Antalya (Turkey) (AFP) – Former US vice president Al Gore said it was “literally insane” that oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia could block global action against climate change, calling for sweeping reforms to UN negotiations. Speaking to AFP on the sidelines of the COP31 summit in Antalya, Turkey, Gore said UN climate talks needed to replace the consensus-based decision-making system with a supermajority model.
Saudi Arabia and other fossil fuel-producing countries, including Russia and India, have been among those accused of using their de facto veto power to impede tougher language on oil, gas, and coal in UN climate negotiations. “There’s growing support for moving away from a so-called consensus model,” Gore said Thursday in Antalya. “The idea that one individual country like Saudi Arabia can block anything the entire world wants to do is literally insane. We are facing the most serious threat to the future of humanity that we have ever faced,” he said.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate also accused Saudi Arabia of trying to “sabotage” the work of the UN’s climate science panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Saudi government did not immediately respond to an AFP request for comment.
– Emboldened by Trump –
Nearly 200 nations agreed for the first time to transition away from fossil fuels—the main driver of climate change—at the COP28 conference in Dubai in 2023, in a hard-fought compromise after fierce resistance from major oil producers. But the United States, once a major force in COP negotiations, has skipped UN climate talks and pulled out of the Paris Agreement since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to office in 2025 with a promise to drill for oil. “The change in the approach that Donald Trump has taken does embolden the large polluters around the world,” Gore said.
The COP30 summit in Brazil last year ended without any explicit mention of fossil fuels in the final agreement—and Saudi Arabia, Russia, and India were named by some as the culprits. Saudi Arabia’s Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman and Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodriguez defended their countries’ right to develop their oil industries in their COP31 speeches. While the fossil fuel transition has not been mentioned in COP decisions since Dubai, “it hasn’t been removed either,” Gore said. “It is a firm part of the set of agreements that every nation in the world has signed on to. So, this will continue and I’m hopeful there will be a growing recognition that the climate crisis is a fossil fuel crisis,” he said.
COP31 host Turkey is championing a voluntary pledge to boost the electrification of transport, buildings, and industry. Critics say the initiative leaves open the possibility to use fossil fuels as a source to power electricity grids. Gore welcomed the Turkish initiative but said it should be “coupled with an insistence that clean energy be used as much as possible in reaching that goal.” Gore’s Climate TRACE initiative, which uses satellite imagery and artificial intelligence to track greenhouse gas emissions, presented new analysis at COP31 showing how implementing the electrification target alongside cleaner power grids could double emissions reductions.
– US absence: ‘mixed blessing’ –
Despite the US government’s absence at COP31 and rollback of US climate policies, Gore expressed optimism that the political tide would turn after Democrats dealt Trump’s Republican Party a major defeat in last week’s midterm elections. Although Trump will remain in office for another two years, Gore predicted “significant improvements,” pointing to the possibility of restoring tax credits for electric vehicles. “There are a number of measures that will be so popular with the public that, especially in the wake of this election, he will have a lot of pressure on him to agree to some of these measures,” he said.
A congressional delegation of Democrats is due to attend COP31 this weekend, although Gore played down its likely influence in negotiations in the absence of an official US government presence. “I do believe that it’s a mixed blessing that some of the individuals in the Trump administration are not here able to interfere personally in the negotiations,” Gore said. “But it’s bad enough that they have tried to block climate action at every single turn,” he added.
© 2024 AFP
