The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is working laborious to promote sustainable improvement and inexperienced power because the nation prepares to host COP28 later this 12 months.  The UAE is spending hundreds of thousands to pump up its inexperienced cred, whereas concurrently planning large will increase in oil and fuel manufacturing.

The UAE’s efforts to place itself as a local weather chief and international clear power advocate are at odds with its core actions. Hydrocarbon manufacturing is antithetical to their rebranding efforts. There isn’t any reconciling their bold local weather commitments and their plans to extend oil and fuel manufacturing.  

The UAE’s public relations efforts are according to the fossil gas disinformation playbook.  The UAE makes use of what UN Secretary-Common António Guterres described as “bogus ‘net-zero’ pledges to cowl up large fossil gas growth”. A observe that Guterres calls “reprehensible”. 

The same observe has been uncovered within the U.S.  As reported by CNN, a year-long Home Oversight Committee investigation on local weather disinformation concluded the fossil gas business feigns help for local weather motion as a pretext to maintain producing emissions-intensive power. In keeping with Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, the oil business is prioritizing income over planetary well being by “posturing on local weather points whereas avoiding actual commitments” to cut back emissions.  “The business has no actual plans to scrub up its act and is barreling forward with plans to pump extra soiled fuels for many years to come back,” she stated.

The fossil gas business’s lobbying, public relations, and greenwashing efforts are designed to distract the general public from plans to extend oil and fuel extraction.  These efforts are likely to deal with the oxymoron of unpolluted fossil fuels whereas downplaying their unfavorable impacts.

Fossil fuels are the main explanation for local weather change. In keeping with the UN, fossil fuels account for three-quarters of world greenhouse fuel (GHG) emissions and practically 90 % of all carbon dioxide emissions.

The UAE is a petrostate that produced 2,954,000 barrels of oil per day in 2022.  The nation is the world’s seventh-largest oil producer, and it has the seventh-largest oil reserves. The desert kingdom has constantly elevated crude oil manufacturing and its investments in exploration have yielded main finds that can considerably enhance the UAE’s manufacturing capability. 

The UAE has spent hundreds of thousands to obscure the truth that the nation is basically at odds with local weather motion. Reaching web zero emissions by mid-century precludes new oil and fuel initiatives. To manage the narrative, each the UAE and ADNOC, have invested in public relations and lobbying to form public opinion and affect coverage choices. In 2017 ADNOC launched a two-tiered promoting marketing campaign celebrating the significance of fossil fuels and touting the corporate’s unrealized emissions discount efforts.   

As reported by The Guardian, “filings with the U.S. Division of Justice present the UAE contacted media organizations with a purpose to increase the notion of its motion on local weather points”. They paid the lobbying agency Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, $2.85 million to hawk affect with American lawmakers. The UAE additionally employed three PR strategists to assist affect and form opinion. In whole, the UAE has spent greater than $10 million on American lobbying and public relations contracts.

The UAE has efficiently used spin masters to affect local weather insurance policies previously. In 2017, leaked emails recommend that the UAE lobbied in opposition to an Worldwide Civil Aviation Group (ICAO) proposal to restrict emissions from aviation. The UAE allegedly opposed the adoption of paragraph 15 of ICAO decision A37-19 which might have required states to cut back aviation emissions. Though the UAE’s Etihad Airways are the primary Gulf airline to decide to web zero emissions by 2050, this effort relies upon virtually solely on but unrealized carbon offsets.

The fossil gas business’s guarantees to cut back emissions and their help for clear power are a ruse. That is a part of a community of greenwashing initiatives which can be designed to confuse the general public and gradual any efforts to stymie the expansion of hydrocarbons.

As a part of the UAE’s efforts to extoll its local weather efforts they’re aggressively promoting their help for clear energy, nevertheless, a measure of sustainable power often called the Power Trilemma Index signifies that the UAE has steadily declined lately. The UAE’s token investments in inexperienced power initiatives like hydrogen could also be likened to what the Home Oversight Committee investigation described as a “long-running greenwashing marketing campaign”. The fossil gas business will not be honoring its guarantees to reduce manufacturing and its investments in clear power are being dwarfed by its investments in new hydrocarbon initiatives.

The greenwashing of the oil and fuel business has been extensively uncovered. “This must be the final nail within the coffin of the oil business’s inexperienced claims,” Keith Stewart, with Greenpeace Canada, advised CBC Information. “Whilst Large Oil rakes in report income, they’re delaying motion on the local weather disaster to make a number of further bucks whereas individuals and ecosystems pay the prices in ever extra excessive climate, wildfires, drought and flooding.”

Whereas they make claims about lowering their ‘carbon depth’ and growing their reliance on ‘low carbon options’ that is greenwashing. There isn’t any means round the truth that their core exercise is synonymous with emissions.

The truth that the UAE is about to host this 12 months’s local weather convention is a travesty. What we’d like from COP28 is a science-based pathway to get rid of fossil fuels.  No quantity of spin, public relations, or greenwashing can obscure the truth that hydrocarbons are incompatible with local weather motion.  

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