Opinion: Climate meeting closes with some encouraging signs

It’s a political myth, really, but it’s still poignant: that no one could have visited China back in 1972 but then-President Richard Nixon.

His anti-communist positions provided him the political cover he needed to improve relations without being attacked by the Cold War “hawks” on the right.

“Only Nixon could have gone to China,” historians and even Spock (in the movie Star Trek VI, Wikipedia says) have said. Maybe in the years ahead, they’ll add, “only the fossil fuel industry could take on global warming.”

The latest global climate conference, COP28, in oil-rich Dubai, came to a close last week with some encouraging signs, not the least of which is a new urgency.

“Failure is not an option,” said COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber in Barron’s magazine. “What we are after is the common good. What we’re after is what is in the best interest of everyone, everywhere.”

Coming from a leader in the oil industry, and out of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, there’s good reason to be skeptical of the sincerity behind such a statement. After all, he comes from an industry that has been working hard to deny the severity of our global circumstances for decades now. Why believe anything they say now?

Such skepticism is warranted, but I still think this was the most encouraging meeting on climate change I’ve seen so far, right up there with the Paris Accord if you ask me. The debate over whether to “phase out” or “phase down” fossil fuels is sparking a good debate over what needs to be done versus what can be done as we transition to clean energy sources. If you ask me, that’s progress.

I was particularly glad to see the conference’s attention on capping methane emissions on oil and gas wells — something that’ll impact New Mexico and Texas and their Permian Basin methane emissions.

Methane is the second largest contributor to climate change after carbon dioxide, and while agriculture is a big reason for that, let’s look specifically at methane emissions from oil and gas wells — something the Biden administration is working to stop through tighter regulations imposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Methane traps heats in the atmosphere, as does carbon dioxide, but it doesn’t stay around as long, so removing methane from the atmosphere is a “quick fix” of sorts, which can buy us more time to take on the larger culprit, carbon dioxide.

Plus, capping off our orphaned methane emissions is do-able in the here-and-now. Sure, it’ll cost a few bucks, but the oil and gas industry isn’t exactly broke. They can pay for it from those record profits we keep hearing about.

Guess we’ll see in the days ahead how our own “oil patch” citizenry will react to the new EPA rules, but I’m hoping that, deep down, they know it’s the right thing to do for our environment.

Meanwhile, the big oil companies seem to be hedging their bets. The American Petroleum Institute said the other day it was still reviewing the new EPA rules, but added that it shares the administration’s goal to reduce methane emissions.

Of course, as the skeptic would point out, it’s all just talk. The oil and gas industry has been fighting environmental regulation for practically forever now, so why should they support a cap on methane emissions?

One reason is that it’s a whole lot cheaper than addressing their CO2 output.

Another is that oil and gas producers see the writing on the wall. They’re investing in clean renewables just like everyone else, obviously in anticipation of a day when clean energy captures the market.

And, perhaps, one more reason. Maybe oilmen like the 50-year-old Sultan Al Jaber, who has four children, are recognizing climate change as the threat it really is to our future. Maybe Al Jaber, like so many more of us, is feeling motivated to leave an inhabitable world behind for future generations.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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