DAVOS, Switzerland — John Kerry on Thursday offered a full-throated defense of the decision to hold this year’s United Nations climate talks in the United Arab Emirates, one of the world’s largest oil producers, suggesting the Gulf state was rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels and would not compromise the integrity of the negotiations.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover,” Mr. Kerry, President Biden’s special climate envoy, said in an interview on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
The United Arab Emirates, selected by the United Nations to host the November talks, has faced withering criticism from climate activists over its selection of Sultan Al Jaber, the head of its national oil company, to oversee the climate talks.
Mr. Kerry has worked closely with Mr. Al Jaber for years and called him a “good friend,” adding that he believed the oil executive “would be a very serious and focused interlocutor on this.”
He added that the United Arab Emirates, a major strategic ally of the United States, was moving rapidly to embrace renewable energy and reduce its planet-warming emissions in agriculture and other areas.
“There’s an advantage to having a petrostate that is actually in the forefront of some of these cutting edge initiatives,” Mr. Kerry said. “I think the U.A.E. is serious about it.”
Hours after Mr. Kerry spoke, Greta Thunberg, the Swedish climate activist, appeared in Davos and assailed the choice.
Onstage at the World Economic Forum
The annual gathering of world leaders takes place in Davos, Switzerland, from Jan. 16 to 20.
“Lobbyists have been influencing these conferences since basically forever and this puts a very clear face to it,” she said at a news conference, wearing the muddy boots she had on when she was detained by the police while protesting a coal mine in Germany on Tuesday. “It’s completely ridiculous.”
Ms. Thunberg was joined by three other young female climate activists, Helena Gualinga of Ecuador, Vanessa Nakate of Uganda and Luisa Neubauer of Germany. The four have launched an online petition demanding that energy companies stop new oil, gas and coal projects.
Ms. Gualinga dismissed the idea that substantive negotiations over climate action could occur in the United Arab Emirates. “There’s a huge conflict of interest there,” she said. “It sends this message of not taking it seriously.”
The climate protesters were joined at the news conference by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. Mr. Birol called for a rapid winding down of fossil fuels.
Former Vice President Al Gore, speaking at the main Davos conference and at side events, also lent his support to the activists.
“The appearance of a conflict of interest undermines confidence at a time when climate activists around the world, and I’m partly speaking for them right here on this stage, have come to the conclusion that the people in authority are not doing their job,” a fiery Mr. Gore said in a panel discussion on Wednesday. “There’s a lot of ‘blah blah blah,’ as Greta says, there are a lot of words, and there are some meaningful commitments. But we are still failing badly.”
“We cannot let the oil companies and gas companies and petrostates tell us what is permissible,” Mr. Gore added.
At last year’s United Nations climate talks, known as COP27 and held in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, representatives from Saudi Arabia blocked language in the final agreement that would have called for a phasing out of fossil fuels.
Jo Sheldon, a spokeswoman for COP28, the talks scheduled for November, said Mr. Al Jaber was “an energy expert and founder of one of the world’s leading renewable energy companies, a senior business leader, government minister and climate diplomat with more than 20 years of experience of taking climate action.”
“He is uniquely qualified to deliver a successful COP28,” Ms. Sheldon said. “He is determined to make COP28 a COP for all. And to make truly transformational progress it is critical that all stakeholders are at the table.”
With the Russian war against Ukraine creating an energy crisis that has had the short-term effect of spurring more fossil fuel production, greenhouse gas emissions have reached a record high, even as solar, wind and other renewable sources are growing.
On Wednesday, the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, issued a stern warning to the crowd gathered at Davos.
“We are flirting with climate disaster,” Mr. Guterres said. “Every week brings a new climate horror story. Greenhouse gas emissions are at record levels.”
Mr. Guterres added that the consequences of runaway warming “will be devastating” and that “several parts of our planet will be uninhabitable. And for many, this is a death sentence.”
Meanwhile, business leaders sought to highlight their companies’ eco-friendly bona fides.
On the main street of Davos, an Alpine resort town transformed into a giant trade show for the week, multinational corporations plastered idealistic slogans on storefronts they had transformed into temporary offices.
A Salesforce billboard featuring a smiling brown bear proclaimed that “Business is the greatest platform for change.” Uber advertised that it was offering “All-electric Uber Green rides” all week in Davos. And the offices of SAP, the technology giant, featured the slogan, “When you put people first, we build a sustainable world together.”
The World Economic Forum program featured a heavy dose of panel discussions and other programs addressing climate change and efforts to reduce emissions.
“Climate is top of the agenda,” Jason Bordoff, a dean at the Columbia University Climate School said in an interview at the event. “The sense of urgency is not abating, but there is a new sense of realism that the gap between reality and ambition is getting bigger, not smaller. Now we need to make sure that the reality catches up with the ambition, and we need to meet people’s energy needs along the way.”
Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of environment and climate change, spoke on Tuesday and said that the newly installed government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was committed to helping stop planetary warming by protecting the Amazon rain forest.
“We are back to the international agenda to talk about climate, to talk about ambitious targets for the climate and biodiversity,” Ms. Silva said.
While temperatures remained below freezing for most of the week, an abnormally warm winter has left much of the area with far less snow than usual, a reminder of the changing climate. In Davos, some ski runs were shuttered and the winter sledging run, a popular diversion for overwhelmed conference attendees, was closed for a lack of snow.
