Urgent Update: COP28 Climate Agreement’s ‘Cavernous’ Loopholes Threaten Progress. After two weeks of intense negotiations. The globe came to a historic agreement on a new climate pact at the COP28 meeting in Dubai on Wednesday. The agreement included ambiguous wording that would allow certain nations. To take very little steps towards the transition away from fossil fuels.
The protracted deliberations between nations sharply split over the future role for oil, gas and coal forced the meetings into overtime. And the accord known as the Global Stocktake was struck early in the morning.
In his address to national delegates at the final session. That approved the accord COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber referred to it as “historic. For the first time ever fossil fuels are addressed in our final agreement. He stated, adding that the pact signified “a paradigm shift that has the potential to redefine our economies.”
According to Jean Su, head of energy justice at the Centre for Biological Diversity. “The loud calls to end fossil fuels have finally landed on paper in black and white at this COP,” yet “cavernous loopholes threaten to undermine this breakthrough moment.”
The accord does not include wording from a previous draft that would have required the globe to “phase-out” oil, coal, and gas. As more than 100 nations and other climate groups had been requesting.
Rather than imposing restrictions on countries’ freedom to reduce carbon pollution, the agreement offers them a number of options to choose from, including “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy
Held at the conclusion of a year marked by unheard-of levels of global heat. COP28 coincided with record-breaking wildfires. lethal heat waves, and devastating floods. El Niño and human-caused global warming have combined to make this year the warmest on record, and next year is predicted to be much hotter.
Controversy and accusations that oil interests were influencing the discussions have dogged the meeting in Dubai.
There were significant differences during the summit as well. Saudi Arabia led a group of oil-producing countries that rejected wording on the phase-out of fossil fuels. More aspirational parties, like as the European Union and a collection of island governments. On the other hand, voiced their displeasure with a prior draft that had softened the wording about fossil fuels.
As oil and gas-producing countries resisted wording favouring fossil fuels. US climate envoy John Kerry said that disagreements almost brought the summit to a halt.
“I believe there were moments during the past 48 hours when a few of us believed this could not work,” Kerry told reporters on Wednesday.
Kerry referred to the agreement as a triumph and a confirmation of multilateralism.
After the agreement was reached, he stated in a previous address, “We can all think of a paragraph, sentence, or section where we would have said it differently. I find it is cause for optimism, cause for gratitude, and cause for some significant congratulations to everybody here,” he said, “to have as strong a document as has been put together.
Speaking of the internally agreed-upon goal
To limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels—beyond which scientists warn humans and ecosystems will struggle to adapt—he said that the agreement was “much stronger and clearer as a call on 1.5 than we have ever heard.”
“We are moving away from fossil fuels, that is the message coming out of this COP,” Kerry stated. “We are not going back.”
