'Existential threat' Why Saudi Arabia is desperate to delay climate action

Can you imagine someone giving you $170,000 (£130,000)? Can you imagine getting another $170,000 one minute later, and then again, for years and years? If so, you have a feel for the colossal cash machine that is Saudi Arabia's state oil company, Aramco, the world's biggest producer of oil and gas last year.

- Damian Carrington

That tidal wave of cash keeps the authoritarian kingdom afloat, but it is also why the drive for accelerating climate action, principally by getting the world off fossil fuels, is seen as an existential threat to Saudi Arabia's economy and even its ruling royal family.

Saudi Arabia has fought harder than any other country to block and delay international climate action.

Three decades ago, when the global UN climate treaty was being signed off, the negotiations veteran Alden Meyer was in the room at the UN headquarters in New York. "The French diplomat Jean Ripert had to ignore the Saudis, and the Kuwaitis, vigorously waving their nameplates in the back of the room, trying to object to adoption of the treaty. He just ignored them and brought down the gavel," he says.

Since then Saudi Arabia has built alliances and managed to block the use of voting to take decisions in UN climate negotiations - voting is common in other UN bodies. Instead, consensus is needed for approval. "This impasse has never been overcome. It gives outsized influence to laggards, which suits Saudi Arabia very well," the Climate Social Science Network reported, the impasse "crippling" the talks.

Armed with an effective veto, the Saudis have also mastered the arcane and complicated procedural rules, from disputing agendas to claiming strands of the talks have no mandate, to insisting action to help vulnerable countries adapt to global heating is linked to compensating oil-rich nations for lost sales. Delay is a key aim.

"They are really good at it - absolutely masterful," says Dr Joanna Depledge at the University of Cambridge.

The Saudis worked against the plan to cap the production of plastic and the landmark deal for a carbon tax on shipping: this full-spectrum assault on climate action was described last year by Meyer as a "wrecking ball". "They definitely are still in that mode," he says.