CLIMATE JUSTICE: For New Zealand’s Maori communities, climate change is already hurting (Washington Post $), Hurricane Otis kills at least 27, hammers Acapulco as damage seen in billions (Reuters), In photos: The scene after Otis slammed into Acapulco as a Category 5 hurricane (Washington Post $), Hurricane Otis survivors search for friends and necessities in devastated Acapulco (AP)
OIL & GAS: Pennsylvania’s gas industry used 160 million pounds of secret chemicals from 2012 to 2022, a new report says (Inside Climate News), Gulf oil lease sale postponed by court amid litigation over endangered whale protections (AP)
COP28: China warns against 'empty slogans' at COP28 climate talks (Reuters)
CITIES & STATES: Baltimore church becomes an extreme weather ‘resiliency hub’ (Yale Climate Connections), Pennsylvania program helps residents, businesses convert lawns to meadows (WHYY), As communities face climate change, CORE and CLEER help them transition to clean energy (Aspen Public Radio), Million dollars to support new Flagstaff climate change resilience hubs, senators announce (Arizona Daily Sun), Snow piles up in North Dakota as region’s first major snowstorm of the season moves eastward (AP), NY Fed to tackle weather-related risks in upcoming research barrage (Reuters)
IMPACTS: How hot seas may have fueled Hurricane Otis’s sudden intensification (Washington Post $), Later frosts could make new crops possible in Alaska. But climate change brings challenges, too (Alaska Public Media)
DIPLOMACY: U.S. opens its northernmost diplomatic station, in Arctic Norway (Reuters), Newsom discusses fentanyl, climate change during China visit – and has a bumpy toboggan ride (LA Times $), China says it wants to bolster climate cooperation with US as California Gov. Newsom visits Beijing (AP), Survivors of deadly Hurricane Otis grow desperate for food and aid amid slow government response (AP)
WATER: What’s stopping desalination from going mainstream? (E&E News), A salty problem for people near the mouth of the Mississippi is a wakeup call for New Orleans (AP), Jefferson Parish has now tested its saltwater pipeline. Does it work? (NOLA.com)
THE HILL: House Speaker Mike Johnson’s first big bill cuts Biden’s climate change funding (Bloomberg $), Manchin takes aim at EPA methane rules (E&E $)
INSURANCE: Feeling the pinch of high home insurance rates? It's not getting better anytime soon (NPR), Climate change is wreaking havoc on the global insurance market (MPR)
HYDROGEN: High hopes for a smaller but more focused hydrogen economy (Reuters), Netherlands begins construction of national hydrogen pipeline network (S&P Global), The Southeast, including NC, didn't win U.S. funding for a hydrogen hub. What happens now? (Star News Online)
PIPELINES: Minnesota regulators OK rare fund to decommission new Enbridge pipeline (Minneapolis Star-Tribune $), Pipeline opponents sue to block Summit Carbon water permit (Columbus Dispatch), Anchor of Chinese container vessel caused damage to Balticconnector gas pipeline, Finnish police say (AP)
GOP: Republican-led US states appeal ruling allowing Biden ESG investing rule (Reuters)
METHANE: Landfills in Washington and Oregon leaked ‘explosive’ levels of methane last year (Grist), Exclusive: EU executive proposes methane emissions limit on gas imports - document (Reuters), Mapping methane: Satellites seek out gas-spewing waste sites (Al Jazeera), China set to release long-awaited methane plan before COP28 (Bloomberg $)
CARBON REMOVAL: The US Energy Department is spending $36 million on ocean carbon-capture research (TIME), The carbon removal project that puts communities in the driver’s seat (E&E News)
EVS: The new Wi-Fi? Hotels go big on EV charging (E&E News), Indian company that makes EV battery materials to build its first US plant in North Carolina (AP)
YOUTH: Dartmouth students urge college to stop accepting research money from fossil fuel companies (NHPR), Stop locking young people out of legal process in climate cases, say experts (The Guardian)
INT’L: Siemens Energy in talks with German government for financial help (New York Times $), Canada to pause carbon tax on home heating oil for three years (Reuters)
FISH: Climate change is pushing salmon north in Alaska, scientists say (Smithsonian Magazine), Greenpeace urges Greece to scrap offshore gas drilling project because of impact on whales, dolphins (AP)
POLLUTION: Soil removal from Ohio train derailment site is nearly done, but cleanup isn’t over (AP)
HISTORY: How climate change contributed to the collapse of the Roman Empire and 7 other ancient civilizations (Business Insider)
ART: Australian artist ‘a tad hysterical’ after Albanese gifts her bushfire painting to Biden (The Guardian) |
The Laptop-Throwing Oil Boss Hosting Climate Negotiations Has Benefited From 30 Years of PR
This year’s annual global climate negotiations, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or just COP28 for short, will be hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who heads the petrostate's oil and renewables companies. As we and others have noted, the UAE's been on quite a public relations (PR) kick, making use of bots on Twitter and accounts effusively praising the country on Reddit.
The latest insights into the petrostate’s PR efforts come from Ben Stockton and Amy Westervelt, who provide The Intercept with a look "inside the campaign that put an oil boss in charge of a climate summit." There's a lot of great history in the article, but here are excerpts of our favorite parts to entice you to go read the story in full!
It seems that years of PR contracts with major American agencies have been important not just to the UAE as a whole but also to Al Jaber on a personal level, as "behind closed doors, Al Jaber is said to be an exacting boss with a domineering approach.” “Two former COP28 team members claimed Al Jaber once threw a laptop at a wall in a fit of anger; one of them said he had a reputation as a 'bully.'"
Yikes! And the bigger climate picture isn't any better. Stockton and Westervelt explain, "Al Jaber has rebuffed calls to step down from Adnoc, insisting there is no conflict of interest. But the line between the oil company and COP28 has 'blurred,' one former summit staffer said. At one point, the COP team was working out of Adnoc headquarters." What's more, when the UNFCCC questioned the UAE team about whether the national oil company Adnoc "had access to COP28 strategic documents," it turned out that "Adnoc employees were still being consulted on how to respond to media inquiries about the summit" months later.
In fact, "One of Al Jaber’s advisers at Adnoc was signing off on communications leaving the COP28 team while still employed at the oil company, according to people who worked with him. While attending a U.N. conference in June, Oliver Phillips registered as a representative of Adnoc. But according to two sources who worked on COP28 communications, Phillips had already played a key role in steering PR efforts for the summit."
Despite multiple sources confirming that Phillips had been an employee of the oil company until recently, he doesn’t even declare any affiliation with Adnoc on his LinkedIn page.
The line between Al Jaber's roles as an oil boss and as the climate negotiations overseer have even been blurred for the high-power American public relations firms long tapped by the UAE to burnish its image, which include APCO, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Edelman, and Teneo. "Some agencies acting on behalf of COP28 were engaged by Adnoc and Masdar rather than the COP team, according to sources with direct knowledge and filings with the U.S. Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires U.S. companies to report their dealings with foreign governments."
Edelman in particular has apparently tasked "Lindsay Clifton, former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and deputy press secretary for President Donald Trump" to work for the UAE's COP team. This adds someone to the climate negotiation organizing crew whose White House position entailed defending "Trump’s stance on climate change as his administration rolled back policies intended to help abate global heating." Clifton was "listed as Al Jaber’s direct 'media support' during the U.N. General Assembly in September," according to a "strategy document." Despite being a PR person hired for media support, "Clifton did not respond to requests for comment."
Fortunately, someone actually worth hearing from did respond to the reporters’ inquiries: "Melissa Aronczyk, media studies professor at Rutgers University and co-author of ‘A Strategic Nature,’ a book about the history of environmental PR". She told Stockton and Westervelt that the fossil fuel industry has been working for decades to prevent climate action: “Working with U.S. PR firms, oil and gas companies, car companies, and petrochemical companies all conspired 30 years ago to create campaigns and programs around ‘sustainability’ with the goal of telling the world that the fossil fuel industry was helping to ‘solve’ the problem of environmental degradation and climate change."
And, according to Aronczyk, "when companies want a seat at the table where climate policy is at stake, it’s primarily so they can control what happens.” “Having the head of an oil company presiding over COP28 represents the culmination of 30-plus years of capitulation to the power and money of the fossil fuel industry.”
So next time you come across articles trying awfully hard to prop up public opinion of the UAE, remember just how much money and time powerful actors are investing in laundering the petrostate’s oil-stained reputation.
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