[1] The trip was about trying to repair a frayed relationship but also about oil – the Americans wanted the Saudis to pump more oil and gas. It is an interesting notion coming from political representatives of the globe's largest oil producer and second largest polluter, the United States. The tension, which transcends the unfairly targeted Sultan Al-Jaber and even oil-rich UAE, is whether nations should be completely fazing out oil, coal, and gas – something UN Secretary General Guterres and others have called for – or whether the focus should be on reducing emissions, the position of oil producing states (and Western oil companies). There is, of course, nothing at all preventing Western countries from shutting down their own fossil fuel production and polluting industries, nothing except the fury of their own citizens. I suspect that a considerable part of the fury directed at the organizers of COP28 is a type of projection.

Source: ABC News June 26, 2023 15:37 UTC