So what are we supposed to make of the end-of-year stories regarding the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28)? Mainstream media outlets, desperate to put a positive spin on the event, chose to call it a success even though the deal reached by the participating countries recommends “transitioning away from fossil fuels” but doesn’t directly call for a phaseout of those fuels. 

Washington Post put on its happy face and said the COP28 delivered “a historic deal” and “an unlikely breakthrough on fossil fuels.” A New York Times story announced that “the world agreed to move away from fossil fuels.”

But in another Times article, the science writer David Wallace-Wells noted that “The question isn’t about whether there will be a transition, but how fast, global and thorough it will be. The answer is: not fast or global or thorough enough yet, at least on the current trajectories, which COP28 effectively affirmed.” 

Wallace-Wells included this reminder:

Not very long ago, this was a future that terrified us — the world beyond the goals of the [2015] Paris agreement looking tremendously bleak. Now, we are not just coming to accept that future but, in some corners, applauding it as progress.

“Pretty damn nu-anced, ain’t he?” my neighbor Swamp Rabbit said. “I think he’s saying this is one of them glass-half-full, glass-half-empty situations. Depends on how you look at it.”

“Give me a break. The glass is half-empty, and it’s leaking.”

I pointed to concluding remarks by the president of COP28, Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, who congratulated himself and other participants “who came and made the COP a success.” Meanwhile, the United States continues to be the world’s biggest oil and gas producer, and China and India, the world’s two most populous countries, continue expanding their coal industries.

And Al Jaber, the head of the UAE’s state oil company, continues to make oil and gas deals with any and all countries that want to jump on the oil barge with him.

It’s probably not on his list of favorite words, but you have to admire the Al Jaber’s chutzpah.