COP28: Nations reach deal to ‘transition away’ from fossil fuels
Global News
UN climate negotiators directed the world on Wednesday to transition away from fossil fuels in a move the talks chief called historic, despite critics’ worries about loopholes.
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.
“Humanity has finally done what is long, long, long overdue,” Wopke Hoekstra, European Union commissioner for climate action, said. After nearly 30 years of talking about carbon pollution, climate negotiators in a key document explicitly took aim at what’s trapping the heat: the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
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 to get back on — 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.”
Stiell cautioned people that what they adopted was a “climate action lifeline, not a finish line.”
The new deal had been floated early Wednesday and was stronger than a draft proposed days earlier, but had loopholes that upset critics. Analysts and delegates wondered if there was going to be a floor fight over details, but al-Jaber acted quickly, not giving critics a chance to even clear their throats.
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