A kingdom built on oil now controls the world’s climate progress

Zero: The Climate Race

Bloomberg

Technology, Business, Science

4.7 • 219 Ratings

🗓️ 5 April 2023

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When Sultan Al Jaber was made president of COP28, the year’s biggest climate summit, there was outrage. How can the head of a giant oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. – think Exxon and BP combined – convince the world to cut emissions faster? But Al Jaber isn’t an oil boss cut from the same mold. He spent a decade as a renewables executive.

This week on Zero, Bloomberg Green Executive Editor Aaron Rutkoff talks to Senior Reporter Akshat Rathi about his new in-depth profile of Al Jaber exploring a world of contradictions. You can read the full article “The Oil Sheikh’s Climate Fixer”.

Read a transcript of this episode, here.

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks this week to Gilda Di Carli, Stacey Wong, and Kira Bindrim.

Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Zero. I'm Aaron Rutkoff, the editor of Bloomberg Green. This week we published a profile of
0:07.9	Sultan al-Jabber, president of COP28, the year's biggest climate summit set to happen in the United Arab Emirates at the end of November.
0:15.2	Akshott spent months working on this article. I think it's a really important story. So I wanted to talk to him about
0:21.7	how he got the story on this episode. These summits have been growing bigger and gaining in
0:26.3	importance, just as climate impacts are striking with greater ferocity and global emissions
0:30.2	continue to hit new records. That's why Aljabber's appointment has attracted so much attention
0:34.8	and criticism. He isn't just leading a pivotal UN climate forum,
0:39.3	but among his many, many jobs, he's also the head of Adnock. That's the state-owned oil company
0:44.7	that's the source of wealth in the United Arab Emirates. But, you know, it's complicated. The UAE is
0:50.2	the first country in the Middle East to set a net zero goal, and it's the only country to build any significant amount of renewable energy capacity in the region.
0:57.2	And Al Jobber's behind all that. He isn't just an oil boss cut from the classic mold.
1:02.2	He spent much of his career as a renewables executive with a grand plan to build a zero-carbon city in the desert.
1:08.1	Those contradictions are worth exploring, especially because Al Jaber is now
1:12.4	the one who gets to decide the limits of how much progress will be made at this year's big climate
1:17.3	summit. So, Akshad, this article is partly a profile of who this guy is. And there's also this
1:24.2	philosophical question that we're asking of of where does oil belong in the climate
1:28.8	negotiations? So let's start there with trying to understand why there's a big UN climate summit
1:35.2	happening inside of a very big oil monarchy. Well, so a feature of these annual cop summits,
1:41.5	which, as the number says, have been happening for about 28 years,
1:45.9	is that they are hosted in a different country on a different continent every year. And the countries
1:51.7	that want to host the summit have to run a campaign to gather support from other countries,
1:56.4	typically from the same continent, and win the bid. So the country that runs an effective campaign wins, which is how the UAE, one of the largest
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.