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This week I published a cover story profiling Sultan Al Jaber, the controversial president of the coming U.N. climate conference in Dubai. Al Jaber has received unrelenting criticism for running the conference, known as COP28, while also serving as the CEO of the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company.

But Al Jaber doesn’t like to position himself as an oil CEO and instead prefers to talk about his experience co-founding Masdar, a renewable energy company, and, more generally, his experience in other business functions. “I bring finance experience, economics experience, project management, business development,” he told me.

This is certainly, in part,…