Juan Cole Informed Comment
Matteo Civillini at Climate Home News reports that the Arab bloc at the COP31 UN climate summit in Antalya, Turkiye, led by Saudi Arabia, is attempting to sideline from the discussions a report of the United Nations Environment Programme issued September 2 of this year. The report argued that we are on a path to exceeding 1.5º C. (2.7º F.) of global heating above pre-industrial norms within a few years, certainly the next decade. Its scientists laid out steps that could bring us back from the brink.
Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest carbon polluters in the world. Before the Netanyahu-Trump war on Iran, it exported about 12 million barrels a day of petroleum. If we count those exported barrels in carbon emissions, they rise from 638 million tons of CO2 emitted domestically to closer to 2.3 billion tons if we add in Scope 3 emissions. One Saudi company, Saudi Aramco, is responsible for 1.7 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually.
Human beings put out on the order of 38 billion tons of CO2 annually from burning fossil fuels. So Saudi Arabia is responsible for roughly 6 percent of that. But Saudi citizens make up only about a quarter of one percent of the world population.
Climate Home News writes, “The European Union, the UK, the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and small island states are among those pushing for COP31 to make the response to overshoot of 1.5C one of the summit’s priorities.”
On the other hand, China, India and other developing countries also want to put discussion of the UNEP report off-limits, on the silly grounds that it wasn’t produced by a committee of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the treaty to which the COP31 attending nations are parties.
I wrote of the UNEP report last September,
The UNEP report argues that if we put another 130 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, starting in 2026, it will push the world over the 1.5º C limit. But we’re now putting out 40 billion tons of CO2 a year, so we’d breach that budget in a little over 3 years. Put another way, in order to stay under 1.5º C, we’d have to cut carbon dioxide emissions, beginning right now, so deeply over the next six years that by 2032 we’d be down to zero emissions. And let’s face it, that isn’t going to happen. Donald Trump and the big carbon companies that have backed him have kneecapped American efforts to reduce greenhouse emissions.
The scientists conclude, “In all cases, central estimates indicate that global warming will cross 1.5°C within the next decade.”
In the past few years, 80 percent of tropical coral reefs suffered bleaching, and their ability to recover has decreased. Species are being lost at an alarming rate. Arctic and Antarctic ice are being reduced to minimums never before seen in modern history. More than 40 percent of all glaciers lost since 1970 have been lost in the past ten years.
At a 1.5º C increase, weird and destructive weather will emerge that would have been impossible in a cooler world. Just since 2006, 50 never-before-seen extreme heatwaves have been documented, and just in 2024-2025 some 50% of the globe’s population suffered 30 days of extreme heat. People are dying in unprecedented numbers from heat stroke. Three times more people died from the summer 2025 heatwave than had died during previous such events, because of global heating. Cyclones and hurricanes have become more intense, to the point where we may need to add a Category 6 classification. Floods, wildfires, and droughts are increasing in frequency and intensity.
File photo of Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Salman with US President Donald Trump. Official White House photo by Daniel Torok. Public Domain. Via Picryl
The Saudis hate the UNEP report because they want to go on exporting 12 million barrels a day of petroleum for years to come, whereas these scientists are warning that the earth can’t afford those sorts of greenhouse gas emissions and we have to go cold turkey on giving up fossil fuels. Now. If we cut methane to zero and went all in on afforestation, they say, we might still be able to stay under the 1.5º C. limit.
I don’t know whether Saudi officials don’t understand the risks to humanity of our continuing to pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, or whether they want their trillions in profits and just don’t care. Ironically, they could be making the Arabian Peninsula itself uninhabitable. If it heats to 50º C. and becomes 80% humid, as could happen in its coastal areas as seas heat up, that would create a dead zone for human beings where they could not live.
It is a profound flaw of the COP summits that Big Oil has an outsized voice there. It is like expecting a conference of wine sellers to promote teetotalism.
Juan Cole’s Informed Comment delivers independent, expert analysis of war, the Middle East, climate change, and U.S. foreign policy. Help sustain this work
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