The Fossil-Fuel Industry Has a Rosy Idea of Its Future
Like the draft agreement that came out yesterday at COP28, in Dubai—which softened language about phasing out fossil fuels to “reducing” them and “efforts towards” substituting “unabated” fossil fuels—Canada is awkwardly trying to live with two contradictory ideas about climate change. The world has to stop using fossil fuels, and yet, for a petrostate, letting go isn’t easy.
During the United Nations’ climate meeting, Canada has been busy doubling down on its climate bona fides. Late last week, the environment minister, Steven Guilbeault, held an impromptu press huddle in the glaring sun outside the plenary halls, the national flags of dozens of countries fluttering around the gathered reporters. Canada had just been appointed by Sultan Al Jaber, the president of the conference, to push countries negotiating on fossil fuels to come to some sort of agreement, and Guilbeault said that Canada had already begun working with a number of delegations on that front. He also wanted to talk about the country’s announcement that it would put an old-fashioned emissions embroidered in white thread. (An emissions cap, get it?) Caroline Brouillette, the executive director of Climate Action Network Canada, ceremonially handed a hat to the environment minister, who accepted it but didn’t put it on.
