Another global Climate Summit, the 28th in a row as its name, COP28, aspires to achieve historic results. Oxymoron: the Arabs of Dubai, one of the United Emirates, are also the ones who cause the biggest problem as large producers of fossil fuels. As hosts of the global UN Climate Summit, they aspire to sign at their headquarters, among other things, an agreement on the gradual elimination of fossil fuel production.
More stringent and bold measures
In the next few days, 180 heads of state and government and tens of thousands of representatives of institutions and companies as well as organizations fighting for a better planet will be in Dubai. In fact a planet that will show, in the coming decades, if it can be saved from warming. Scientists here in Dubai are circulating their updated studies, which show that the goal of keeping the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees by 2050 no longer seems achievable. Well, stricter and bolder measures should be taken.
There are many opinions on how to achieve this goal and the practices that sound complex. A zero methane footprint, a “filtering” of fossil fuels so they don’t pollute, even the US proposal by Washington’s special climate envoy, former Secretary of State John Kerry, for nuclear fusion. Kerry is attending the UN Climate Summit to promote the US international strategy to commercialize nuclear fusion power which is said to have an advantage over today’s fission nuclear power plants that split atoms. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is a cheap, carbon-free source of electricity that produces no long-lived radioactive waste.
Resounding absences
However, what is chattering in the wells here in Dubai is the resounding absence of the US and Chinese heads of state from such an important Climate Summit.
