level entry
But it surely’s not simply the numbers. It’s who’s representing the fossil gasoline business and who they’re consorting with. The heads of a number of main oil and fuel companies—Aramco, BP, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies—are included within the provisional registration record as friends of the host nation.
ExxonMobil’s Woods confirmed up at COP29 as a number nation visitor. He was invited to speak at a high-level assembly convened by the COP presidency—an unparalleled alternative to personally domesticate political leaders from around the globe and try and outline the phrases of the vitality transition in ways in which perpetuate reliance on fossil gasoline merchandise and develop company income.
In the meantime, Woods discouraged U.S. President-elect Trump from withdrawing the US from the Paris local weather settlement, saying “The way in which you affect issues is to take part, to not exit.” Paradoxically, that is one level on which I’d agree with him—with one vital modification in relation to the fossil gasoline business: “The way in which you affect issues UNDULY is to take part. . . .”
3. Refusing to pay up
Local weather finance is the highest precedence for COP29, and one leg of the monetary stool is funding for decrease earnings international locations to handle loss and damage from fossil fuel-driven local weather impacts. The 12 months 2024 is on monitor to be the hottest on document, with excessive climate occasions leaving a path of dying and destruction throughout the globe. Whereas main fossil gasoline companies proceed to rake in massive profits, individuals and communities within the International South bear a disproportionate burden of those disasters—which is why many within the local weather justice motion are campaigning to Make Big Polluters Pay.
In response to a new report commissioned by the Worldwide Chamber of Commerce, climate-related excessive climate occasions have value the worldwide economic system greater than $2 trillion over the previous decade. In a painful irony, this is similar Worldwide Chamber of Commerce whose delegation to COP29 contains 33 fossil gasoline business lobbyists—and whose U.S. arm pushes the oil and fuel business’s anti-climate agenda. (Learn extra in this blog post by my UCS colleague Laura Peterson.)
Earlier this 12 months, Azerbaijan, the host nation for COP29, introduced a Climate Finance Action Fund to be capitalized with $1 billion in voluntary contributions from fossil fuel-producing international locations and oil, fuel, and coal firms. Nevertheless, the fund’s launch—set for Local weather Finance Day at COP29—has been quietly postponed. The shelving of the fund marks a small victory for advocates who had decried the initiative as a problematic distraction from the crucial for the US and different rich nations—the accountable events at these UN local weather talks—to collectively present not less than $1 trillion per 12 months in grants or very low-interest loans. Nationwide and worldwide policymakers have to be cautious of voluntary approaches that low-ball polluters’ duty, danger granting them social license, and will give them inappropriate affect over choices about how the funds are spent.
4. Conniving to money in
Even because the fossil gasoline business avoids paying its justifiable share of the mounting prices of fossil fuel-driven local weather harms, fossil gasoline subsidies bankrolled by governments (and taxpayers) around the globe soared to $7 trillion in 2022, based on the Worldwide Financial Fund.
Right here at COP29, ExxonMobil’s Woods added insult to those compounding accidents when he demanded that governments create “incentives” for firms to transition to much less carbon-intensive vitality sources. The issue: ExxonMobil has its personal misleading, dangerous definition of “advancing local weather options” that its lobbyists are little question pitching to COP29 decisionmakers. The company’s “low carbon” roadmap depends closely on applied sciences similar to carbon seize and storage and hydrogen that can’t ship steep emissions cuts within the essential interval between now and 2030. In an interview with The New York Instances whereas he was at COP29, Woods bragged that he resisted investor “stress to get into the wind and photo voltaic enterprise”—and ExxonMobil’s inventory soared as the corporate doubled down on oil and fuel.
Whereas fossil gasoline business lobbyists proceed their efforts to delay the urgently needed phaseout of oil, fuel, and coal, they’re concurrently making an attempt to co-opt the clear vitality transition by demanding subsidies from governments for applied sciences that aren’t prone to play a fabric function in assembly 2030 local weather targets. Nations should resist any try by the fossil gasoline business to swindle funding that ought to rightly be put towards local weather finance desperately wanted by nations within the International South.
5. Greenwashing, diverting consideration, and capturing the dialog
In the course of the first week of COP29, I didn’t catch any fossil gasoline business lobbyists within the act of lobbying on the Olympic Stadium the place the talks are being held, as such conversations are most certainly happening behind intently guarded doorways staffed with safety. However the fossil gasoline business’s presence is pervasive and distinguished:
- The COP29 presidency hired Teneo—a public relations agency with shut ties to the oil and fuel business—to boost its picture forward of the talks.
- The Oil and Fuel Decarbonization Constitution—a voluntary initiative launched at COP28 by oil and fuel companies and condemned by a whole bunch of civil society organizations as a greenwashing ploy—has predictably resurfaced at COP29 after minimal visibility or progress over the previous 12 months.
- Events within the enterprise pavilion have been sponsored by oil and fuel companies together with Chevron, ExxonMobil, SOCAR, and TotalEnergies.
I’ve spent hours strolling across the pavilions within the Blue Zone, the place the official negotiations happen, and the general public Inexperienced Zone, amassing quite a few examples of company greenwashing. I’ve seen posters selling pure fuel as “the cleanest of hydrocarbons,” dozens of “internet zero” claims, and cartoons touting the deployment of problematic applied sciences over confirmed local weather options.
Within the Group of the Petroleum Exporting Nations (OPEC) pavilion, I discovered a banner saying that “oil touches our each day lives in several methods.” In oil-producing areas of the world, that assertion is painfully true—individuals endure well being issues, environmental devastation, displacement, and lack of livelihoods and cultural heritage.
Friday Nbani Barilule, who leads the Lekeh Financial Growth Basis in Nigeria, took the chance to share how oil touches his life and that of others within the Niger Delta area the place he lives and works. Watch his testimony here and skim extra in my blog post about final month’s Niger Delta Local weather Change Convention.
Learn how to overcoming fossil gasoline business affect
Fossil gasoline companies and their surrogates shouldn’t have a seat on the negotiating desk the place local weather coverage is being made. Permitting them entry is like setting the cat unfastened among the many pigeons. Firms similar to BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, and Shell—which have engaged in a decades-long marketing campaign to deceive the general public and policymakers and block or delay local weather motion—have repeatedly proven that they will’t be trusted as good-faith gamers.
At the same time as they proceed to exert undue affect over local weather coverage, main fossil gasoline companies insist that we focus solely on governments to advance local weather motion. Shortly after new proof emerged that Shell and different oil and fuel companies knew of the planet-heating results of their merchandise as early as 1954, a Dutch appeals court docket overturned an earlier order requiring Shell to chop its world warming emissions by 45% by 2030. In celebrating the ruling, Shell urged people to “foyer governments reasonably than Shell to vary insurance policies and convey a couple of inexperienced transition.”
UCS and our allies will proceed to foyer governments, and we’ll proceed to work with climate-conscious investors to stress companies to slash their heat-trapping emissions and align their lobbying with their said help for the Paris Local weather Settlement. And we acknowledge the symbiotic relationship between worldwide local weather negotiations and local weather litigation. UCS’s Science Hub for Climate Litigation is constructing a neighborhood of scientists to assist meet the nice demand for scientific experience to tell litigation and authorized motion around the globe.
Because the U.S. and different nations grapple with surging disinformation and drastic anti-climate political change, COP29 has a possibility to point out the world that worldwide diplomacy stays a significant means to handle the worldwide local weather disaster. Because the fossil gasoline business employs a spread of methods to co-opt and derail the method, negotiators should train political will to beat these schemes. We’ll measure world leaders’ success in COP29 choices that start to treatment the harms individuals around the globe are already experiencing, speed up the phaseout of fossil fuels, and fund an equitable world transition to wash vitality.
This submit was initially printed by the Union of Concerned Scientists and is republished with permission.