Fossil Fuel Superpowers Are Not Going to Quit

"If we die," says Wolverine to his nemesis Stryker at the start of the final act of the 2003 film X-Men 2, "you die." He then chains him to a helicopter.

At COP24 in Katowice, Poland, it's becoming increasingly clear that we, the people of Earth who aren't major shareholders in oil companies, are Stryker.

There will of course be those of you who don't want to see yourselves as a not-very-good-villain from a middling superhero film, but that’s where we find ourselves. We’re Stryker, chained to a helicopter, waiting for impending disaster. We may as well accept that.

The Wolverine in this scenario (stay with me) is the global fossil fuels industry, which over the course of the first week of the UN climate conference has made it clear that it, like the later version of the hero in the 2017 movie Logan, does not give a shit.

On Saturday, the US backed other fossil fuel superpowers, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, to block a motion "welcoming" the landmark report published by the IPCC in October which warned that the world is currently heading towards catastrophic levels of warming.

The move could be significant. Delegates are meeting here to agree a "rulebook" on how countries can meet the goals set out during the historic summit in Paris three years ago. The action by the four countries could derail the talks and lead to a weak agreement being signed at the end of negotiations. Ultimately, that means we’ll all have less chance of keeping the world within "safe" levels of global warming.

So why are these countries doing this? They can’t argue with the science. The climate is changing. Everyone knows that. The hope is that by ignoring the IPCC report they might be able avoid commitments to keep the world within 1.5 degrees of warming. Doing that would require massive reductions in emissions and the reshaping of the entire fossil-fuel driven global economy. They can’t have that.

Aside from Saturday's dramatic intervention, the major oil powers have tried to keep a low-profile in Katowice.

On Monday, I went to a bizarre event put on by the US delegation on how coal and natural gas were great. It was attended by Australia’s ambassador for the environment, Patrick Suckling, two members of the Trump administration, figures from the US fracking industry and a few dozen protesters.

Preston Wells Griffith III, a climate advisor in the White House, summed up the administration’s policy by saying the US does not want to "keep it in the ground". Instead, it wants to use all energy "cleanly".

A few minutes earlier, I’d been at a talk organised by the Saudi state oil company Saudi Aramco, all about how it was reducing flaring at its operations, in the name of environmental policy. Exporting huge amounts of oil to rest of the world might negate that, but oh well. Such doublethink is common at COP24.

Katowice, the host city, is changing, we’re told. It’s a modern, vibrant place, committed to transitioning to a green economy. But thousands of people around here still work in the coal sector, the streets and buildings are coated with black soot and the air is difficult to breathe.

The first sponsor of COP24 was a Polish coal company. Since then, the event has been sponsored by two more. The historically significant trade union Solidarity signed a statement on Thursday questioning the science on climate change. The stand selling Katowice to attendees contains several cages filled with coal and glass cabinets advertising coal soap and coal jewellery.

"There is no plan today to fully give up on coal," President Andrzej Duda told the conference last Monday. "Experts point out that our supplies run for another 200 years, and it would be hard not to use them."

Giving up dirty fuels would be hard for Saudi Arabia too. Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman hopes that a move to part-privatise Saudi Aramco will raise tens of billions of dollars and finance his Vision 2030 masterplan. The success of the initial public offering of the company depends on its valuation staying high, with MBS setting it a $2 trillion target.

But moves to mitigate climate change could decrease the company’s value to $940 billion, according to research by Oil Change International – a huge problem for a man looking to become King, and one that he and his human rights-abusing cronies are prepared to make us all pay for.

@JSandlerClarke

Joe Sandler Clarke is a reporter for Unearthed.