(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Laptop-Throwing Oil Boss Hosting Climate Negotiations Has Benefited From 30 Years of PR [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-10-27 This year’s annual global climate negotiations, the 28th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) or just COP28 for short, will be hosted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber, who heads the petrostate's oil and renewables companies. As we and others have noted, the UAE's been on quite a public relations (PR) kick, making use of bots on Twitter and accounts effusively praising the country on Reddit . The latest insights into the petrostate’s PR efforts come from Ben Stockton and Amy Westervelt, who provide The Intercept with a look " inside the campaign that put an oil boss in charge of a climate summit ." There's a lot of great history in the article, but here are excerpts of our favorite parts to entice you to go read the story in full! It seems that years of PR contracts with major American agencies have been important not just to the UAE as a whole but also to Al Jaber on a personal level, as "behind closed doors, Al Jaber is said to be an exacting boss with a domineering approach.” “Two former COP28 team members claimed Al Jaber once threw a laptop at a wall in a fit of anger; one of them said he had a reputation as a 'bully.'" Yikes! And the bigger climate picture isn't any better. Stockton and Westervelt explain, "Al Jaber has rebuffed calls to step down from Adnoc, insisting there is no conflict of interest. But the line between the oil company and COP28 has 'blurred,' one former summit staffer said. At one point, the COP team was working out of Adnoc headquarters." What's more, when the UNFCCC questioned the UAE team about whether the national oil company Adnoc "had access to COP28 strategic documents," it turned out that "Adnoc employees were still being consulted on how to respond to media inquiries about the summit" months later. In fact, "One of Al Jaber’s advisers at Adnoc was signing off on communications leaving the COP28 team while still employed at the oil company, according to people who worked with him. While attending a U.N. conference in June, Oliver Phillips registered as a representative of Adnoc. But according to two sources who worked on COP28 communications, Phillips had already played a key role in steering PR efforts for the summit." Despite multiple sources confirming that Phillips had been an employee of the oil company until recently, he doesn’t even declare any affiliation with Adnoc on his LinkedIn page. The line between Al Jaber's roles as an oil boss and as the climate negotiations overseer have even been blurred for the high-power American public relations firms long tapped by the UAE to burnish its image, which include APCO, Burson Cohn & Wolfe, Edelman, and Teneo. "Some agencies acting on behalf of COP28 were engaged by Adnoc and Masdar rather than the COP team, according to sources with direct knowledge and filings with the U.S. Justice Department under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, which requires U.S. companies to report their dealings with foreign governments." Edelman in particular has apparently tasked "Lindsay Clifton, former spokesperson for the Republican National Committee and deputy press secretary for President Donald Trump" to work for the UAE's COP team. This adds someone to the climate negotiation organizing crew whose White House position entailed defending "Trump’s stance on climate change as his administration rolled back policies intended to help abate global heating." Clifton was "listed as Al Jaber’s direct 'media support' during the U.N. General Assembly in September," according to a "strategy document." Despite being a PR person hired for media support, "Clifton did not respond to requests for comment." Fortunately, someone actually worth hearing from did respond to the reporters’ inquiries: "Melissa Aronczyk, media studies professor at Rutgers University and co-author of ‘A Strategic Nature,’ a book about the history of environmental PR". She told Stockton and Westervelt that the fossil fuel industry has been working for decades to prevent climate action: “Working with U.S. PR firms, oil and gas companies, car companies, and petrochemical companies all conspired 30 years ago to create campaigns and programs around ‘sustainability’ with the goal of telling the world that the fossil fuel industry was helping to ‘solve’ the problem of environmental degradation and climate change." And, according to Aronczyk, "when companies want a seat at the table where climate policy is at stake, it’s primarily so they can control what happens.” “Having the head of an oil company presiding over COP28 represents the culmination of 30-plus years of capitulation to the power and money of the fossil fuel industry.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/27/2201959/-The-Laptop-Throwing-Oil-Boss-Hosting-Climate-Negotiations-Has-Benefited-From-30-Years-of-PR?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/