Saudi Arabia’s energy minister rejected any phase down of fossil fuel now or in the future on Monday, using an interview at the U.N.’s COP28 conference to reject the increasingly strident demands of climate activists.
AFP reports a tentative “phasedown/out” was included in a first draft of an agreement on climate action delegates are haggling over during talks that are scheduled to finish on December 12.
If successful it will end all new oil, gas, and coal projects.
But Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, a half-brother of de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, told Bloomberg that Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, rejects the proposal outright.
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“Absolutely not,” he said in an interview in Riyadh. “And I assure you not a single person — I’m talking about governments — believes in that.”
In an interview last week, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called for a total phaseout of fossil fuels, warning “complete disaster” awaits mankind on its current trajectory, as Breitbart News reported.
U.S. President Joe Biden has already promised to eliminate the fossil fuel industry by 2050, along with millions of American energy workers’ jobs with his climate change plan.
But Prince Abdulaziz said: “I would like to put that challenge for all of those who… comes out publicly saying we have to (phase down), I’ll give you their name and number, call them and ask them how they are gonna do that.
“If they believe that this is the highest moral ground issue, fantastic. Let them do that themselves. And we will see how much they can deliver.”
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