While all this may seem like an abstract, moral point against the idea of engaging in COP27 or anything involving the Egyptian state, or Westerners thinking of the future while climate-vulnerable Egyptians aren’t even afforded a present to live in, this is not the entirety of my argument. All this may be true, but the broader point is that the destruction of Egyptian democracy is not only an outrage, it is an oil-funded outrage. With its military economy precarious, but its population the largest in the Arab world, there was a mutually beneficial arrangement whereby the oil states of Saudi Arabia and the UAE (Dubai, notably, will host COP28) have pumped billions into Egypt, and in return got a military coup and dictatorship to stop in its tracks the largest democratic opening in those uprisings known as the Arab Spring.
Democracy for Arabs, democratic demands voiced in Arabic, have always been regarded, understandably, as an existential threat to the dictatorships of the House of Saud and the UAE, every bit as much as their Israeli allies work to suppress the same demands from Palestinians. What this network of oppression achieves, on top of its implicit destruction of humanity, is a tight political oppression over demands to democratise, and in turn perhaps retire early, the world’s largest oil and gas fields. If you want Saudi Aramco to start engaging with issues like scope 2 and 3 emissions in the same way that Norwegian energy giant, Equinor, is obliged to, then you need democracy in the Arab world, and you need it now. How, apart from anything else, can Westerners hope for change in Egyptian or Gulf policy, or pressure on delegates, when Egyptians are not allowed to protest or even gather outside COP27 events?