In the March-June quarter, Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, posted a net profit of $48 billion, breaking all-time records. In the July-September quarter, earnings were $40 billion, up 40% from the same period last year. What happens in the world’s largest company is repeated in the entire oil and gas industry, which is at the peak of its profitability.

The imbalance of power with paralyzed states is clearer than ever: however incapable of effectively taxing the windfall profits of private oil companies, governments are equally incapable of planning and enforcing the drastic downsizing of the industry necessary for human survival.

At COP 27, the 27th UN Climate Crisis Summit, which concluded last week in Sharm el-Sheikh, the heavy hand of the oil industry was more than palpable. It wasn’t just the 636 registered oil lobbyists (more than in any other year), and it wasn’t just that Saudi Arabia contributed $5 billion to Egypt’s central bank on the very days that Egypt, as chairman of the session, drew up the final communiqué. It was a general feeling of stagnation, impossibility of progress, fixation on reality, pleasant in the short term and absolutely destructive in the long term.

The conclusions of the meeting said nothing about phasing out fossil fuels, only the overall goal of keeping the temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The problem is that the goal alone, without proper preparation, means nothing, and any future couch marathon runner knows this for sure. Scientists insist that humanity’s emissions should be halved by 2030 – in just seven years. Their warnings are repeated, with new examples of terrible disasters added each year. But the attention of international public opinion is focused elsewhere.

Scientists are warning in the air that pollutant emissions emitted by humanity should be halved by 2030.

The recent unprecedented floods in flood-stricken Pakistan displaced 33 million people, damaged 1.2 million homes, destroyed 5,000 kilometers of roads, 240 bridges and part of the autumn crop as if they never happened. Forgotten are the unimaginable heatwaves that hit Europe this summer, during which 20,000 more deaths were recorded than usual.

The fossil fuel industry in the West, the Arab world, and Russia sets the agenda, and the current agenda is artificial fuel scarcity to drive up prices and political power for the industry. From a geopolitical point of view, it is important whether Europe will be supplied with fossil fuels from Russia or from other sources. Climate – no. But instead of phasing out fossil fuels altogether, the goal has dwindled to phasing out Russian fuel alone, and claims that until recently would have been considered scandalous, such as that the US is planning to build four new terminals to drastically increase fossil fuel exports for the rest of the world (an increase in pollution by 233 million tons per year) are considered normal.

Of course, there are also commitments to “climate neutrality”, but in the vast majority of cases this is greenwashing. A number of companies, from airlines and banks to food companies, have announced to delegates that their activities are not harmful to the climate, when in fact they are buying certificates for hydroelectric or renewable energy projects that will be built anyway. That was the conclusion of a Bloomberg Green study that looked at 215,000 such transactions in a market now worth $2 billion. Basically, it’s a public relations exercise. Accordingly, the speeches and presentations of states at COP 27 were their own PR exercises, and the end result, the summit’s greatest achievement, can be described as an agreement to create an empty shell.

After years of denial, the industrialized countries responsible for the largest amount of pollutants have agreed to set up a fund to finance victims of climate disasters in the most vulnerable countries, but without specifying the sources and amount of funding. It’s as if the whole city is rushing to decide how to put out the fire, and finally celebrating because the arsonists have accepted some responsibility and agreed to compensation for an infinitesimal percentage of future fire victims. This would be desirable, but not practical.

Transition in 5 easy steps

The desire for political stagnation has led a new generation of activists to engage in attention-grabbing activities, such as painting mosques that guard famous works of art. Financial Times columnist and managing director Martin Wolfe reminds governments of their own responsibility, highlighting five necessary policy changes: invest more in research, subsidize clean technology, end fossil fuel subsidies, which by 2021 amounted to $700 billion a year, spending on carbon emissions and guarantees to finance the green transition, especially in developing countries. The imposition of harsh prison sentences on those who protest is not part of these duties.