Week 49: Oil-Cave Jabs and the Dramatic Dance of Petrostates at COP28

Dear all,

My precious! The Conference of Petrostates taking place in one of the leading petrostates in the world is about to end in a couple of days. And what a conference it has been so far: entertaining, dramatic, heated, and intensive. Tons of words bought as merchandise per kilogram at the local bazaar in Abu Dhabi and Dubai served as mezze between the "negotiation" sessions.

These per-kilogram words contain traces of substance that would make even the most resistant constitution allergic instantly. Thus, knowing this, hosts have made sure that proper medicine has been distributed prior and during the conference.

The "oil-cave jab" is served to participants at their discretion whenever they feel for it. The function of this exquisite luxury treatment is to tranquilize any doubt that things indeed are as bad as they are. Side-effects of this medicine are, let me put it this way, a financially beneficial outcome for jab distributors and, here comes the twist, a person does not need to go back and live in the cave.

Which on the other hand would be the case. A cave. It is sort of a no-brainer for anyone that the oil cave jab is the correct treatment for this enormous virus called, common sense supported with science, that has taken a grip on the world and hard-working people in it.

Terrible as it may sound, it has been proven that the oil-cave jab has great efficiency. And soon, very soon, you will be able to "top-up" your jabs anytime you want. A tiny, printed warning text on the back of the prescription package saying, "all the negative side-effects caused by consumption of this jab are being paid for by you" is nothing to be concerned about.

After all, better than any cave. This breakthrough medicine has been developed, molded, and architected by the brightest minds from the ranks of oil, mining, and finance industries guarding safety and stability of the planet itself and all creatures living on it (inclusive of biodiversity and bees, rats, fish, ah well, you know flora and fauna, all of it).

Splendid, eh? Biodiversity is a new asset class very soon and big business. When the scientists and doctors decades ago found out that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, that's the kind of new knowledge that used to serve as the basis for discussion and then mutual commitment.

But the tobacco companies in response to a famous surgeon general's report in the US hired actors and dressed them up to pretend to be doctors and put them on camera with their white coats and stethoscopes and had them look into the camera and with all of the affected sincerity they could muster with their theatrical skills, reassure people that there were no health consequences at all, and 100 million people died. And the same PR firms that came up with that strategy are now advising ExxonMobil and Saudi Arabia and the team managing the petrostate conference. Who are the actors pretending in this scam? Business leaders? Politicians? All of us?

On some metalevel, this has always been a fight for the soul of human. The Gollum of humanity crucified in that little space where hope and fear shake hands.

OPEC Secretary General Haitham Al Ghais sent a letter to the group's 13 members and 10 Russian-led allies this week after negotiators at talks in Dubai released a draft deal that included calls for a phase-out of fossil fuels. In the letter sent Wednesday, Ghais urged the group to "proactively reject any text or formula that targets energy i.e. fossil fuels rather than emissions". The letter urged OPEC+ members and allies to reject any mention of fossil fuels in the final summit deal, warning that "undue and disproportionate pressure against fossil fuels may reach a tipping point".

The president of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, has claimed there is “no science” indicating that a phase-out of fossil fuels is needed to restrict global heating to 1.5°C, the Guardian and the Centre for Climate Reporting can reveal. Al Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves”.

Well, he has said that this statement has been misinterpreted, and I wonder what part has been misinterpreted, science, or caves? Or maybe the phase-out of fossil fuels.

We don’t know at this stage, but maybe he has taken too many jabs. Al Jaber spoke with Mary Robinson (the chair of the Elders group and a former UN special envoy for climate change) at a She Changes Climate event. Robinson said, “We’re in an absolute crisis that is hurting women and children more than anyone … and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel. That is the one decision that COP28 can take and in many ways because you’re head of Adnoc, you could actually take it with more credibility.” Al Jaber said, “I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5°C.”

But, but! Hold your breath! U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said countries must prioritize the fight to keep global warming to 1.5°C after it was revealed the COP28 president claimed there was “no science” behind calls for a phase-out of fossil fuels.

Well. American crude oil production reached all-time high of 13.2 million barrels a day in September, which was more than any other country and accounting for about one in eight barrels of global output. FT reported that the added volumes outpaced official forecasts and called into question claims of a US oil industry constricted by Wall Street or environmental regulations.

“People are arguing that the fossil fuel industry, which is obviously responsible for the emissions that are going up, needs to step up and do more. I think that Sultan Al-Jaber would say that — I say that certainly. They can and must do more in order to solve this problem much more rapidly,” US climate envoy John Kerry said last week to reporters.

“We are in a race against time, and I know that everybody here does accept that concept,” he added. The US has been the world's biggest oil producer since 2018 and produced close to one-fifth of the world's oil supply in 2022.

Last week, the United States witnessed a historic peak in its domestic oil output, presenting a stark divergence from the endeavours undertaken by the Biden administration and global leaders to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. According to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration, the nation's oil production soared to 13.2 million barrels per day during the initial week of October , surpassing the prior 2020 record by an additional 100,000 barrels. The weekly production of domestic oil has experienced a twofold increase since the corresponding period in October 2012 up to the present moment. My precious! This is tragicomic.

Deals are made in luxury hotels, air-conditioned private jets on the tarmac and hangars, waiting for exhausted heroes to fly back from saving the world week. It is a heroic mission they have been on.

The world knows that. Leaning back in soft armchairs, sipping on cognac and smoking cigars satisfied with yet one more CCS, or CCSU, (a new jab) deal. Petrostate conference organizers granted attendance to at least 475 lobbyists working on carbon capture and storage (CCS), unproven technologies that climate scientists say will not curtail global heating.

The carbon capture bloc is one of the largest at Petrostate conf, outnumbering official Indigenous representatives by 50%, as well as several of the most climate-affected countries, including Somalia (366), Niger (135), Guinea-Bissau (43), Tonga (79), Eritrea (7), Liberia (197), and Solomon Islands (56).

Oxford University conducted a massive study of the phenomena known as rights law, the cost-reduction curves for technologies, and we've seen in our lives some stunning examples: the mobile phones, the flat screen TVs, not to mention computer chips.

And so they studied all of them, and some go down in cost very rapidly, some a bit slowly. They have a very small category labelled non-improving technologies. That's the category that carbon capture and sequestration is in. For 50 years, there has been zero reduction in cost for carbon capture and sequestration. ZERO.

Who will pay, who will gain, who will get the pain? When we talk about deals, it is wise to remind ourselves how the UAE got this petrostate conference in the first place. Who hosts the COP rotates between the different regions of the world as they're defined by the United Nations.

Countries compete to get it in the region whose turn it is. The Republic of Korea was the competition for the UAE. Well, that was just for the show. Why? You might look at the massive oil storage facility placed by the UAE in Korea . Getting millions of barrels giving them first purchase. You might look at the massive investment fund established by the UAE in Korea ; you might look at the military training relationships that were established.

You get the vibe. Deals. Once the country is selected, then that country has the authority to name the president of the COP. We don't know where the next COP is going to be because another petrostate, Russia, has objected to country after country in Eastern Europe. Maybe Serbia will emerge as an acceptable host. And then after that is Brazil and then perhaps Australia.

You can almost sense the tension created by lobbyists, oil, mining, and finance executives, host country representatives discussing new oil & gas terminals, expansion of operations below the seabed, and nowadays largely melted arctic region.

All this needs finance, and when we are there, well, that has never been a problem, eh! A recent blog released by the European Central Bank revealed that commercial banks within the Eurozone, presenting an image of environmental responsibility, are primarily responsible for the increased lending to major polluters.

The blog, authored by four economists, emphasized that banks projecting a greener facade tend to allocate a larger share of their lending to industries associated with higher environmental impact, often referred to as "brown industries." Among the authors, a senior team lead economist from the ECB's financial research division stands out, with the remaining three hailing from prominent institutions in the United States and Europe. You can find their presentation here; https://lnkd.in/ePvXHtFb .

But don’t despair! Banks that do more of their lending to ‘brown’ borrowers tend to have higher environmental disclosure. Well, great with SFDR….

They found little evidence to support the argument of some banks that their loans helped brown borrowers to transition to greener technologies or business models. This is the most common argument banks use to continue financing apocalyptic business.

“Our research suggests that the discrepancies between banks’ environmental disclosures and their lending practices arise because banks are reluctant to disrupt established lending relationships with larger carbon footprint borrowers.” The blog concluded there were “insufficient incentives for banks to change their lending policies”. This is ECB; this is not Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, or Fridays for Future. My precious!

Norway has secured a parliamentary majority for its plans to open up for deep-sea mining despite opposition from environmentalists and the fishing industry, who warn that the move risks further damage to fragile oceans.

“The renewable green industries run on minerals. This is an important contribution internationally,” said B?rd Ludvig Thorheim, an MP from the main opposition Conservatives. Norway runs on oil & gas extraction.

And if Norway is so keen on renewable energy, how come they're not investing anything in it? Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the largest of its kind in the world at more than $1.3 trillion, has made some 10,000 investments across the global economy. Yet, it has made just three investments in renewable energy projects. Three.

This human destiny touched me deeply. Four years after Tang Mingfang called out the injustices he witnessed at a Foxconn factory in China, nothing has changed, except for him. He blew the whistle on Amazon . He’s still paying the price. Amazon stock is holding in many pension funds around the world, most of the people have no idea about. They should know.

Below is the letter in full text, Mr. Tang wrote and sent to Jeff Semi-God Bezos, and divinity has, as expected, not responded yet! Recommended reading.

My precious! Have a great oil jab week! And please do not forget to top-up from time to time.

Tang Mingfang's Letter to Amazon Executives

To the Executive Chairman of Amazon Jeff Bezos:

Hello，

My name is Tang Mingfang, and I am from Yongzhou City in Hunan Province, China. I was a material control engineer at Foxconn Hengyang, where I worked on the mass production and quality control for the Amazon Kindle and Echo Smart Speakers and Displays. Due to Hengyang Foxconn’s cost cutting measures, its employees’ interests and rights were not protected, and Chinese laws were violated. The factory illegally employed student workers and dispatch workers from employment agencies, and Hengyang Foxconn refused to acknowledge the fact that it did not protect employees’ basic wellbeing or respect their demands. After gathering my courage, I risked my safety and reported the violations to China Labor Watch, founded by Li Qiang, to whom I provided key evidence for the above claims, including several photos that were not encrypted by Foxconn. I believe you have viewed these photos and you are aware of the issues at Foxconn. The reason why I reported these abuses was to fulfill my duty to defend social justice and out of empathy for the battered student workers; my intentions were never to seek profit or harm the company. After the China Labor Watch report was published in August 2019, with the help from you and Amazon, Hengyang Foxconn immediately rectified the above-mentioned violations, and Hon Hai Group issued a public statement claiming it had already disciplined those responsible for the malpractice. But Foxconn did not promote legal practices in order to fundamentally solve the problem; rather Foxconn is now trying to punish me, the “whistleblower”, to fundamentally solve their problem: me publicly exposing their malpractice.

After China Labor Watch and The Guardian initially reported Hengyang Foxconn labor law violations in March 2018, Amazon took actions right away, including requiring the Hengyang plant to develop an error correction plan and routine inspections and ensuring Foxconn can make the necessary changes. Foxconn also issued a statement that they would correct the found violations. As an employee of Foxconn in Hengyang at that time, and a witness of this incident, I clearly know Amazon’s strict requirements for its suppliers regarding corporate social responsibility and commitment to employee welfare, as well as Amazon’s firm intolerance of such illegal employment practices by Foxconn. However, the real situation I witnessed was that although Hengyang Foxconn issued a public statement promising to improve, in actuality, they not only did not follow Amazon’s requirements to improve, but the labor environment also worsened in 2019 as you can see in the media investigation report in August 2019. I believe every person with a conscience has a responsibility to stop such illegal actions. I believe it was important to let Amazon know about this noncompliance. I just had no way to contact Amazon directly, so I thought of looking for media outlets to expose the situation. But because of the huge impact of Hengyang Foxconn, local media was reluctant to report it, so I had no choice but to find the organization, Chinese Labor Watch, that had previously exposed Hengyang Foxconn in 2018. I could only hope that Amazon would see these problems and urge Foxconn to carry out comprehensive rectification as soon as possible in order to avoid the incident from expanding out of control which would bring more trouble to Amazon. After the issue came to light, I was happy to see that Amazon immediately instructed the audit department to investigate and urge Hengyang Foxconn to rectify the problem. I just never thought I would be maliciously targeted by Hengyang Foxconn and pay the price of two years in jail.

On August 16, 2019, under the directive of Foxconn Hengyang, I was interrogated at the local police station; I was arrested on September 11, I was forced to make false confessions under extreme duress from the interrogators. I was detained and in custody until July 2020, when I was convicted by the local court. While I was detained in the police station for questioning, I endured tremendous physical and mental stress. The officers at the police station used corporal punishments and violence during the interrogation to force me to change my statement and say that I did commit the so-called criminal activities. The police officer battered me multiple times during the interrogation, he repeatedly slapped and hit me in my face and in the back of my head. I was also tortured during the interrogation process when I refused to collaborate and admit to their baseless accusations. I could not stand up because my hands were chained onto the little desk that connected the two armrests, I could not do anything but suffer through such grave pain. During the first few days of the interrogation, the officers purposefully turned the air conditioner to the maximum level in the interrogation room, and I felt extremely cold. Eventually, they got angry and handcuffed both hands to the bottom of the iron frame. I was unable to stand or sit down, and I spent the entire night in a semi-crouching position. By the next morning, I could no longer not endure it. My entire body shivered and shook when I reluctantly signed the documents provided by the police, next to an officer whom I feared would beat me again if I did not cooperate.

During this period, the local prosecutor’s office returned the case to the Public Security Bureau for supplementary investigations twice, on January 3 and again on March 3, 2020, on the grounds that “some key facts were unclear and evidence was insufficient”. However, under pressure from your supplier Hengyang Foxconn, the Public Security Bureau reopened their investigation on me and reissued their original reports on February 3 and April 3, 2020 respectively. And so, their original goal of putting me in jail was finally achieved. The photos you have seen, which are obvious proof of illegal employment, were appraised at my own expense by two Judicial Expertise Centers in Hunan and Beijing, and they classified all of my photos as trade secrets (the lawyer I hired confirmed that the appraisers of the two reports did not have the qualification of appraisers as required by Chinese law and that their reports should not be accepted in a court of law). What is even more outrageous is that Hengyang Foxconn asked a Hunan accounting firm to categorize the 1.4 million RMB incurred in retiring illegal workers and re-recruiting legal employees as “losses caused by my infringement of its trade secrets” in order to achieve its promise to you and the public that “the irregularities have been immediately corrected”. Under the strong pressure from Hengyang Foxconn, the local court was forced to ignore my lawyer’s plea of not guilty and instead handed me a guilty verdict, a sentence of two years in prison, and a 10,000 RMB fine.

During my two years in prison, both my physical and mental health suffered tremendous damage. My 80-year-old father was bedridden after he suffered a stroke, and after learning that I was arrested in the detention center, he suddenly collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. He was resuscitated multiple times, but sadly, he passed away on November 2, 2019. Since I could not even go home for the funeral, everyone in my hometown found out that I was in jail. All the rumors circulating in my hometown overwhelmed my grieving elderly mother and nearly broke her spirit. This series of injustices also affected my dear sister and my wife. With the family breadwinner in prison, my wife suddenly lost her only source of income. With some financial support from relatives and friends, my wife was forced to take our son, who was still in the second grade of elementary school at the time, and transfer him to a school hundreds of kilometers away. After the move, our originally lively and outgoing son became silent and sullen because of his father’s sudden disappearance from his life. Hengyang Foxconn is the source of all of this suffering. My father always taught me that I should be a good person, and because I followed my heart and believed that justice should be served, I reported the serious violations at Hengyang Foxconn. Yet my imprisonment has caused such great harm to me and my family! After I was released from prison on September 10, 2021, my wife could not understand or accept what I had done, and to this day she has not forgiven me. My sorrow at my situation still causes me to burst into tears, but I was moved to see the care and concern of righteous people like Li Qiang and other friends in the community who are still willing to help me. But the managers of Hengyang Foxconn were full of resentment towards me. On the day that I was released from prison, I went to Hengyang Foxconn to pick up my personal belongings. I wanted to meet with the Foxconn supervisor to understand the situation. But the supervisor refused to see me and told his subordinates to block me from the factory’s door even though I was hungry and penniless after being released from prison. In the end, not only did Hengyang Foxconn management not see me, but they also called the police to remove me from Foxconn property. They said that I apparently had voluntarily resigned from Foxconn at the end of September 2019 and that it was impossible for management to see me since I was not a current Foxconn employee.

Thinking of what Hengyang Foxconn has done to me in the past two years, I feel angry. But I am just a person at the bottom of society; I have no voice and no one to listen to me. After learning that Li Qiang was willing to convey my situation to the world, I could not help writing this letter to you because I was your loyal admirer when I was at Foxconn. I know that you resigned from your high salary Wall Street position and resolutely drove to Seattle and founded Amazon. I know that you started selling books online and went on to create the powerful Amazon empire. You once said, “We have a lot of problems on the earth, and we need to solve these problems” and “We need people who fight hard for their beliefs and try hard.” Although the distance between me and you is farther than from space to the earth, I sought to follow in your footsteps, but when I “showed the courage” to report the problems at Hengyang Foxconn to the media, I was treated so unfairly. As the top executive of Hengyang Foxconn’s largest customer, how do you feel about this?

Shakespeare once said: What’s past is prologue. I would like to believe that Hengyang Foxconn has done better than before in terms of the labor environment, and I also hope that Amazon and you can respect my efforts and continue to follow up with suppliers to improve labor conditions. Although the price I had paid is too high for me, if I can get your attention and benefit the employees of all Amazon suppliers, I think it will be worth my effort. Finally, as your faithful admirer, as a former employee of your company’s client, as a victim, a son, a husband, and a father, I hope you can understand and pay attention to what happened to me. I would also like to ask you here: Can you ask Hengyang Foxconn to face up to its own problems and to compensate and apologize to me? I was convicted and sent to jail because Hengyang Foxconn accused me of violating Chinese law by exposing the use of student and dispatch workers and because the actions Amazon took under its social responsibility standards in response to my whistleblowing caused economic losses to Foxconn. As the only customer of Foxconn in Hengyang, I hope that you will ask Foxconn in Hengyang to communicate with the local court and assist me in my complaint about the case so that the court can finally revoke my guilty verdict!

Thank you,

Tang Mingfang

01/18/2022