It was never really in doubt. But the first week of Cop28, which ended with a rest day on Thursday, made one crucial fact impossible to ignore: the fossil fuel industry is not planning to go quietly. Far more of its lobbyists are in the UAE than have attended UN climate talks before. One analysis counted 2,456 of them – nearly four times the number registered last year in Egypt.
The battle is hotting up over what next week’s report on progress towards the Paris goals, known as the global stocktake, will say. Fossil fuel interests – both corporate and national – are pushing hard to avoid references to the phase-out that would signal the end of their business model and vast profits. They don’t want an energy transition that leads to their demise.
Last week, the Guardian revealed that Sultan Al Jaber, who holds the Cop presidency and leads the UAE’s state oil company, recently asserted that “no science” indicates that “a phase-out of fossil fuel is what’s going to achieve 1.5C”. Forced on to the defensive, he later said that “the phase-down and phase-out of fossil fuel is inevitable”. But it is the nations at Cop28 that will decide, and there is no guarantee that any such pledge will appear in the final text.
One of the key battlegrounds at Cop28 is that of language: whether fossil fuels will be phased “down” or “out”. The choice is either reducing carbon energy sources or getting rid of them entirely. The latter would be preferable, but there are many other battles to be won. There will be haggling over whether a transition to a cleaner future should see fossil fuels “unabated”, with greenhouse gas emissions released directly into the atmosphere, or “abated”, where carbon capture technology and carbon offsets reduce the harm caused. The latter have so far failed to deliver promised benefits, appearing more of a risk than a solution, in enabling the necessity of replacing fossil fuels to be ducked.
Currently, not a single G20 country has policies in place that are consistent with the 1.5C target. Some, including the UK under Rishi Sunak, are moving in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, the former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres highlighted the unfinished business of financing a “global business plan” for decarbonisation. Climate change is eroding poor nations’ development gains, and without cash to adapt, such gains will be unachievable in the future. Yet finance flows to developing countries, according to the UN, are roughly a tenth of the $340bn needed by 2030. Bitter divisions between developing and developed countries on this issue almost derailed climate talks earlier this year.
Climate scientists are increasingly desperate. This week, five authors of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports told the Guardian that they want the panel to have a voice on policy as well as the science underpinning it. The emissions-cutting process stewarded by Cop is failing. Although the rate of increase has fallen, overall emissions are still rising, with 2023 expected to set a new record. Perverse though it may seem, in one sense the strenuous efforts of fossil fuel interests to hijack the UN climate process could be seen as a sign of hope. The industry understands that it is under threat. Following through on that threat, by insisting on a just transition to a safer energy system, is the task facing governments and the societies they represent.