Three climate fights will dominate COP28

The United Arab Emirates, venue for cop28, the latest climate summit convened by the United Nations, is a controversial choice. Some 70,000 climate advocates, diplomats and other hangers-on will attend an event that begins on November 30th in Dubai, one of the gleaming cities built on wealth that fossil fuels have brought to the region. The fact that the world’s most important climate gathering will be hosted by a leading oil producer has sparked outrage among environmentalists. That the summit’s president, Sultan Al Jaber, runs adnoc, the uae’s national oil company (noc), is proof, whisper conspiracists, that the fix is in on behalf of Big Oil.

Yet from Abu Dhabi on the Persian Gulf, the shipping route to global markets for the world’s greatest concentration of oil reserves, to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, an entrepot abuzz with tankers carrying Russian oil evading Western sanctions, comes a sense of vulnerability to climate change. The region is short on water and home-grown food. The rising heat of summer is becoming inhumane. The cities built on these desert sands are at risk from a rising sea level. That the uae shares the threat from increasing global temperatures makes the gathering no less fraught.