The end of the fossil fuel era: The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) rejected a pledge on climate finance (COP29)
The text agreed upon on Wednesday is different to a Monday version that called for reducing consumption and production of fossil fuels. That was criticized as not being strong enough and this is a rare sign of unity from different parts of the globe.
The COP28 agreement is strong in that it calls for a 60 percent drop in emissions by 2035, says Gregory Nemet, who studies low-carbon innovation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Its ambition does not reflect the current situation: The more carbon we pump into the atmosphere, the more we have to rely on carbon removal technologies to keep temperatures from rising further.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the agency that organizes COP meetings, headlined its press release: ‘Beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era’. The minister of energy for Saudi Arabia was quoted by the newspaper as saying that it wouldn’t affect his country’s crude oil exports.
The requirement under UN rules that countries unanimously agree on text is a “fatal flaw” in the COP process, says Charles Fletcher, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii at Manoa who studies sea-level rise. Al Gore told member states to consider taking decisions that have been agreed on by 75% of the world’s nations. “It’s almost ludicrous that we are asking the leaders of fossil fuel production to shepherd humanity into a safe climate future,” Fletcher adds.
When the final deal was agreed, delegates from the Alliance of Small Island States, which are vulnerable to climate change, said they weren’t in the room. We were working hard to coordinate the states that were disproportionately affected by climate change, but they were not in this country when we arrived. AOSIS wants a target that will cause global emissions to peak.
“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 approach is not one that we should be asked to defend.
A loss and damage fund principle was agreed on during last year’s conference in Egypt. “We started the COP with this huge bang,” says Schipper. When it comes to pledges on climate finance, she says that COP28 has been disappointing.
The big part of the climate finance discussion will take place next year at the COP29 in Azerbaijan, says Romain Weikmans, who is the author of the book Climate Finance.
Ben Rubin, the executive director of the Carbon Business Council, said that delaying carbon removal creates its own risks. Reducing emissions needs to work in tandem with the removal of carbon.