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    Re: De-Smog outraged that Russian oil & gas oligarchs present at COP27 Archived Message

    Posted by Ian M on November 13, 2022, 7:40 pm, in reply to "Re: De-Smog outraged that Russian oil & gas oligarchs present at COP27"

    Global Witness compiled the list. They write:

    'This finding is the result of a rapid analysis of the over 30,000 delegates admitted to the talks carried out by Global Witness using a combination of scraping, machine learning and long hours poring through the data. We define fossil fuel lobbyists as people who have links to companies with significant business activities in fossil fuels, or who are attending the talks as part of a trade body representing fossil fuel interests.

    Even then, the estimate is likely to be conservative, as our methodology relies on delegates to the talks disclosing their own connections to fossil fuel interests, and many lobbyists may choose to obscure that link. We also rely solely public sources like company websites, news coverage or databases like InfluenceMap’s for connecting delegates to fossil fuel interests.

    We have also not included the many lobbyists for other industries closely tied to fossil fuels or heavily implicated in the climate crisis, like the finance industry, big agribusinesses or petrochemicals industry.'     - https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/636-fossil-fuel-lobbyists-granted-access-cop27/

    I thought it was weird that the graph in the BBC article (also linked by de-smog) didn't show any delegates from the US:


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63571610

    Then I read in the global witness press release that at least some appeared to be embedded in the UAE crowd:

    'Vicki Hollub, the CEO of Oxy, a major US oil and gas producer, complained in October this year that oil and gas companies like hers were not allowed into negotiations at COP26, though she did get access to the talks last year.

    Hollub claimed at an energy industry event that oil and gas companies were already working to influence this year’s COP27 and next year’s COP28, scheduled to take place in the United Arab Emirates. She predicted that they would be allowed into negotiations with the climate talks taking place in oil producing countries.

    Hollub’s prediction seems to have come true with her and eleven of her colleagues from Oxy gaining access to this year’s talks as part of the official United Arab Emirates delegation, which included at least 70 fossil fuel lobbyists according to our analysis.

    Oxy is one of the largest US oil and gas producers and a major producer in the prolific Permian oil basin. The company was also the second highest spending oil and gas lobbyist in the United States in 2021, behind only Koch Industries. Hollub has criticised others for pushing the energy transition “too quickly” saying instead that with carbon capture technology, largely used to pump yet more oil, she can see a way to continue producing oil and gas “for the foreseeable future, I’m talking 2060, 2070, 2080, I’m not talking about ending fossil fuel development in ten or twenty years”. '     - ibid.

    As far as I can make out the whole COP circus is a giant orgy of lobbyists and their various bought-and-paid-for politicians. Even the 'good' ones lobbying for 'renewable' [sic] tech are still basically advocates for mining, industry and global trade - all deeply political stances at odds with the interests of most ordinary people and the health, even viability, of the living planet.

    They're part of the problem, which is why the only 'solutions' they're capable of agreeing on all stink.

    cheers,
    I

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