The first week of the COP28 climate talks has come to an end not with the euphoria of the first days of breakthrough announcements, but with growing anxiety about whether the world will do anything about the main cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. <\/p>\n
The trade-show-like pavilions \u2014 where countries have for days been touting everything from zero-carbon shipping to nuclear fusion energy \u2014 are slowly starting to empty. One European nation\u2019s pavilion had just three staff members left late Wednesday morning, all rushing out to catch a flight home. Another representing climate vulnerable states had its lights switched off, no one at all inside. <\/p>\n
The summit\u2019s glamorous early days are over. What\u2019s left now is the tedious, hard work between countries\u2019 negotiators who are sorting the thorny issue of what to do about fossil fuels \u2014\u202fpursuing what could potentially be the most ambitious COP outcome in years. <\/p>\n
But journalists, delegates and civil society groups are still talking about the summit\u2019s president, whose recent remarks cast a shadow over the negotiations. <\/p>\n
Comments from Sultan Al Jaber that came to light on Sunday sent shockwaves through Expo City in Dubai: In a late-November panel discussion, he said there is \u201cno science\u201d behind the demand to phase out fossil fuel to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius \u2013 the goal of the Paris climate agreement. Al Jaber, who is also an oil executive, fiercely defended his commitment to climate science the next day, and said phasing out fossil fuels is \u201cinevitable\u201d and \u201cessential.\u201d <\/p>\n
Days later, UN climate chief Simon Steill was asked by a reporter about Al Jaber during a news conference Wednesday, but refused to be drawn on the controversy, saying his focus was now on the summit\u2019s critical negotiations. <\/p>\n
US climate envoy John Kerry fended off similar inquiries. Kerry has publicly supported Al Jaber\u2019s COP presidency several times, but chose not to wade into it at a press conference Wednesday. He had earlier told POLITICO that Al Jaber\u2019s remarks perhaps \u201ccame out the wrong way\u201d and could use a \u201cclarification.\u201d <\/p>\n
Getting climate action on the same page as the science has never been more urgent; 2023 will officially be the hottest year on record, and even scientists are expressing alarm that the climate impacts they\u2019re seeing are outpacing their predictions. The planet\u2019s average temperature this year is on track to be around 1.4 degrees above pre-industrial levels \u2014\u202fjust a hair below the Paris Agreement\u2019s threshold. <\/p>\n
The impacts of the climate crisis weigh heavily on attendees at the talks \u2014 but there are now concerns among civil society groups and some delegates that Al Jaber\u2019s remarks may bleed into the negotiations themselves. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole COP has been a conflict of interest,\u201d said Isabel Rutkowski from Germany, part of the European Youth Forum. \u201cIt\u2019s frustrating because the science is pretty clear, and you have a president for COP who is not following science. It\u2019s crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n
Whether Al Jaber\u2019s comments will have an impact on final language around fossil fuels is yet to be seen, but countries are deeply divided over the issue. <\/p>\n
The latest draft of the summit\u2019s key agreement included several options: One called for a phase-out of fossil fuels \u2013\u2014 the language widely supported by most climate scientists. Another called for a phase-down of fossil fuels, which is weaker language and leaves the door open for a future with more planet-warming pollution. Another option was to omit language on fossil fuels altogether. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s frustrating,\u201d said Murgu\u00eda, who wanted to see more progress and \u201caction\u201d and fewer distractions. <\/p>\n
\u201cMexico is a highly vulnerable country and we\u2019re facing that as our own fight,\u201d he said, pointing to Hurricane Otis, which killed dozens of people and tore through coastal cities. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to rebuild Acapulco now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Reaching consensus on fossil fuels was always going to be a tough fight. The UN\u2019s Stiell said Wednesday that there was a \u201cspectrum of positions\u201d on the issue among the nations at the summit. <\/p>\n
A delegate from the Philippines, which represents the G77 nations \u2014\u202fa coalition of developing countries \u2014 described the US as taking a \u201cbroadsword\u201d to the agreement, with nearly 200 edits or comments, the sources said. <\/p>\n
Some of India\u2019s delegates expressed reservations on phasing out fossil fuels, according to the sources, but the country has previously supported a phase-down. <\/p>\n
Al Jaber\u2019s influence over talks may become clearer next week, when ministers and senior officials join other delegates and discuss this language openly in public sessions, said Tom Evans, a policy advisor in\u202fclimate diplomacy and geopolitics for the E3G climate consultancy. <\/p>\n
And the controversy could, ironically, bring positive outcomes, he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe fact that we have had so much scrutiny on the fossil fuel industry and on the comments on the fossil fuel transition is actually, maybe helpful in putting them under the spotlight and saying, \u2018If things do go south, we\u2019ll be pointing at the UAE,\u2019\u201d Evans said. <\/p>\n
He cautioned that there were several other countries that were blocking progress on including a fossil fuel phase-out, and that failure in that regard wouldn\u2019t solely be the UAE\u2019s doing. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut, we do see that pressure now playing into the discussions, constructively,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n
The first week of the COP28 climate talks has come to an end not with the euphoria of the first days of breakthrough announcements, but with growing anxiety about whether the world will do anything about the main cause of the climate crisis: fossil fuels. The trade-show-like pavilions \u2014 where countries have for days been <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":12647,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-12646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}