A Fox Running Our Chicken House?

Are we really surprised? The UAE's President for Cop28 apparently revealed his true views, in an earlier bad-tempered Zoom conference. In it, he baldly maintained 'There is no science out there that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5C'. This man, trusted to run UN climate meeting, also claimed that phasing out fossil fuels wouldn't allow sustainable development,'unless you want to take us back to the caves'. The Sultan is, of course, also the Chief Executive of Adnoc, the UAE's state oil company. Oil is the source of the UAE's extraordinary wealth (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels). A number of environmental experts have pointed out that the science has been 'out there' for decades. Urgent phasing-out of fossil fuels is the only way for us to, perhaps, have a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. The Sultan is clearly a traditional climate change denier, more worried about profits than the planet. Perhaps he can count the money in a cave, when conditions become intolerable? The allocation of Cop28 to the UAE was either a very bad move or a devious attempt to force major fossil fuel addicts into an unforgiving spotlight.