EXPO CITY, NEAR DUBAI, REARS OUT OF THE DESERT LIKE A HOUSING ESTATE DESIGNED BY DISNEY IN A FEVER DREAM. Built for the Expo 2020 global fair, identikit skyscrapers surround a vast dome, with a sprinkling of giant steel-and-silicon mushrooms stretching towards the sun. There is a forest of glass needles, a “surreal water feature” like a mini Niagara Falls in black marble, a giant metal falcon and sculptures of running horses. The effect is both beautiful and bewildering.
It’s here, amid the imported palm trees and concrete flowers, that the most important meeting yet on the future of the global climate will soon take place. Cop28 will gather the heads of state and government from a potential 196 countries to draw up an escape plan for a world on fire. Global heating has been increasing in severity for years, but this summer there were impacts no one could ignore.
Temperatures in July were the highest they had been for 120,000 years. New Yorkers choked on smoke from Canadian wildfires, tourists fled Greek islands, workers suffered heatstroke in India and Hawaii blazed. As land temperatures broke records, the seas reached hot-tub heat around Atlantic coasts, killing fish and bleaching coral, in a marine heatwave. Antarctic ice is failing to re-form and there are signs that part of the Gulf Stream system may be weakening. Scientists warn we have entered “uncharted territory” for the climate, and people around the world can see the results with their own eyes. “The era of global boiling,” as the UN secretary general put it, “has arrived.”
And yet, despite more than 30 years of intensifying climate talks, last year the world’s annual greenhouse gas emissions reached record levels. We are still hurtling in the wrong direction.
If the surroundings of Dubai’s Expo City appear surreal, the circumstances of the conference stretch credulity. Dubai, like the rest of the United Arab Emirates, is built on fossil fuel wealth. UAE is the world’s seventh biggest oil producer with
