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Failure of Cop28 On Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Is Devastating', Say
Failure of Cop28 On Fossil Fuel Phase-Out Is Devastating', Say
Activists hug at the end of a climate protest at the Cop28 summit, which ended on Wednesday in Dubai. Photograph:
Peter Dejong/AP
Climate experts say lack of unambiguous statement is ‘tragedy for the planet and
our future’
One called it a “tragedy for the planet and our future” while another said it was the
“dream outcome” for the fossil fuel industry.
The UN climate summit ended on Wednesday with a compromise deal that called
for a “transition away”
(https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/13/cop28-landmark-deal-
agreed-to-transition-away-from-fossil-fuels) from fossil fuels. The stronger term
“phase-out” had been backed by 130 of the 198 countries negotiating in Dubai but
was blocked by petrostates including Saudi Arabia.
The deal was hailed as historic as it was the first citing of fossil fuels, the root
cause of the climate crisis, in 30 years of climate negotiations. But scientists said
the agreement contained many loopholes and did not match the severity of the
climate emergency.
“The lack of an agreement to phase out fossil fuels was devastating,” said Prof
Michael Mann, a climatologist and geophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania in
the US. “To ‘transition away from fossil fuels’ was weak tea at best. It’s like
promising your doctor that you will ‘transition away from doughnuts’ after being
diagnosed with diabetes.”
Dr Magdalena Skipper, the editor in chief of the science journal Nature, said: “The
science is clear – fossil fuels must go. World leaders will fail their people and the
planet unless they accept this reality.”
“The climate doesn’t care who emits greenhouse gases,” the editorial continued.
“There is only one viable path forward, and that is for everybody to phase out almost
all fossil fuels as quickly as possible.”
Sir David King, the chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and a former UK chief
scientific adviser, said: “The wording of the deal is feeble. Ensuring 1.5C remains
viable will require total commitment to a range of far-reaching measures, including
full fossil fuel phase-out.”
There was a chasm between the stark statement of the emissions cuts needed and
the action proposed to deliver those reductions, he said: “The Cop28 text
recognises there is a need for ‘deep, rapid and sustained reductions in greenhouse
gas emissions’ to stay in line with 1.5C. But then it lists a whole bunch of efforts
that don’t have a chance of achieving that.”
The scientists said the loopholes included the call to “accelerate” carbon capture
and storage to trap emissions from burning fossil fuels, an option that can play a
minor role at best.
Dr Friederike Otto, a climatologist at Imperial College London, said: “Until fossil
fuels are phased out, the world will continue to become a more dangerous, more
expensive and more uncertain place to live. With every vague verb, every empty
promise in the final text, millions more people will enter the frontline of climate
change and many will die.”
Prof Martin Siegert, a polar scientist and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of
Exeter, said: “The science is perfectly clear. Cop28, by not making a clear
declaration to stop fossil fuel burning is a tragedy for the planet and our future. The
world is heating faster and more powerfully than the Cop response to deal with it.”
“That this deal has been hailed as a landmark is more a measure of previous
failures than any step change when it comes to the increasingly urgent need to
rapidly stop burning coal, oil and gas.”
Cop28 is a farce rigged to fail, but there are other ways we can try to save the planet George Monbiot Read more
Mann said Cop rules needed to be reformed, for example by allowing super-
majorities to vote through decisions over the objections of holdout petrostates and
by barring oil executives such as Al Jaber, who runs the United Arab Emirate’s state
oil company (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/15/cop28-host-
uae-oil-plans-data), from presiding over future summits.
“Mend it, don’t end it,” Mann said. “Cops are our only multilateral framework for
negotiating global climate policies. But the failure of Cop28 to achieve any
meaningful progress at a time when our window of opportunity to limit warming
below catastrophic levels is closing, is a source of great concern.”