Battle lines on fossil fuels hardened at UN climate talks yesterday, despite scientists warning that global warming could breach the 1.5°C threshold within seven years.
A new COP28 draft agreement in Dubai included the options of phasing out fossil fuels or not addressing the issue at all, setting the stage for tough negotiations due to end next week.
Saudi Arabia — the world’s biggest oil exporter — said it would “absolutely not” agree to phasing down fossil fuels, never mind phasing them out.
Photo: Reuters
The thorny debate over the future of fossil fuels, the biggest cause of global warming, is the key battleground at the UN Climate Change Conference hosted by the oil-rich United Arab Emirates.
The latest version of a potential agreement included three options — an “orderly and just” phaseout, faster efforts to phase out fossil fuel projects that do not capture and store emissions or “no text” on the subject.
An earlier draft, prepared by the UK and Singapore, that proposed a “phasedown/out” was badly received by delegates, a Latin American negotiator said.
“Everyone was extremely unhappy with the first draft,” the negotiator said, requesting anonymity.
“When we started talking ... everything collapsed... There is pretty much nothing on the way forward,” the delegate added.
Saudi Arabian Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said he would “absolutely not” agree to a phasedown of fossil fuels in the COP28 agreement.
“I would like to put that challenge for all of those who ... come out publicly saying we have to” phase down, Prince Abdulaziz told Bloomberg. “Call them and ask them how they are gonna do that?”
Laurence Tubiana, the architect of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, said the negotiations are “difficult because we’re at a stage where all options are on the table and we don’t see a balancing point.”
“On one hand it’s normal at this stage, but it seems particularly difficult because we’re talking about the elephant in the room, which is fossil fuels,” Tubiana said.
The annual Global Carbon Project yesterday said there is a 50 percent chance warming would exceed the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal over multiple years by about 2030.
Carbon pollution from fossil fuels also rose 1.1 percent last year, an international consortium of climate scientists said in their annual Global Carbon Project assessment, with surging emissions in China and India — now the world’s first and third-biggest emitters.
Projected global warming has risen slightly — by 0.1°C — the Climate Action Tracker said in its annual update on government plans, putting it at a catastrophic 2.5°C above preindustrial levels by the end of the century, the group said.
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