A year ago, the United States was aiming to overtake the Europeans in the fight against climate change, thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the huge energy transition subsidy plan that was passed in the summer of 2022. But since then, the atmosphere has darkened, and US President Joe Biden, who attended the two previous meetings, will not be attending the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), which will be held in Dubai from Thursday, November 30 to December 12.
First of all, there's an elephant in the room, named Donald Trump: The Republican candidate intends to take the country out of the Paris Climate Agreement again (a withdrawal he first set in motion in June 2017) if he wins the 2024 presidential election.
For years, Biden's special climate envoy, John Kerry, has explained that a Republican return to power would not break the momentum of the energy transition because a point of no return has been reached. "No politician can undo what is happening now. Why? Because the marketplace has made its decision," Kerry told the Financial Times this summer. While this optimism may be justified in the long term, it warrants being tempered today.
Oil companies have picked themselves back up since the war in Ukraine and soaring gasoline prices, which are a major factor in the unpopularity of Biden, a Democrat. In August, the US broke its all-time record for oil and natural gas production. The country produces more than the Arabian Peninsula and Russia combined. It has no dependency problems, is unaffected by the war in the Middle East and intends to use the geostrategic weapon of oil to its advantage – for example, by exporting liquefied natural gas to Europe. The US plans to move from energy "independence" to "dominance," to borrow a phrase from Nikki Haley, a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination.
In this context, there is no longer any question of getting out of fossil fuels, and oil giants such as ExxonMobil and Chevron are embarking on mergers and acquisitions in order to drill more efficiently. The American philosophy is that the climate battle will be won with the oil companies, rather than against them. "We have to get the fossil fuel industry at the table," Kerry, who supported the holding of COP28 in the United Arab Emirates, explained to the Financial Times.
His comments are a blend of geopolitical pragmatism and faith in technology: One of the main ideas is to develop CO2 capture and underground storage, so as to be able to continue emitting it. This avenue is being explored by ExxonMobil and Occidental Petroleum, the firm in which billionaire Warren Buffett has invested. Kerry continued, "The question is, can you bring it to scale?" – that is, staying within the temperature rise curve envisaged by the Paris agreement.
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