Greenwashing the Petrostate

COP28 in Dubai?

Original artwork by Sloan Stump

I’m back with another installment of my pre-adventure to COP28. I’m still working through the tensions of this event. In my previous post (found here) I addressed the tension of a bunch of us flying to Dubai to advocate for phasing out fossil fuels. Today’s topic is greenwashing: the attempt to make people believe that your company or country is more environmentally friendly than it actually is.

COP28 is being hosted by the United Arab Emirates — the 7th largest producer of oil in the world. Is that like the Federation of Foxes hosting a conference for the protection of hens? To be fair by that logic, we really shouldn’t ever host a COP in the United States, because we are the world’s largest producer of oil now (we produce about four times more barrels per day than the UAE).

I think most of the charges of hypocrisy, though, adopt a slightly different line of argument by saying the real problem is that the UAE is a petrostate — a country whose GDP and government revenues overwhelmingly come from the export of petroleum (oil and natural gas). There is additional prejudice against the petrostates because they represent new money arising out of the fairly recent discovery of oil, and that has redrawn the lines of wealth that threaten the order of things (like Saudi Arabia paying Cristiano Ronaldo $200 million to come play for their soccer league). And of course there are the human rights concerns of these countries. Here I’ll stick to greenwashing.

A brief economic history

You can find evidence of human habitation in the area today known as the UAE going back more than a hundred thousand years. While I’m there on the ground, I hope to investigate some of that ancient history. But for this post we’re mainly interested in the modern history of the region.

At the beginning of the 20th century, this area was known as the Trucial States, a collection of seven sheikhdoms along the southern coast of the Persian Gulf and the northwestern coast of the Gulf of Oman. The Brits provided significant influence and protection, effecting a series of treaties in the 19th century aimed at curbing piracy and promoting peace in the region. (I assume the British influence is why I’ve been instructed to bring a Type G electrical adapter!) But there wasn’t a lot driving the local economy except the pearl divers, and that industry was decimated by the advent of cultured pearls in the middle of the century.

The big turning point for the region came when oil was discovered under the Arabian Desert. That occurred in the 1930s and 1940s and initially provided a boost for the Allied forces in WWII to propel trucks, tanks, and planes. After the war, the global demand for oil surged, and those sleepy little Arab countries became major world economic players.

In 1968 the British announced that they were ending their treaties with those independent sheikhdoms. In 1971 those sheikhdoms banded together to form the United Arab Emirates. I’m not sure what the relationship is between the original sheikhdoms, the emirates they became, and the cities of today like Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Perhaps I’ll learn that they are just different words for the same thing.

The oil boom transformed the UAE from a region of small desert principalities into a country with some of the highest standards of living in the world. Wealth generated from oil revenues was strategically invested, and Dubai in particular, with its massive building projects, has become a global hub for finance and real estate, and a symbol of luxury.

Al Jaber — The man in the middle of the conflict (of interest)

So there’s all that history driving concerns about COP28… and then there is the present.

The man put in charge of COP28 (of course it was a man… this is an Arab country) is called Sultan Al Jaber. By all accounts, he is an accomplished and competent businessman (they don’t make just anyone a sultan over there!). He went to college at USC, getting a degree in chemical engineering, and then did a PhD in business and economics at Coventry University in the UK, and for good measure tossed in an MBA from Cal State.

OK, so what would you expect from a guy from the UAE with an education in chemical engineering and business? That’s right, he became the head of the national oil company in the UAE. He also founded a governmental company that operates renewable energy projects in more than 40 countries. Does that signal a shift away from oil for the UAE? Or is it greenwashing?

To his credit, al Jaber has said, “A phasedown of fossil fuels is inevitable. We have to accept that.” But also, “We need to get real. We cannot unplug the world from the current energy system before we build a new energy system.”

Ok, granted; we can’t turn off the energy from fossil fuels today. But does that mean we should increase the production of oil now? That is what his company has done. And to be fair, it is also what the oil companies in the United States are doing. That sounds to me like the textbook definition of greenwashing.

So lots of people are wondering whether COP28 is capable of any meaningful action toward phasing out fossil fuels, or whether big oil has co-opted the entire process. I’ll let you know what I find (though if I report from Dubai in the back of my new Ferrari that everything is fine, you might suspect that they got to me too).