Monday just ended. It’s been a weekend of the jarring realities of the climate crisis in contrast with the dishonesty of many global leaders’ optimistic words. The U.S. Pavilion, one of many spaces where events are held, opened on Saturday, with a series of programming meant to uplift and celebrate Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), lauding it as the best national climate policy passed thus far. But the U.S.’s “best,” as we know, is NOT a climate justice bill, even if the U.S. insists it is, full of carbon scams that do not reduce emissions and increase burdens on environmental justice communities. On Sunday, actions across the COP28 campus centered human rights, calling for ceasefire, drawing attention to the ongoing genocide in Palestine –as well as the genocide in Sudan.

The False Promise of the IRA – The US Passes the Buck, Hoping Private Companies Will Magically Foot the Bill on the Climate Crisis

As evidenced by limiting space for attendees and leaving no room for questions, the US remains a global leader in enforcing the status quo and shirking responsibility, wishing for the private sector to solve the climate crisis instead.

Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry praised industry and insisted that the only way to address the climate crisis was to partner with private corporations. Kerry talked proudly about how the IRA had mobilized corporations to invest in dangerous, energy intensive technologies like carbon capture and hydrogen. His speech was followed by a slew of corporate heads who praised John Kerry and bragged about the profits in store from developing and exporting carbon scams.

The Biden Administration’s Clean Energy advisor John Podesta touted the Inflation Reduction Act as a pillar of industry as well as inclusive of the communities previously left out — going further to say that it was designed with such communities in mind, alluding to Justice40 and the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC). While there are a few pieces of the IRA worth praising, the developing, passing and implementation of the IRA were and are done with little frontline communities’ leadership, expertise, and input.  We are again experiencing the same dynamics and challenges of accessing resources as we always have — especially when expected to compete with private companies with powerful arsenals built on extracted wealth from our communities.

The profit-driven nature of COP28 runs counter to the issue it supposedly aims to solve— there is no questioning of the system of extraction and maximizing financial returns that led to the climate crisis in the first place. There is too much at stake to allow global leaders and corporations to rely on capitalist financial mechanisms - our futures are not for sale. 

Caption: CJA Videographer Keenan Rhodes meets Democracy Now journalist Amy Goodman

Highlights from the Weekend

• Colombia and Palau announced support for a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, joining eight other nation-states in the call for a complete phase out of fossil fuels. Listen to Alex Rafalowicz’s speech at the Climate Justice Pavilion about how extraction of fossil fuels is NOT a sign of human progress.
• Our members at the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives presented a side event on the importance of zero waste and agroecology in cutting methane emissions -- a critical piece of limiting our global warming to 1.5°C. The panel uplifted the incredible work of communities in the Global South - watch the stream here.

Access all of our Field Notes and our documentation on our participation in COP28 here.

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