| Some countries like Saudi Arabia have voiced a desire for a less ambitious treaty — and they’ll likely be trying to get other countries, like the oil-rich UAE, on side. How concerned are you about that? My diplomatic instinct tells me that we will deal with that problem if it occurs. What I’m seeing now is that more and more countries seem to agree [with us]. When you start setting common goals, and then commission a lot of research and analysis about how these goals are met … it seems very unlikely that you can actually achieve the goal of reducing the leakage [of plastic waste] to nature sufficiently without also addressing the volume. Increasingly, we’re also seeing that countries understand that the total volume has to go down. This is not the end of the plastic industry. It’s just a more regulated plastic industry. Just like … carmakers used to make fossil cars. They still make cars, but now they’re electric, but there are still cars. So it’s not about taking away the business, it’s about changing the nature of the business. How big of a gap exists between the High Ambition Coalition and the U.S.? And what middle ground might be found between the coalition’s goals and the U.S. position that advocates for national action plans? So, of course, the U.S. — of the Western and industrialized countries — is the primary holdout on that it should be more bottom-up and more Paris Agreement-like, you know, common goals but differentiated implementation. [U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Jose W. Fernandez on Friday] did not go away from that position but he very strongly underlined that they want an ambitious treaty and they want to support the process. Interestingly, there was an American event [on Friday morning] that I attended at the U.S. Embassy and then [Fernandez] came to our event, as the only non high-ambition country. He reiterated their core position but [also said] he agreed that we need a [draft] text. And that, I believe, was a positive move. Norway’s petroleum and energy minister reportedly said the industry should leave no stone unturned in its pursuit for new hydrocarbon discoveries in the Arctic. Is there a contradiction between Norway essentially doubling down on fossil fuels while heading up the High Ambition Coalition on plastics? Well, we also worked [at global COP27 climate summit] in Sharm-El Sheikh [last year] and will work [at COP28] in Dubai for an explicit agreement that we need to start phasing out unabated fossil fuels … because we do recognize that we need an energy transition away from fossil fuels. Our argument is that this is not principally done by supply-side cuts. This is done by a systemic transition of our energy systems, which we are doing big time at home. There’s hardly anybody left buying fossil cars in my country, we’re also changing ferries and local shipping into fossil fuel-free alternatives. Right now, Europe is clearly in need of gas to compensate for the loss of Russian gas. The war has accelerated Europe’s energy transition and it’s going to go faster. But there is still an increased interest in oil being produced in a Western country because they don’t want to go back to dependence on Russia. [Ending fossil fuel use] is not done by a turn of a switch. [So] we prefer to focus on the consumption and the usage side, and to develop the [green] technologies that [will make] it unnecessary to burn fossil fuels. We definitely do not want to be one of those fossil producers that try to block the transition, we would rather see the transition accelerated and we’ll find other things to do.
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