Slouching towards Dubai

"Unabated", the UK's pre-COP split personality, big week for DAC, and the case for not throwing climate baby out with offsets bathwater.

Welcome back to Wicked Problems. Your purveyor of climate tech insights, Dad jokes, bantz, and existential dread since just before 420 ppm.

That grinding noise is getting deafening with wordsmiths of all stripes sharpening all their rhetorical weapons as they prepare to clash in and around COP28. Solution vs solution; action vs delay; Global South vs Global North; meanwhile eyes are on oil and gas lobbyists’ covert infiltration of national and NGO delegations. But it’s fair to say there’s more attention than ever to the fights over language.

Advice to Journos: “Unabated” is a Weasel Word

“Unabated fossil fuels” threatens to be one of those phrases that will be wallpapered over the discourse leading up to COP28 in Dubai and beyond. It does two things - it suggests there will be willingness to scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems at point-source on power plants that burn methane or coal to generate electricity; and it’s been deployed to soften the language around “phase-out” or…