The Cop28 president told a shocking lie about fossil fuels – and he’s wrong about climate economics too

Sultan Al Jaber has claimed that a phase-out of fossil fuels would ‘take the world back into caves’. Photograph: Martin Divíšek/EPA

For months Sultan Al Jaber, the president of the Cop28 climate negotiations in Dubai, has been insisting that there is no conflict with his day job, chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) state oil company.

Instead, he argued, the dual role enabled him to persuade fossil fuel companies to change. And some early successes in the talks provided some credibility to that claim.