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Given that this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference was hosted by a petrostate and led by a fossil-fuel CEO, climate campaigners understandably had low expectations.
This attempt to rebrand an everyday word encapsulates COP28, surely one of the most surreal climate summits to date. Between Dubai’s ostentatious fossil-fueled wealth, misguided car-centric city planning, and the fact that COP28 itself was led by a fossil-fuel CEO, it has been much easier than in prior years to be cynical about the whole exercise. But cynicism will not help us address climate change, and while it was tough to spot amid all the greenwashing, there was some real progress on the ground. Two weeks before the conference, the United Arab Emirates opened the world’s largest single-site solar plant, with two gigawatts of panels spanning 20 square kilometers and powering almost 200,000 energy-hogging UAE homes for $1.32 per kilowatt-hour – one of the lowest prices for electricity anywhere delivered at this scale. Nor is this the only development to applaud. The renewables lobby is celebrating a pledge, supported by 118 governments, to triple global renewable-energy capacity and double the annual rate of energy efficiency improvements by 2030. The nuclear industry also has reason to cheer, with 22 governments pledging to triple global nuclear-energy capacity by 2050. Both commitments are good news for the climate. The world needs both renewables and nuclear in order to cut fossil-fuel use quickly. Building low-carbon capacity fast is what matters, more so than whether the COP28 agreement includes the words “phase out” or “phase down.”
“#Actionism.” That word greeted arriving passengers at Dubai International Airport, the port of entry for the vast majority of the 100,000 or so climate negotiators, activists, industry lobbyists, and others attending this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference and the events around it. It flickered from ads in the oddly underused metro connecting the airport directly to the official COP28 venue, and it was displayed on the occasional billboard along the two main “roads” spanning the length of the city, each with at least a dozen lanes. Apparently, the neologism is meant to convey not just action, but “vigorous action to bring about change.”