DUBAI, U.A.E. — Arabia is on a roll. Qatar hosted the 2022 World Cup and the Saudis will do the honours in 2034. Once the world agrees to play football in the scorching desert, a gargantuan climate jamboree is nothing. COP28 — the annual United Nations climate festival — opens Thursday with a gala dinner, the carbon footprint of which might rival the daily production of this week’s newest coal-fired plant in China.
King Charles III will wax grandiloquent in his opening speech on Friday. It will be old crown for the king: as Prince of Wales, he did the same in Paris in 2015 and Glasgow in 2021. Yet this time, the audience will be bigger than ever, with some 70,000 delegates descending upon Dubai for a week of high-living in what locals are referring to as “the happiest place on earth.”
