Western powers and nations most threatened by climate change yesterday fought against oil producer Saudi Arabia for stronger calls on exiting fossil fuels as negotiators worked past a host-set deadline in UN talks in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
The 13-day COP28 summit in the glitzy metropolis built on petrodollars has debated a historic first-ever global “phase-out” from oil, gas and coal, the main culprits in a planetary crisis of warming.
However, a draft put forward on Monday by COP28 president Sultan Al Jaber, head of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co, fell well short, instead presenting reductions in fossil fuels as one of several options.
Photo: Reuters
With low-lying island nations warning that their very survival is at risk, negotiators worked through the night and the Emirati hosts promised a new draft to try to find consensus.
Danish Minister for Development Cooperation and Global Climate Policy Dan Jorgensen, one of the climate ministers tasked with leading the talks, said that the Dubai summit needed to be clear that fossil fuels were on their way out.
“I’m personally not married to one word,” he said. “But I am insisting that the meaning of this formulation, whichever one we will end up having, has to be extremely ambitious.”
French Minister for Energy Transition Agnes Pannier-Runacher called for the “clearest language possible,” but added: “Obviously we can accept edits that note that we’re not all coming from the same place.”
US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry has also urged stronger language on phasing out fossil fuel, even though the US is the world’s top oil producer.
Kerry met ahead of COP28 with his Chinese counterpart and reached an agreement to ramp up renewables, hoping to keep tensions between the two powers — the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitters — from scuttling global action on climate.
“I wouldn’t say China is fighting with us, but we’re not fighting China,” said one person close to the negotiations who backs phasing out fossil fuels.
But as for the Saudis, “they show forcefully that they are not willing to move,” the person said.
Saudi Arabia has told COP28 to take its “concerns” into consideration while the OPEC oil cartel has urged members to resist calls to end their lucrative export.
The most emotionally charged appeals have come from low-lying islands, which fear being submerged as polar ice melts and whose teams flew to Dubai at great expense to their national budgets.
John Silk, the negotiator from the Marshall Islands, which lies on average 2.1m above sea level, on Monday said that his country “did not come here to sign our death warrant.”
The Emirati hosts had urged a deal before the summit’s official close yesterday morning, but COP28 director-general Majid Al Suwaidi said after the deadline that the priority was to “get the most ambitious outcome possible.”
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