My colleague Thomas Hummel and I will soon be packing our bags. Both of us will be reporting from the World Climate Conference in Dubai. This almost two-week summit is usually the moment when all eyes turn to the global climate. But this year a lot is different. Germany has been busy with itself since the Federal Constitutional Court overturned the traffic light coalition’s accounting tricks. Berlin looks helplessly at empty coffers. It is impossible to predict what shockwaves Hamas’ terrible attack on Israel and the war in the Gaza Strip will send to the conference.
All of this is bittersweet for a summit that could perhaps be the most important since the 2015 Paris Agreement. In Dubai, the states don’t just have to put their cards on the table about how much they have achieved since Paris. They should also determine how things should work better in the future. To do this, they would have to develop specifications that the states’ climate goals must meet in the future. This is explosive because these requirements – as many states are demanding – could also include one regarding the future of fossil fuels. That alone will be a tough struggle. A long-demanded fund that is intended to cushion the climate damage already occurring among the poorest could also take shape in Dubai.
Here as there, it’s about money. In Germany it’s about the many billions for the long-overdue modernization of the economy, in Dubai it’s about the future of the fossil business model. The friends of coal, oil and gas will try to delay saying goodbye to it – precisely because they have recently earned better money from it than they have in a long time. They will praise technologies that can capture carbon dioxide and store it underground – even though that will never, ever be the solution.
Especially not at a time when renewable energies have long been competitive. What did Fatih Birol say in the SZ interview these days? “You cannot on the one hand want to achieve the Paris climate goals and at the same time continue to use fossil fuels. That doesn’t work. That’s impossible. That’s the truth, that’s math.” He is right.
A lot of things could become clear in Dubai – but the conditions are difficult. Now the global climate movement is threatening to split up over its position on the Gaza conflict. My colleague Philipp Bovermann has just described aptly what it means when a Greta Thunberg goes from being a climate activist to a Palestine fighter and is thus sidelined: Instead of taking to the streets for climate protection, the movement is with itself busy and silent. Climate protection needs the brightest spotlight, especially these days.
Thomas Hummel and I will still try to shed light on even the darkest corners of climate policy. Because what would happen to the global fight against the climate crisis if no one was interested in it anymore? I don’t like to imagine it.
(This text comes from the weekly Newsletter Climate Friday you here free of charge can order.)