Nearly 200 countries agreed Wednesday to move away from planet-warming fossil fuels — the first time they’ve made that crucial pledge in decades of U.N. climate talks though many warned the deal still had significant shortcomings.
Long Overdue
The agreement was approved without the floor fight many feared — and is stronger than a draft floated earlier in the week that angered several nations. But it didn’t call for an outright phasing out of oil, gas and coal — and it gives nations significant wiggle room in their “transition” away from those fuels. “Humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue,” Wopke Hoekstra, European Union commissioner for climate action, said as the COP28 summit wrapped up.
Within minutes of opening Wednesday’s session, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber gaveled in approval of the central document — an evaluation of how off-track the world is on climate and how to get back on — without giving critics a chance to comment. He hailed it as a “historic package to accelerate climate action.” The document is the central part of the 2015 Paris accord and its internationally agreed-upon goal to try to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial times. The goal is mentioned 13 times in the stocktake document and al-Jaber repeatedly called that his “north star.” So far the world has warmed 1.2 degrees (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) since the mid 1800s.
Several minutes after al-Jaber rammed the document through, Samoa’s lead delegate Anne Rasmussen, on behalf of small island nations, complained that they weren’t even in the room when al-Jaber said the deal was done. She said that “the course correction that is needed has not been secured,” with the deal representing business-as-usual instead of exponential emissions-cutting efforts. She said the deal could “potentially take us backward rather than forward.”
End Of Fossil Fuel Era
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement that “for the first time, the outcome recognizes the need to transition away from fossil fuels.” “The era of fossil fuels must end – and it must end with justice and equity,” he said. United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell told delegates their efforts were “needed to signal a hard stop to humanity’s core climate problem: fossil fuels and that planet-burning pollution. Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.” Stiell cautioned people that what they adopted was a “climate action lifeline, not a finish line.”
The new deal had been floated early Wednesday and was stronger than a draft proposed days earlier, but had loopholes that upset critics. “The problem with the text is that it still includes cavernous loopholes that allow the United States and other fossil fuel producing countries to keep going on their expansion of fossil fuels,” Center for Biological Diversity energy justice director Jean Su told The Associated Press. “There’s a pretty deadly, fatal flaw in the text, which allows for transitional fuels to continue” which is a code word for natural gas that also emits carbon pollution.
German climate envoy Jennifer Morgan said the difference between phase-out and transitioning away could be seen as a positive: “I think the ‘phase-out’ was about sending a clear signal. And I think the ‘just transition away from’ is a way of phrasing the phase-out with the equity component included in it” for poorer nations who can’t act as quickly as richer ones. In a press conference, Kerry called it “a clear unambiguous message on one of the most complicated issues that we face.” He said the United States wanted stronger language, but it was too much “of a steep climb” to get from 195 nations. He said that “there were times in the last 48 hours where some of us thought this could fail.” But “we stayed at it. People showed good faith. People stepped up.”
Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, a Nobel Peace Prize winning climate activist, said while it is an important milestone “to finally recognize that the climate crisis is at its heart a fossil fuel crisis,” he called the deal “the bare minimum” with “half measures and loopholes.” “Whether this is a turning point that truly marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era depends on the actions that come next,” Gore said.
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Source: PBS
