by Martin Jay, Strategic Culture:
It was always going to be a balancing act keeping the credibility of the global environmental talk shop COP28 in check while holding it in a country where they are producing fossil fuels like it is going out of fashion. It might not have been a wise choice of the UAE’s president Mohamed Bin Zaid to give the top job of presiding over the event to the oil minister and the boss of the national oil company, but it was equally unwise for Sultan al-Jabar to have used the event as a way of promoting the UAE and its oil production to other countries. Something about that smacks of shooting yourself in the foot and perhaps Mr Al Jabar’s denials and feigned innocence at the opening day press conference just made the whole fiasco even more of a farce than it already was.