Cop28 Agreement Calls for Fossil Fuel Phase Out
Tell your reps to reject climate denial and commit to phasing out fossil fuels.
Updated Dec. 13, 2023, 10:00 a.m. EST
- For the first time, the Cop28 summit agreement calls on countries to transition away from fossil fuels. Many leaders are unsatisfied with the agreement, as it cannot require countries to move away from the resource.
- The Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), representing the countries on the frontlines of climate change but have contributed little emissions to cause it, said the text contains "a litany of loopholes." Anne Rasmussen of Samoa, speaking on behalf of AOSIS, said:
"It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do...This is not an approach that we should be asked to defend."
- Dan Jørgensen, Denmark's climate minister, said:
"It's embarrassing that it took 28 years but now we're finally there. Now it finally seems like the world has acknolwedged that we need to move away from fossil [fuels]."
Updated Dec. 11, 2023, 2:30 p.m. EST
- The U.N.'s draft deal from the Cop28 summit highlights various options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but stops short of suggesting a phase-out of fossil fuels, which many governments and activists have demanded.
- This draft will lead to the final round of negotiations in Dubai. Cop28 President Sultan al-Jaber, head of the UAE's oil company, says the countries "still have a lot to do" ahead of the end of the conference.
- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said a prominent benchmark of success will be whether or not Cop28 yields a deal to phase out fossil fuels.
What’s the story?
- The head of the 2023 U.N. Climate Change Conference, or Cop28, stated that there is no scientific evidence that fossil fuels must be phased out to mitigate the climate crisis.
- Sultan al-Jaber, chief executive of the United Arab Emirates state-oil-run company, Adnoc, is leading the talks from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12 in Dubai. He made the comment a little over a week before the conference began.
- Al-Jaber also said a phase-out of fossil fuels would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves.” These comments came after questions from Mary Robinson, chair of the Elders group and a former U.N. special envoy for climate change. In the meeting, Robinson said:
“We’re in an absolute crisis…and it’s because we have not yet committed to phasing out fossil fuel. That is the one decision that Cop28 can take and in many ways, because you’re head of Adnoc, you could actually take it with more credibility.”
- To this, al-Jaber responded:
“I accepted to come to this meeting to have a sober and mature conversation. I’m not in any way signing up to any discussion that is alarmist. There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says that the phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C.”
- On Monday, al-Jaber sought to clarify those comments in a press conference, saying they were taken out of context, insisting he does support science. He said:
“We’re here because we very much believe and respect the science.”
The response
- Climate scientists said the comments were “incredibly concerning” and consistently maintain that the only path to limit climate change is by phasing out fossil fuels.
- António Guterres, U.N. secretary general, said to Cop28 delegates on Friday:
“The science is clear: The 1.5C limit is only possible if we ultimately stop burning all fossil fuels. Not reduce, not abate. Phase out, with a clear timeframe.”
- Chief executive of Climate Analytics, Bill Hare, said:
“This is an extraordinary, revealing, worrying and belligerent exchange. ‘Sending us back to caves’ is the oldest of fossil fuel industry tropes: it’s verging on climate denial.”
- Professor Sir David King, chair of the Climate Crisis Advisory Group and former UK chief scientific adviser, said:
“It is incredibly concerning and surprising to hear the Cop28 president defend the use of fossil fuels. It is undeniable that to limit global warming to 1.5C we must all rapidly reduce carbon emissions and phase-out the use of fossil fuels by 2035 at the latest. The alternative is an unmanageable future for humanity.”
- Harjeet Singh of Climate Action Network said:
“Cop28 must deliver a decision on phasing out fossil fuels in a just and equitable manner, without any loopholes or escape routes for the industry to continue expanding and exacerbating the climate crisis.”
- A spokesperson for Cop28 highlighted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s scenario where fossil fuels play a small role in the future energy system. They continued:
“The Cop president was quoting the science, and leading climate experts."
Want to get involved in the cause?
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Tell your reps to reject climate denial and commit to phasing out fossil fuels.
-Jamie Epstein
(Photo credit: Flickr/UNclimatechange)
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We're doomed.
Call me a climate denier, but you will never be able to phase out the needed for fossel fuels. How else are they going to fly all their private jets to the COP conferences?
I like cheap and reliable energy. So I'll be driving my horrible gas car for the forseeable future.
What good was this meeting if the members did not issue a strong statement to eliminate the use of fossil fuels or to at least expand the use of technology to capture carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels during the phase-out of fossil fuels. Seems like a waste of two weeks to me.
"Whilst we didn’t turn the page on the fossil fuel era in Dubai, this outcome is the beginning of the end.”
– United Nations Climate Secretary Simon Stiell
Delegates at UN climate talks in Dubai agree to 'transition away' from planet-warming fossil fuels 13 Dec 2023
https://apnews.com/article/64c0e39e6ad54a98e05e5201a2215293
BY SETH BORENSTEIN, DAVID KEYTON, JAMEY KEATEN AND SIBI ARASU
~3:30 am EST
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — United Nations climate negotiators directed the world on Wednesday to transition away from planet-warming fossil fuels in a move the talks chief called historic, despite critics’ worries about loopholes.
Within minutes of opening Wednesday’s session, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber gaveled approval of the central document — the global stocktake that says how off-track the world is on climate and how it will get back on track — without asking for comments. Delegates stood and hugged each other.
“It is a plan that is led by the science,’’ al-Jaber said. “It is an enhanced, balanced, but make no mistake, a historic package to accelerate climate action. It is the UAE consensus.”
“We have language on fossil fuel in our final agreement for the first time ever,” said al-Jaber, who’s also CEO of the UAE’s oil company.
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.”
Read the full story
This is what happens when you allow a fossil fuel company to run the conference and you invite all the oil and gas companies to attend.
We need to stop listening to the dollars and listen to the planet. We cannot continue burning fossil fuels for any reason, and the sooner we turn to clean and sustainable energy the better off we'll all be.
I'm very sad that this has happened, and I hope those leaders who are actually invested in saving our environment will do better after this conference is over to ensure this never happens again and we can make new agreements soon.
We know what to do. The lines are clearly drawn.
Reminds me of the fight over tobacco. The tobacco producers fought back hard, too.
Cop28 draft climate deal criticised as ‘grossly insufficient’ and ‘incoherent’ | Cop28 | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/11/cop28-draft-agreement-calls-for-fossil-fuel-cuts-but-avoids-phase-out
<Quote>
A draft deal to cut global fossil fuel production is “grossly insufficient” and “incoherent” and will not stop the world from facing dangerous climate breakdown, according to delegates at the UN’s Cop28 summit.
The text put forward by the summit presidency after 10 days of wrangling was received with concern and anger by many climate experts and politicians, though others welcomed elements of the draft including the first mention in a Cop text of reducing fossil fuel production.
Some countries are despairing that the text does not require a full phase-out of fossil fuels.
Cedric Schuster of Samoa, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said: “We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.”
The Cop28 presidency released a draft text in the early evening on Monday, which called for “reducing both consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, so as to achieve net zero by, before or around 2050, in keeping with the science”.
The text avoids highly contentious calls for a “phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels, which have been the focus of deep disagreement among the more than 190 countries meeting in Dubai.
But instead of requiring fossil fuel producers to cut their output, it frames such reductions as optional, by calling on countries to “take actions that could include” reducing fossil fuels. “That one word ‘could’ just kills everything,” said Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, adding that the EU could walk out of the talks if the text did not improve.
“We can’t accept this text,” Ryan said. “It’s not anywhere near ambitious enough. It’s not broad enough. It’s not what parties have been calling for … we have to stitch climate justice into every part of this text and we are not anywhere near that yet.”
The text is expected to form the key outcome of this fortnight of fraught talks on the future of climate action, which are scheduled to end on Tuesday morning in the United Arab Emirates.
If the language on fossil fuels survives an expected onslaught from the negotiators of big oil-producing countries, it would mark the first time that countries were being asked under the UN framework convention on climate change to reduce their fossil fuel production.
<End Quote>
More:
Al Jaber is protecting his country's income, not the planet. Who put a climate denier in charge of this conference?
A better idea: a conference led by SCIENTISTS AND CLIMATE RESEARCHERS that world leaders attend. Afterwards, the leaders could come together to make actionable plans for greener renewable sources of energy that benefit the entire planet & all living beings.
All countries need to end the use of fosil fuels if we want a planet to live on. However if Trump gets back in the WH climate change won't really matter because he'll have us involved in some insane war where we''re all likely to be nuked.
Sultan Al-Jaber was the choice made by the rulers of the UAE, the host country of COP28.
"This appointment goes beyond putting the fox in charge of the henhouse,” said Teresa Anderson, global lead on climate justice at ActionAid, a development charity."
As the saying goes,"Watch what they do not what they say."
Al Jaber has attempted to walk back some of these comments, but he still remains a poor head of this conference because he is deeply entrenched in the oil and gas industry.
I'm still hopeful that some progress has been made so far at the conference, but we need to ensure that future conferences and efforts are completely free of the influence or participation of the fossil fuel industry.
This industry cannot be part of the solution, because they are the main problem (along with wealthy individuals who line the pockets of politicians). We don't need cooperation from fossil fuels, we need to eliminate them and ignore them completely while we develop and use sustainable, clean energy sources.
Al Jaber should be a cautionary tale and the last such biased member of these conferences.
Al Jaber has a conflict of interest as COP28 President but heading an oil company that will suffer serious financial loses, but further clarified his statement saying it was inevitable that a phase-out, phase-down of fossil fuel was needed to meet climate goals but how it's done will effect economic growth.
"He continued that the 1.5-degree goal was his “north star,” and a phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel was “inevitable” but “we need to be real, serious and pragmatic about it.”
"Al Jaber’s presidency of the COP28 summit has been controversial. The Emirati businessman is the UAE’s climate envoy and chairs the board of directors of its renewables company, but he also heads the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC)."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/03/climate/cop28-al-jaber-fossil-fuel-phase-out/index.html
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/03/back-into-caves-cop28-president-dismisses-phase-out-of-fossil-fuels
Putin visiting uae & saudi
US and EU need to wake up
with friends like these who needs enemies
let them discover how great a friend china and russia can be
deny them access to arms, tech, banking, visas etc