Climate Summit Cop28 Co-opted by Oil Companies

On Friday December 8, Extinction Rebellion Boston climate activists marched from Boston Common through Beacon Hill to John Kerry's home, accompanied by Red Rebels Brigade and Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians to protest inaction on climate at the Cop28 summit

There is no lack of government inaction on the climate crisis in 2023. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts did not stop building fossil fuel infrastructure. Over the summer, there were disastrous floods in the western and central parts of the state. Why didn’t the Healey administration and the legislature take the bold steps necessary to curb carbon emissions?

Yet COP 28 will inevitably be one of the year’s biggest disappointments. The annual UN conference is taking place in the United Arab Emirates. The CEO of the state oil company will preside over the conference which is supposed to tackle the climate crisis. The Emirates are one of the world's biggest producers of oil. They have received long-sought permission from OPEC, the coalition of oil-producing nations that coordinates on output and prices, to pump more oil starting next year.

It is the classic situation of the fox being in charge of the chicken house. How did this happen?

Here we are at John Kerry’s house.

John Kerry is an important member of the Democrat Party faction of the political wing of the US ruling class. He represents and acts on behalf of the economic, political and military interests of that class. Some in that class understand there is a climate crisis and want to do something – as long as it does not conflict too strongly with the overall power and profitability of the system.

This is why John Kerry so often appears to speak out of both sides of his mouth. While he can say sort of the right things some of the time, he actually promotes actions that undermine the

requirement to act now to prevent even more massive damage to the planet.

I am going to elaborate on that by discussing John Kerry, the US and the COP process in light of the four Extinction Rebellion demands.

Number 1 -Tell the Truth – Declare Climate and Ecological Emergency

The US is the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels.

John Kerry and the Biden administration acknowledge there is a climate crisis, but they refuse to declare a climate emergency. Biden approves more drilling, more pipelines, more export

terminals. His strategy is to bribe the middle to upper classes to go electric – home heating, electric cars, and so on – but not to stop expanding US fossil fuel production. He pretends that

the emissions from the fossil fuels sold to other nations won’t affect the US.

Kerry carries out this agenda. He uses the slippery language of the oil industry. One such term is ‘unabated.’ It seems to mean that emissions will be captured or otherwise absorbed. Carbon

capture is 90 percent or more pure deception and delusion, another form of greenwashing. It fits with corporate game of ‘carbon credits,’ pretending to compensate for emissions by purchasing forest lands, mostly land that is not even in danger of being cut.

Kerry most recently agreed that fossil fuels must ‘largely’ be phased out. He did not say if ‘largely’ means 51 percent or 95 percent. Nor did he say how fast. It is also important to understand that the US likes to hide what it does. It gets other countries to do its dirty work, and at the last minute it smuggles in language that undercuts progress. So they will bemoan the acts of Saudi Arabia and other petrostates to block strong language, as if the US were not also a petrostate seeking high profits for its fossil fuel corporations.

Which brings us to demand two,

Act Now – net zero by 2025

We are at the end of 2023 with, lets be clear, zero chance of reaching this goal. In fact, the amount of fossil fuel burnt each year keeps rising, in almost exact parallel with the rise of the

Earth’s temperature.

Scientists say a 50% reduction by 2030 has a 50 percent chance of keeping warming below the 1.5 degree rise. That is clearly too little, and as we told the state of Massachusetts, net zero by

2050 is clearly too late. What is necessary is extremely fast action by those nations that burn the most fossil fuels, now and historically. That means the US first of all.

Will Kerry and the Biden administration ensure that COP28 agrees to a rapid and clear mandatory cut in fossil fuel production and use, without loopholes like “unabated” or “largely?”

Don’t hold your breath. With all this duplicity and bullshit around acting on the emergency, we must be clear who is and will be the most harmed by the already existing catastrophe.

That brings us to demand 4 (I will

come back to demand 3).

Just Transition – prioritizes the most vulnerable and establishes remediation

We know that the wealthiest 10 percent of the world’s people cause 50% of the carbon emissions, and most of that is caused by the wealthiest 1%. If we expropriate most of the wealth

of the 1% and enact measures to stop their carbon over-use, we would be well on our way to rapid cuts in emissions and having the money to remediate and to enact reparations for the

damage done to the majority of the world’s population.

This majority includes indigenous people, who more than anyone else are on the frontlines of the ecological and climate fight. It includes the great majority of the people of the global south, in particular Latin America, Africa and Asia, and people of color in the US. But it includes large numbers of low-income people in the global north as well.

The US has shown no interest in addressing this part of the crisis, and they consistently undermine efforts to do so. They opposed a loss and damage fund, they insist they don’t want

any language that hints at the need for reparations, they imposed that the US-controlled World Bank control the loss and damage fund that finally got set up, and now the US has contributed

$1.7 billion dollars to that fund. $1.7 billion. The need is now estimated at perhaps $4 trillion. That tells you just how much the ruling class thinks the poor people of the world are worth.

That brings us to demand 3:

Beyond Politics – Establish Citizens Assemblies

Politics as usual cannot produce the actions that the planet needs. XR calls for supplanting the existing do-nothing political apparatus. It calls, in effect, for a peaceful revolution.

The particular demand is to establish citizens assemblies – I think we can agree we mean residents’ assemblies, since migrants including the undocumented deserve a say in policies that

affect our lives, the lives of all living things, and the future of planet earth.

How we can get to assemblies or to forms of more direct, participatory democracy, in politics and in the economy is a topic for much more thought and action.

But it is clear that what blocks us, in the US and around the planet, from doing what is necessary is not a technological problem, it is a political problem. As a political problem it is also a class

problem – most of the human race is in the working class. Which means most of the human race has an interest in both solving the climate crisis and ending the reign of the capitalist economic system that has brought the world to the brink of complete climate catastrophe.

So we are at your house, John Kerry, to explain to you why we insist on our four demands. These demands point the way forward. If you and your fellow ruling class won’t take heed, then it is up to us to build massive non-violent direct action, civil disobedience, and disruption of business as

usual, until you act or you are pushed off the stage of history.

All photographs © Lita Xú Líng Kelley. Contact for personal use, editorial license or personal print purchase..