Today at COP28: A change in mood

As COP28 reaches its mid-way point, the initial lustre and enthusiasm of the world’s great and powerful showing up to sunny Dubai seems to be wearing off.

Comments from summit president Sultan Al Jaber aside, the first week has provided its fair share of optimism in the form of nuclear pledges, affirmations of intent from major business leaders and collective action agreements.

From an outsider’s perspective, however, the tone began to change today as worrying data from international bodies was published and an unexpected guest turned up.

The spy who came in from the cold

Vladimir Putin didn’t actually attend COP28 today but his arrival in nearby Abu Dhabi earlier today couldn’t be ignored.

Against the grim backdrop of his war against Ukraine, the Russian leader was enthusiastically greeted by Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE’s foreign minister, who espoused that Russian-UAE relations were at an “all-time high”.

He is able to visit the country freely due to the UAE not recognising the international criminal court, which has a warrant out for his arrest on war crime charges.

Ukrainian scientists attending the summit have reportedly said there will be a protest in the unlikely event he shows up.

Behind the summit and the visit, Russia is still effectively managing to avoid G7 sanctions on its oil trade, despite some progress being made on sanctioning ships carrying oil above the $60 price cap in recent days.

Putin will move on to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia later this week where Russia’s role in oil organisation OPEC+ and future Saudi Arabian production cuts in an effort to shore up prices, will be discussed.

It’s getting hot in here

As the world’s business and political leaders continue to roundtable and interview and posit their way around the Expo City in Dubai, more prescient warnings about the scale of the climate crisis came to light.

The Copernicus Climate Change Service, the EU’s Earth Observation Programme, reported that the global temperature had once again been broken for a record sixth month in a row.

This November “smashed” the previous global average temperature record, reaching 14.22C, 0.85C above the 1991-2020 average for November and 0.32C above the previous warmest November, in 2020.

Only two months ago, a group of researchers published a paper that claimed 2023 was likely to be the hottest year in the last 100,000.

No in, all out

Since Rishi Sunak’s whirlwind turn at COP28 last week to unveil the Dogger Bank offshore wind project and a brief Q&A session, journalists are reporting having little luck getting close to the UK’s dignitaries.

In attendance are climate minister Graham Stuart, minister for overseas development Andrew Mitchell, Richard Beynon, a Foreign Office and Defra representative and the newly-minted foreign secretary, David Cameron.

And yet no public briefings are said to have been held with any UK journalists. As the Guardian’s Fiona Harvey puts it: “Ministers are clearly taking their avoidant lead from Sunak and doubtless they will claim their diaries are full with meeting international counterparts.”

Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, meanwhile has held numerous press junkets at the summit, claiming that the UK would play a leading role in climate change action under his auspices.

No Games

Simon Stiell, the UN’s climate tsar, warned countries negotiating at COP28 not to fall into point-scoring when pledging action on climate change.

Speaking at a press conference today, he said “lowest common denominator politics” must be kept out of trying to advance the global net zero agenda.

“All governments must give their negotiators clear marching orders,” he said.

“We have a starting text on the table … but it’s a grab bag of wishlists and heavy on posturing and the key now is to sort the wheat from the chaff.

“There are many options that are on the table right now which speak to the phasing out of fossil fuels and it is for parties to unpick that, but come up with a very clear statement that signals the terminal decline of the fossil fuel era as we know it.”