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Negotiators ‘Getting Real About What Matters’ as COP28 Enters Final 48 Hours

Negotiators ‘Getting Real About What Matters’ as COP28 Enters Final 48 Hours

Image by French photographer and digital artist Fabien Barrau http://fabienbarrau.com/

On so many of the key issues on the COP agenda, Stiell said, there were still multiple options on the table that represented faster or slower action on climate impacts and solutions. “If we want to save lives now, and keep 1.5°C within reach, the highest ambition COP outcomes must stay front and centre in these negotiations,” he told participants. “So I urge negotiators to start with the highest ambition outcome and for them to ask, ‘How do we get there?’ Yes, compromises will be essential. But not on ambition.”

A day later, Stiell was back on the podium, urging negotiators to deliver “a climate action surge now, and a springboard for the crucial years ahead”. That momentum should start with the targets countries have already set for 2030 and climate finance as the “great enabler” for “ongoing acceleration,” particularly in the Global South..

That means it’s “high time we stop thinking of halving emissions as a some nice-to-do aspiration,” Stiell said. “It must become a must-do if we are to keep the global economy functioning, and protect billions of human lives.”

“Certain countries—seemingly committed to derailing the adaptation agenda—effectively hijacked the negotiation process not just in relation to the GGA, but across the entire spectrum of the adaptation negotiations,” the newsletter added, haggling over text formatting while refusing to engage on the substance of the text.

To date, “more than 100 countries have said they’d support a phaseout of fossil fuels, but many, including leading oil producers remain opposed,” Bloomberg said. “The hope is to forge a compromise by switching to the softer ‘phase down’, and using adjectives like ‘unabated’ and ‘orderly’,” a purported compromise that Al Jaber tried hard to sell in the months leading up to the COP.

“The myth of ‘abated fossil fuels’ is nothing more than greenwashing,” Nikki Reisch, climate and energy program director at the Center for International Energy Law, told The Energy Mix in an emailed statement.

But by then, the Friday edition of ECO, the daily COP newsletter produced by Climate Action Network-International, was already spotlighting climate change adaptation and mitigation as crucial discussion streams that were falling far short on their mandates.

Derailing Climate Adaptation

During a tense negotiating session Wednesday on the COP’s Global Goal for Adaptation (GGA), civil society observers “watched in horror as the adaptation negotiations collapsed in front of our eyes” and an earlier spirit of collaboration “vanished into thin air,” ECO wrote https://climatenetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/08.12.2023.pdf [pdf].

“We need just a simple understanding that there’s only one question we should ask, which is: when are you going to stop burning fossil fuel?” Forrest said. “Any industrialist, any politician should receive that simple question. Not ‘what’s your net-zero 2050 plan’ or ‘what is your going greener plan’, or any of that whitewash.”

With more than three billion people already exposed to the impacts of climate change, “the time for excuses and prevarication is over,” Forrest said. “We have the solutions to phase out fossil fuel, and this is where we must go. If you say you can’t, then maybe you’re right—you can’t. But now’s the time for you to leave the stage and bring on someone who will.” |Read more https://www.theenergymix.com/negotiators-getting-real-about-what-matters-as-cop28-enters-final-48-hours/| theenergymix.com/negotiators-g…

#world #cdnpoli #COP28 #greenwashing #abatement #negotiating #AlJaber #hijacked #whitewash

Varcoe: ‘Nothing short of the NEP’ — Oilpatch girds for Ottawa’s new cap-and-trade emissions plan for sector

Varcoe: ‘Nothing short of the NEP’ — Oilpatch girds for Ottawa’s new cap-and-trade emissions plan for sector

“It’s the single-biggest existential threat (to the sector). An emissions cap is a cap on production. It’s as simple as that,’ said Ensign Energy Services president Bob Geddes

As mentioned in a previous article https://libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1265-7481-a7e2-2d9102123364, Politico, Reuters, the Financial Times and the Economist top the list of most influential media for EU decision-makers, and they are paid huge sums of money to promote oil and gas.

Locally, in Canada, most of the newspapers are operated by Postmedia. They don’t pretend to be anything other than Conservative supporters. When they publish an article, like the one linked below in the Calgary Herald, you pretty well know what to expect.

“I hear that he’s intending to announce an emissions cap, which we see as a production cap on oil and gas . . . It’s a pretty outrageous thing to do, to come to a conference like this without having shared the details with us,” Smith said before heading into the dinner.

“I’ll be polite, as I always try to be, but I have to be firm, that they have continued to violate our jurisdiction, they lose in court and then they act as if they can operate outside the law.”

There hasn’t been any cap on production, only emissions.

An article released today by the ‘Canadian Energy Centre’ — which is what they are rebranding Jason Kenney’s war room as, said, “Canada’s oil sands producers are doing more to reduce emissions than operators in other countries, according to BMO Capital Markets.

“Between 2013 and 2021, BMO estimates the average oil sands barrel shaved off more than 22 kilograms of emissions, compared to a reduction of just five kilograms per barrel for other major global oil producers.

“Fact: Oil sands producers reducing emissions per barrel, on track for absolute emissions reductions

“The AP article makes no mention of the success oil sands producers have achieved reducing emissions per barrel. That so-called emissions intensity is now estimated to be 23 per cent lower than it was in 2009, according to S&P Global.”

Then it goes on to say, “The AP article perpetuates the inaccurate position that CCS is not a proven technology. But CCS in Canada has successfully operated for more than two decades.

“Canada has six of the world’s 39 commercial CCS operations, accounting for about 15 per cent of global CCS capacity even though Canada generates less than two per cent of global CO2 emissions, according to the International CCS Knowledge Centre.

“In Alberta, since 2015 two CCS projects – both tied to oil sands production – have safely stored more than 12 million tonnes of CO2, or the equivalent of taking more than 2.6 million internal combustion engine vehicles off the road.”

One would think we would see the emissions in the chart showing a decrease instead of a rapid increase.

If Alberta’s CCS projects are so successful, wouldn’t the Alberta government understand that it’s a cap on emissions and not on production. Or are they lying to us?

Greenhouse gas emissions in Canada from 1990 to 2021, by province (in million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent)*

The chart shown https://www.statista.com/statistics/481142/greenhouse-gas-emissions-in-canada-by-province/ is courtesy of statista.com

Despite talk of further consultation with the sector as the regulations are developed, the oil and gas industry is frustrated by the move. The sector also faces a rising national carbon price, clean fuel standards and new rules to cut methane emissions.

“We strongly oppose an emissions cap and it is unnecessary to meet Canada’s Paris commitments,” Tristan Goodman, head of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada, said Wednesday.

Perhaps the aren’t prepared to match the lies flowing from the war room. Otherwise, they shouldn’t have any problem with the emission cuts.

#abpoli #emissions #COP28 #NEP #lies #WarRoom #media #cuts #oil #gas #environment #politics

Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers

Reuters, New York Times Top List of Fossil Fuel Industry’s Media Enablers

Reuters and other outlets whose in-house ad agencies are striking commercial deals with fossil fuel companies are trusted not only by the public, but by politicians and other key decision-makers. According to communications agency BCW’s annual survey of media brands in Europe, Politico, Reuters, the Financial Times and the Economist top the list of most influential media for EU decision-makers. All four are also some of the fossil fuel industry’s favorite partners for advertising and events.

And these partnerships haven’t just been happening in the leadup to COP28. Over the past three years, FT Commercial, the in-house ad studio of the Financial Times, has created dedicated web pages for fossil majors, including Equinor and Aramco, along with native content and videos, all of it focused on promoting oil and gas as a key component of the energy transition. An “FT Live” event focused on the energy transition featured speakers from BP, Chevron, Eni, and Essar.

The Economist’s in-house studio created a content hub around electrified transport for BP, which was also a platinum sponsor of its 2020 Sustainability Week event, while Petronas and Chevron sponsored the magazine’s “Future of Energy Week” event in 2022.

“They wouldn’t be spending vast sums of money on these campaigns if they didn’t have a payoff and it’s well documented that for decades the fossil fuel industry has leveraged and weaponized and innovated the media technology of the day to its advantage,” said University of Miami professor Geoffrey Supran, who co-authored the 2017 advertorial study with Naomi Oreskes. “It’s sometimes treated as an historical phenomenon, but in reality we’re living today with the digital descendants of the editorial campaigns pioneered by the fossil fuel industry — the old strategy is very much alive and well.”

Politico runs a high volume of sponsored content for the fossil fuel industry. Over the past three years, the publication has run native ads more than 50 times for the American Petroleum Institute, the most powerful fossil fuel lobby in the U.S. Politico has also repeatedly run newsletters sponsored by BP and Chevron – the latter of which also sponsors its annual “Women Rule” summit – and run 37 email campaigns for ExxonMobil. Shell has sponsored every one of Politico’s “Energy Vision” summits since 2017.

According to data from Media Radar, The New York Times took in more than $20 million in advertising revenue from fossil fuel companies from October 2020 to October 2023, twice what any other outlet earned from the industry. That number is due largely to the paper’s relationship with Saudi Aramco, which spent $13 million on ad space during this time period via a combination of print, mobile, and video ads as well as sponsored newsletters. That revenue does not include fees for creative services that were paid to the Times’ internal T Brand Studio. New York Times spokesperson Alexis Mortenson said that T Brand Studio does create custom content in print, video, and digital (including podcasts) for fossil fuel advertisers, and “we allow dark social posts if we’re creating this content.” “Dark social posts” are unpublished social posts promoted as ads to a specific audience, and do not appear on a brand’s timeline.

Of all the outlets we reviewed, only one company, Reuters, offers fossil-fuel advertisers every possible avenue to reach its audience, including custom events. It’s a notable shift for an outlet that has always counted “freedom from bias” as a core value — a pillar of the Trust Principles Reuters adopted to protect its independence during World War Two.

Reuters also partnered with Chevron, the “Diamond” sponsor of both its flagship “Reuters Impact” climate event in London in September 2023, and an upcoming “Global Energy Transition Summit” in New York in 2024. Reuters Events also stages fossil fuel industry trade shows explicitly aimed at maximizing production of oil and and gas, and creates digital events and webinars for vendors in the fossil-fuel supply chain looking to connect with oil and gas companies. In a media kit for “content opportunities in the upstream industry,” Reuters Events offers to produce webinars, white papers and live event interviews for those hoping to get in front of its “unrivalled audience reach of decision makers in the oil & gas industry.” |Read more https://www.desmog.com/2023/12/05/reuters-new-york-times-top-list-of-fossil-fuel-industrys-media-enablers/| desmog.com/2023/12/05/reuters-…

#cdnpoli #misinformation #lies #FossilFuel #content #promotion #MediaSources
#PublicTrust #advertisements #oil #gas

Cap on greenhouse gas emissions singles out Alberta, Premier Smith says

N.B. minister’s comments on homeless state of emergency lack compassion: mayor

Steve MacLellan

Ramble On