by DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The fight for the future of fossil fuels was brought into the global spotlight at the COP28 climate summit.
For nearly three decades, policymakers representing nearly 200 countries at the annual UN climate conference have failed to sensibly address the main driver of the climate crisis: the burning of coal, oil and gas.
Many people gathering in Dubai for COP28 believe that the talks will only succeed if they lead to an agreement to “phase out” all fossil fuels.
The language of the final agreement, which is expected on or around December 12, will be closely watched. A “gradual” commitment would likely require a transition away from fossil fuels until their use is phased out, and a reduction in their use could be represented by a “step down” — but not a complete end .
There is also debate over whether an agreement should be focused on “reduced” fossil fuels, which are captured and stocked with carbon capture and storage technologies. It is widely understood that fossil fuels are produced and used “without reduction” without significant reductions in the amount of greenhouse gases emitted.
Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the world’s most influential Earth scientists, told CNBC that there is no doubt that COP28 must be a mitigation COP.
“The outcome of COP28 must be that all the oil, gas and coal nations of the world see that we are now really at the beginning of the fossil fuel era for the global economy. And that we are now starting to bend the curve properly,” he said.
“That alone will determine the success of COP28,” he continued. “Everything else will follow. So, of course, progress on loss and damage, Article 6, funding, adaptation, nature, agriculture and water is all good, but it’s all progress on the end added to fossil fuel or not.”
A draft text published early Friday appeared to suggest world leaders could sign a deal that would “progressively” phase out all fossil fuels. Other cases, however, include the option of “stepping down” hydrocarbons, to focus on coal only – or to ignore fossil fuels at all.
Not everyone is on board with calls to gradually retire. Russia has said it would oppose using this language in the final agreement, and COP28 host the United Arab Emirates has said it prefers a gradual reduction. .
Big Oil, too, is trying to shift focus from calls to phase out fossil fuels. Exxon Mobil CEO Darren Woods told CNBC on Saturday that society should prioritize reducing emissions, which he called the “real problem.”
‘This year is different’
In an unprecedented start to proceedings on Thursday, delegates at COP28 sealed the details of a landmark deal to help the world’s most vulnerable countries pay for the consequences of climate disasters.
The operation of the so-called loss and damage fund has been hailed as welcome and helps pave the way for policy makers to negotiate other major issues.
“We don’t have an agenda fight now [and] we don’t have a fight between losses and damage, it gives us space to have a big fossil fuel fight,” said Catherine Abreu, founder of the non-profit network Destination Zero working on climate issues.
It’s “important to say that more fossil fuels means loss and damage, so these two issues are intertwined,” she said.
Abreu told CNBC that she previously wrote about the importance of “saying F-words” at the annual UN climate conference, arguing that “a few years ago talking about fossil fuels within the climate convention was basically invisible. “
In particular, at last year’s COP27 conference in Egypt, more than 80 countries supported a commitment to phase out fossil fuel in the final agreement. Ultimately the call failed to gain enough support, but it seemed to show a growing momentum to identify fossil fuels as the biggest contributors to climate change.
Abreu attributed the defeat at COP27 in part to the parties not being organized enough to win that particular battle.
“This year is different,” she said. “We really see that the parties are very organized in this area, coming into COP28. So, we’ve seen a huge conversation in almost every multilateral event that took place in 2023 about the speed and scale of the energy transition.”
“Over the next few weeks, we are going to see parties negotiating this landing zone on how the energy transition package is expressed in the final results of COP28,” Abreu said.
‘Fossil fuel firehose’
A flurry of COP28 announcements on Saturday sought to help decarbonise the energy sector, with nearly 120 governments pledging to triple renewable energy capacity by 2030. Other initiatives launched over the weekend included large blocks of was committed to expanding nuclear power and reducing methane emissions.
For the chief executive of the United Nations, however, preventing the worst effects of the climate crisis depends on stopping the burning of fossil fuels completely.
“We cannot save a burning planet with a fire hose of fossil fuels,” United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Friday, addressing world leaders in Dubai.
“The 1.5 degree limit can only be reached if we finally stop burning all fossil fuels. No reduction. Do not reduce. Phase out – with a clear time frame aligned with 1.5 degrees.”
It is widely recognized that the temperature threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) is critical because more chances become higher than this level so-called skip points.
Tipping points are thresholds where small changes can lead to major changes in the Earth’s entire life support system.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
