As another round of frustrating climate talks ended, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said oil and gas companies are on track to be "planet wreckers."
That's because the fossil fuel industry had a record US$4 trillion windfall in net income last year, he said, yet its spending for clean energy and carbon capture technologies was just 4% of what it spent on fossil fuel drilling and exploration.
His comments came as negotiators from nearly 200 nations ended two weeks of talks in Bonn, Germany, on Thursday in preparation for the next major U.N.-brokered climate summit slated for late November to mid-December in Dubai.
They agreed to require fuller disclosure of participants' affiliations and funding, but negotiators spent eight of the nine days feuding over the meeting’s agenda. The talks have included a large contingent of industry proponents who favor balancing more oil and gas production with more carbon removal technologies.
Guterres pushed back at this notion.
"Let's face facts. The problem is not simply fossil fuel emissions. It's fossil fuels – period," he said. "Fossil fuel industry transition plans must be transformation plans, that chart a company's move to clean energy – and away from a product incompatible with human survival. Otherwise, they are just proposals to become more efficient planet wreckers."
Guterres spoke at a press conference after meeting with a group of civil society climate leaders from around the world to prepare for the next climate talks.
'Hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open'
Nations are so far off-track from meeting climate promises and commitments due to a lack of ambition, trust and credibility, he said, that the world is headed for a 2.8° Celsius temperature rise above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century.
"That spells catastrophe, yet the collective response remains pitiful," Guterres said. "We are hurtling towards disaster, eyes wide open – with far too many willing to bet it all on wishful thinking, unproven technologies and silver bullet solutions."
His message is reminiscent of the Netflix climate satire "Don't Look Up" in which people fail to act or cluelessly minimize the dangers all while putting their faith in untested technologies in a last-ditch effort to prevent the planet from exploding.
The Bonn-based U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, serves as a platform for the summits, or Conference of Parties, known as COPs.
Environmental groups and climate experts denounced the United Arab Emirates' announcement that Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, chief executive of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, will preside over the next summit, known as COP28.
He oversees one of the world's biggest oil companies, serves as UAE's minister of industry and advanced technology, and is chief executive of renewable energy company Masdar, based in Abu Dhabi.
The next summit, COP28, must fulfill nations' obligations under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Guterres said. The Paris treaty committed the world to an upper limit of 2° average temperature rise, and, preferably, no more than a 1.5° increase.
"Limiting the rise in global temperature to 1.5° is still possible. We must consider this as a moment of hope," he said. "But it will require carbon emissions to be cut by 45% by 2030."
This article was corrected to restore Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber's missing first name.
