DUBAI, United Arab Emirates —The chief govt of UAE-based energy agency Crescent Petroleum on Tuesday claimed that blaming the oil and fuel industry for the climate crisis “is like blaming farmers for weight problems.”
His feedback come at the mid-point of the U.N.’s greatest and most essential annual climate convention, with many at the COP28 talks in Dubai calling for heads of state from almost 200 nations to conform to a fossil fuel phase out.
The burning of coal, oil and fuel is by far the largest contributor to climate change, accounting for greater than three-quarters of worldwide greenhouse fuel emissions.
“Blaming the producers of oil and fuel for climate change is like blaming farmers for weight problems. It’s our societal consumption that’s the subject,” Crescent Petroleum CEO Majid Jafar advised CNBC’s Dan Murphy on Tuesday.
“Now, we are going to nonetheless want oil and fuel all through the transition and there’s no situation, even the most formidable situation, that doesn’t embody that.”
Majid Jafar, chief govt officer of Crescent Petroleum Co., proper, offers Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief govt officer of Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) and president of COP28, middle, a shawl in the colors of the United Arab Emirates nationwide flag throughout the Summit on Methane and Other Non-CO2 Greenhouse Gases on day three of the COP28 climate convention at Expo City in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, on Saturday, Dec. 2, 2023.
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Among a flurry of pledges in the first few days of COP28 was a dedication by some 50 oil and fuel corporations to chop methane emissions from their very own operations by 2030.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said that the announcement was “a step in the proper route” for Big Oil and confirmed that the fossil gas industry was “lastly beginning to get up.” However, he stated the guarantees made “clearly fall quick of what’s required.”
Asked about Guterres’ feedback, Jafar stated he believed oil and fuel would proceed to play a significant function in the transition to cleaner energy applied sciences.
“So, with all respect for that viewpoint, maybe he ought to begin with the U.N. itself. Maybe he ought to have traveled right here in a wood boat, with sails, rowing when the wind died down,” he stated.
“Maybe he ought to transfer the U.N. employees to upstate New York to a forest someplace the place they will develop their very own meals, with out fertilizers. He has to remove all their smartphones, they cannot use e mail, they will use possibly provider pigeon for U.N. communications.”
IEA warning to Big Oil
Jafar stated he believed it was crucial to supply oil and fuel in a “cleaner” approach however insisted that nations throughout the globe will proceed to depend on fossil gas use.
“We’re truly failing on all three legs of the so-called energy trilemma: sustainability, affordability and availability. We have gotten to maintain that in thoughts,” he stated.
Big Oil’s presence at the U.N. climate talks has lengthy been a source of contention, with many sharply critical of the scale of entry that fossil gas lobbyists seem to have annually.
Others, together with former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, imagine that the participation of energy giants ought to be welcomed at occasions comparable to COP28.
The International Energy Agency said late final month that the fossil gas industry faces a “second of fact” about their function in the international energy system and the climate crisis.
“With the world struggling the impacts of a worsening climate crisis, persevering with with enterprise as traditional is neither socially nor environmentally accountable,” the IEA’s Birol stated on Nov. 23.
“The industry must decide to genuinely serving to the world meet its energy wants and climate targets,” he added.