As the current United Nations Climate Change Conference draws to a close, campaigners and journalists say U.S. hypocrisy is making it harder to negotiate a just and equitable phaseout of fossil fuels.
U.S. Special Envoy for Climate John Kerry said at the talks that he supported a phaseout, as The New York Times reported, and the U.S. State Department said Monday that a draft that excluded it "needs to be substantially strengthened," according to the Financial Times. Yet U.S. projects make up more than a third of all new oil and gas extraction planned worldwide through 2050, prompting Oil Change International to dub it the "planet-wrecker-in-chief."
"The U.S. insisting that a fossil fuel phaseout is the moral litmus test for climate leadership at COP28 while reaching record levels crude oil production—with no plans to stop!—feels like a strategy designed in a lab to drive people insane," journalist Kate Aronoff tweeted Monday.
"It's easy to point the finger at some of the Gulf states here, but we should not ignore the fact that the United States has the single largest oil and gas expansion plans of any country in the world by far."
When a draft text of the Global Stocktake was published Monday with no mention of the fossil fuel phaseout called for by civil society and many climate vulnerable nations, much of the outrage focused on the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), including COP28 host country the United Arab Emirates. The conference already faced scrutiny because its president, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, is also the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), and a whistleblower account ahead of the conference revealed he had been using COP28 negotiations to push oil and gas deals.
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, for example, said the draft text read "as if OPEC dictated it word for word," adding it was "'of the Petrostates, by the Petrostates, and for the Petrostates.'"
Yet even before the draft, climate advocates had pointed out that the so-called petrostates weren't the only ones obstructing progress: While not a member of OPEC, the U.S. has been the leading producer of oil and gas for the last five years, overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia by 44%, according to Inside Climate News.
"It's easy to point the finger at some of the Gulf states here, but we should not ignore the fact that the United States has the single largest oil and gas expansion plans of any country in the world by far," Brandon Wu, director of policy and campaigns with ActionAid USA, told Inside Climate News.
At the same time, the U.S. is pushing untested solutions like carbon capture and storage (CCS) and treating Indigenous, minority, and low-income communities within its own borders as sacrifice zones.
"They want to ship captured carbon from their land to my homelands and sequester it there," Panganga Pungowiyi, an Indigenous mother from Sivungaq, on Dena ina lands near Anchorage, Alaska, told Inside Climate News. "What we're observing is the violation of Indigenous people's rights and the violation of the sacredness of Mother Earth by continued commodification, whether by the extraction of fossil fuels or by the designation of her body and surface as a storage facility for carbon."
"The U.S., in other words, would like the rest of the world to agree to do something it cannot possibly do itself."
When it comes to fossil fuel expansion in particular, the U.S. Gulf Coast sits on the frontlines of drilling, petrochemical manufacturing, and the buildout of liquefied natural gas export facilities.
"To us in the Gulf South, what they say is not matched by their actions," John Beard, founder and executive director of the Port Arthur Community Action Network in Texas, told Inside Climate News of the U.S. government. "They continue to do more of what created the problem by allowing more liquid fossil gas facilities to be sited and by expediting more crude oil exports."
Overall, President Joe Biden approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands in the first two years of his administration than did former President Donald Trump in the first two years of his, despite a campaign promise to end the practice.
What's true of government plans is also true of U.S.-based fossil fuel companies, Aronoff pointed out for The New Republic: ExxonMobil plans to increase production by 11% next year and even further to 4.2 million barrels of oil a day by 2027 while Chevron said it would increase its spending from $17 billion this year to $18.5-19.5 billion in 2024. Current U.S. law does not limit fossil fuel production; the Inflation Reduction Act only provides carrots for renewable energy, not sticks for oil, gas, and coal. And the makeup of Congress means that Democrats would have a difficult time passing laws to restrict fossil fuels even if they wanted to.
By calling for a fossil fuel phaseout at COP28, Aronoff wrote, "the U.S., in other words, would like the rest of the world to agree to do something it cannot possibly do itself. It is by all accounts planning to speed in the opposite direction, with no plans to place any limits on the companies leading that charge. You'd be forgiven for thinking this situation doesn't make any sense because it doesn't."
Another factor that undermines the U.S. and other wealthy nations during climate negotiations is their lack of commitment to funding the renewable energy transition in developing countries.
"Where is the money? Where's the money?"
While the U.S. and E.U. call for a phaseout, Sara Shaw of Friends of the Earth International said, "they are seeking to water down the climate finance provisions (one of the elements of the text which is better than expected) so urgently needed to enable the energy transition in the Global South."
The U.S. has already successfully weakened the framework document for the new Loss and Damage Fund to help developing nations with the inevitable costs of climate change, Wu wrote in Context. Instead of stipulating that developed nations contribute, it now reads, "The fund is able to receive contributions from a wide variety of sources.
Wu added on social media that some developing countries are satisfied with the COP28 stocktake draft text as is because they do not think it would be possible to phase out fossil fuels without funding, and they do not trust wealthy nations to provide it.
"No phaseout/no finance leads to climate chaos. Phaseout/no finance ALSO leads to climate disaster, because a phaseout isn't possible in the majority world without finance and tech," Wu tweeted. "We need phaseout WITH finance."
"Only developed countries have the ability to deliver the missing ingredient to make this whole process work," Wu continued. "Not only are they not doing it, they're signaling that they never want to do it, by watering all new text recalling their obligations. It's never been clearer that providing finance is not only an ethical imperative, it's also a climate imperative. If we must play a blame game, let's point the finger at the developed countries that have been consistently failing this imperative."
Romain Ioualalen, the global policy campaign manager at Oil Change International, added: "Where is the money? Where's the money? We've been hearing from the African group in particular that they're not opposed to transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy but they're going to need support."
"If developed countries had met their financial obligations in this process, and were sending a clear signal that these countries would be financially supported through the transition, maybe the deal would be more secure at this stage," Ioualalen said.
