Flashy country pavilions, corporate-sponsored cocktail parties and a smorgasbord of side events have turned the annual U.N. climate summit into what some say is a trade show or circus.
In this year’s gleaming host city of Dubai, billboards advertise the benefits of wind energy, climate ambition and Exxon Mobil’s carbon capture projects. And with a record 84,000 registered attendees, this year’s Conference of the Parties, or COP28, is a far cry from the first in Berlin in 1995, a low-key affair with fewer than 4,000 delegates focused on multilateral climate change cooperation.
This is seen by some as a sign of success and by others as a dangerous distraction from the business of combating climate change as over nearly three decades global oil demand, carbon emissions and temperatures have marched steadily upward.
