Telegraph Piece: Keeping the actual energy industry out of the room for climate talks is crazy

The fossil fuel industry has a role to play in managing climate change. Excluding them from COP 28 is madness

The fossil fuel industry will have a role to play in our green energy transition CREDIT: Ina Fassbender /AFP

[Note: This story is also published at The Telegraph]

A concerted effort is being made to exclude representatives from the oil, natural gas and coal industries from participating in the upcoming COP 28 conference, which will be held in December in the United Arab Emirates. Such a move would reverse the progress made from last year’s COP 27 gathering, in which the industries were allowed to participate after having been banned from the 2021 event.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres seemed to kick this campaign off in earnest recently when he made a statement blaming the “climate emergency” on the very existence of fossil fuels, rather than the emissions they cause: “The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It’s fossil fuels – period”.