Kamala Harris leaves for climate conference with ‘biggest carbon footprint in history’: VP heads to Abu Dhabi for Cop28 in Joe’s place – with hosts under fire for wanting to ‘push oil and gas deals’

Vice President Kamala Harris headed to the world’s biggest climate conference on Friday as critics say it will have the biggest carbon footprint since the annual summit began due to a record number of people invited.

President Joe Biden has decided not to attend the Cop28 conference in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, sending his No. 2 to represent the United States instead. Biden attended the last two summits.

The conference was engulfed in controversy as Cop28 president-designate Sultan Al Jaber rejected allegations that his team sought to use international climate talks to secure side deals on fossil fuels for the UAE’s state-owned oil and gas company.

Harris will join 400,000 people expected to descend on Dubai for the two-week event – the largest attendance ever. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, special envoy John Kerry, climate adviser Ali Zaidi and clean energy adviser John Podesta will also travel to Dubai.

Also attending the event are King Charles, French President Emmanuel Macron, Pope Francis, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

They are among 97,000 official delegates, more than double the number of Cop26 in Glasgow, the previous largest summit.

“Given the number of people expected here, yes, it would probably have the highest carbon footprint of any police force to date,” Richard Black, senior fellow at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit think tank, told the Telegraph.

The UAE said it would offset emissions from the event, but did not provide details on how exactly it would do so.

Harris’ stay at the two-week conference will be brief. She plans to leave Washington on Friday and return on Sunday. She is expected to speak publicly on Saturday.

Climate will not only be on the agenda. Harris is the most senior US leader to visit an Arab country since the war between Israel and Hamas began nearly two months ago.

A White House spokeswoman said her meetings with other leaders at the summit will include conversations about the conflict.

“While in Dubai, the vice president will have the opportunity to meet with regional leaders and consult with them on the latest developments in Gaza, and in particular she will focus on planning for the next day,” the official said.

“She will stress that any post-conflict plan for Gaza must include a clear political horizon for the Palestinian people and ensure that Gaza and the West Bank are reunited under one entity.”

Publicly, Harris will outline the Biden administration’s plans to accelerate the expansion of clean energy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Leaders at the conference will also discuss the structure of a new international fund to offset irreversible climate damage in developing countries.

It is unclear whether Harris will meet with UAE leader Al Jaber, who also runs the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.

He came under fire after reports that he planned to use Cop28 meetings to lobby foreign government officials over oil and gas deals, according to a cache of internal documents obtained by the nonprofit Climate Reporting Center.

The documents include briefing notes indicating he planned to discuss these side deals with 15 countries during the climate conference.

He denies the accusations and that he has seen such information notes.

“These allegations are false, untrue, incorrect and inaccurate,” he said at a press conference in Dubai on Wednesday. “And this is an attempt to undermine the work of the COP28 presidency.”

“Let me ask you a question: Do you think the UAE or I will need the COP or the COP presidency to go and establish business deals or commercial relationships?” asked Al Jaber.

“This country has been built over the last 50 years on the ability to build bridges and create relationships and partnerships.”

It is unclear how many meetings actually took place.

Al Jaber said all his meetings with officials were about Cop28.

The two-week conference is seen as a key way to address the climate crisis at a time when global temperatures are rising and extreme weather is affecting people around the world.

Human rights group Amnesty International has called on al-Jaber to resign from his role at the summit.

“Sultan Al Jaber claims his deep knowledge of the fossil fuel industry puts him in a position to chair a crucial climate summit, but it is increasingly looking like the fox is guarding the henhouse,” Amnesty International climate adviser Anne Harrison said.

Meanwhile, climate activists criticized Biden for skipping this year’s event. Biden attended the annual UN climate summit in person in 2021 and 2022.

Young voters, a group Biden is courting, cite climate change as one of their top concerns.

Biden has made the issue one of his priorities – he has returned the US to the Paris climate agreement, and his Inflation Reduction Act includes provisions to cut carbon emissions.

But many young voters say the administration hasn’t done enough yet.

A July Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found that 57% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of climate policy, including 59% of voters ages 18-29.