Did the world cop it?

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference or Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, more commonly known as COP 28, held at Expo City, Dubai took a day longer to be concluded because writing a text acceptable to all participants was not an easy task. 

After two weeks of intensive debate, diplomats from nearly 200 countries reached a sweeping agreement that explicitly called for ‘transitioning away from fossil fuels.’ The deal calls on countries to stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere entirely by mid-century; to triple the amount of renewable energy installed around the world by 2030; and to slash emissions of methane, a greenhouse gas.

The global pact was the first in the history of COP summits to explicitly mention the necessity to shift away from every type of fossil fuels. It still received widespread criticism due to the decision not to include a clear commitment to fossil fuel phase-out or, at least, phase-down. In fact, the deal does not compel countries to take action, and no timescale is specified.

The agreement includes global targets to triple the capacity of renewable energy like wind and solar power, and to double the rate of energy efficiency improvements, both by 2030. It also calls on countries to accelerate use of low - and zero - emission technologies like carbon capture and storage.

The decision was a compromise, but it is still an important one. Many have said that it sends the signal that the era of fossil fuels is coming to an end, which is something one cannot imagine COP doing, even up to five years ago. Oil industry executives largely backed the agreement, which does not require countries to take specific actions. This, of course, is its Achilles heel.

European leaders and many of the nations most vulnerable to climate-fueled extreme weather were urging language that called for a complete “phase out” of fossil fuels. That was in direct contrast with the position held by major oil producers led by Saudi Arabia. In the end, the middle ground was found – even though it left some countries, particularly islands who are threatened by a rise in sea level - deeply dissatisfied.

In fact, many island leaders said that they didn’t even have a chance to offer changes or relay concerns before Sultan Al Jaber, the Emirati oil executive presiding over the conference, declared it adopted by consensus.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump, the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination, said that if elected, he would renege on a $3 billion US pledge – announced at the conference by US Vice President Kamala Harris – to a global fund meant to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt to climate change.

It is remarkable that it took 28 of these annual conferences on climate change before governments were willing to name the elephant in the room: the burning of fossil fuels which is the main driver of the increase of average temperatures around the globe.

Before, it even started, the conference was widely criticised, both regarding the leader of the summit, as well as the choice of the United Arab Emirates as the host country, given its dubious environmental record and role as a major producer of fossil fuels.

The fact that Sultan Al Jaber who is the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) was appointed president of the Conference itself, gave rise to concerns over an obvious conflict of interest.

Climate campaigners have also said the Conference resembled a trade fair as business people far outnumbered government officials. There were more than 90,000 registered attendees, a record number. Large corporations – including banks, oil and gas companies – and consultancies were at the summit, as well as the climate tech startups. Leaked documents appeared to show plans for the UAE to use the conference to strike new fossil fuel deals with other nations, sparking international outcry.

Last Wednesay, Al-Jaber announced that a final compromise agreement between the countries involved had been reached, with the deal calling on all nations to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels ‘in a just, orderly and equitable manner’, in order to prevent the worst outcome of climate change, while also ‘accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science’. 

Many groups – including the US, the UK, the EU and some countries that are most vulnerable to climate change – had wanted a more ambitious commitment to ‘phase out’ fossil fuels. The EU negotiating team at the Conference included the Maltese minister responsible for energy, Miriam Dalli.

According to the UN, the 1.5C warming limit, which was agreed at COP 21 in Paris, has driven ‘near-universal climate action’. This has helped bring down the level of warming the world can expect – even though the world is still not acting at anywhere near the pace needed to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Ultimately, the success of COP28 will be determined by the changes the world puts into practice in the years ahead.

Was it Hamas?

Before its attack on 7 October, Hamas maintained tight operational security. The assault blindsided Israel’s spies, and seems to have surprised even Hamas’s political leaders. But did someone know enough to profit? According to The Economist, a new paper by Robert Jackson Jr, a former commissioner of America’s Securities and Exchange Commission and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University suggests so.

The authors’ most striking finding is a surge in short sales – actually bets that a security’s price will fall – of an exchange-traded fund (etf) listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker ‘eis’, which tracks an index of Israeli shares. In September, an average of 1,581 shares a day of ‘eis’ were sold short, representing 17% of the daily total trading volume. On 2 October, five days before the attacks, a whopping 227,820 shares were shorted, representing 99% of total volume.

Rather than reflecting a souring of market sentiment, the increase in activity seems to have come from just two trades. Then, on the first trading day after the attack, standard ‘long’ transactions outnumbered short sales by a similar number of shares (248,009). If these trades were made by the same investor, they would correspond to a $1m profit. Was it Hamas who did it?