[ "While this agreement offers faint guidelines toward a clean
energy transition, it falls far short of the transformational action
we need," said one campaigner.]
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FINAL COP28 DEAL RIDDLED WITH ‘CAVERNOUS LOOPHOLES’ FOR FOSSIL
FUEL INDUSTRY  
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Jake Johnson
December 13, 2023
Common Dreams
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_ "While this agreement offers faint guidelines toward a clean energy
transition, it falls far short of the transformational action we
need," said one campaigner. _

COP 28 protest, Earth Negotiations Bulletin

 

The COP28 climate summit in Dubai ended Wednesday with an agreement
that, for the first time, explicitly endorsed a move away from fossil
fuels—a weak but historic
[[link removed]] signal
that the oil and gas era may be coming to an end.

But the deal, dubbed the UAE Consensus, is also chock full of escape
hatches that will allow the fossil fuel industry to persist and thrive
in ways that are incompatible with efforts to keep warming below
critical targets set out by the Paris climate agreement.

The final text
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on" nations to "contribute" to a number of global efforts, including
tripling renewable energy capacity by 2030, accelerating the
"phase-down" of "unabated coal power," and "transitioning away from
fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly, and equitable
manner... so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the
science."

In the eyes of climate campaigners who pushed for an endorsement of an
ambitious fossil fuel phaseout, the agreement falls well short of
what's plainly necessary as global greenhouse gas
concentrations continue to shatter records
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climate-driven extreme weather wreaks devastating havoc across the
globe.

"At long last the loud calls to end fossil fuels have landed on paper
in black and white at this COP, but cavernous loopholes threaten to
undermine this breakthrough moment," said
[[link removed]] Jean
Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity
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"While this agreement offers faint guidelines toward a clean energy
transition, it falls far short of the transformational action we
need."

"It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make
agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do."

The Alliance of Small Island States, a coalition of nations
particularly vulnerable to the climate emergency, vocally criticized
the deal
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The alliance said that its members—who have called for a fossil fuel
phaseout and an end to fossil fuel subsidies—were "not in the room"
when the final text was adopted.

"We were working hard to coordinate the 39 small island developing
states that are disproportionally affected by climate change, and so
were delayed in coming here," Anne Rasmussen, lead negotiator for the
alliance, said, calling the agreement an "incremental advancement over
business as usual when what we really needed is an exponential
step-change in our actions and support."

"It is not enough for us to reference the science and then make
agreements that ignore what the science is telling us we need to do.
This is not an approach that we should be asked to defend," Rasmussen
added, criticizing the "litany of loopholes" in the deal's language on
the transition away from fossil fuels and subsidies for the polluting
industry.

"The paragraph on abatement can be perceived in a way that underwrites
further [fossil fuel] expansion," she warned, citing the section of
the text that urges countries to accelerate "zero- and low-emission
technologies" such as carbon capture. Critics have called
the unproven technology
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"lifeline for the fossil fuel industry."

The deal also "recognizes that transition fuels can play a role in
facilitating the energy transition while ensuring energy security"—a
thinly veiled endorsement of the liquefied natural gas expansion
underway in the U.S. and elsewhere that is imperiling climate
progress
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"This is not the historical deal that the world needed: It has many
loopholes and shortcomings," said
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Kosonen, senior political adviser at Greenpeace International. "But
history will be made if all those nearly 130 countries, businesses,
local leaders, and civil society voices, who came together to form an
unprecedented force for change, now take this determination and make
the fossil fuel phaseout happen. Most urgently that means stopping all
those expansion plans that are pushing us over the 1.5°C limit right
now."

That the final COP28 text bears the fingerprints of the fossil fuel
industry is hardly surprising, given that the summit was hosted by a
petrostate and a record number of oil and gas lobbyists
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in attendance.

Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program at the Center
for International Environmental Law, said
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"despite the unstoppable momentum and unequivocal science behind the
need for a clear signal on the phaseout of oil, gas, and coal—free
of loopholes or limitations—the text failed to deliver one."

"This failure was 30 years in the making, borne of a process that
allows a select few countries to hold progress hostage and the fossil
fuel industry not just to sit at the table, but to play host," said
Reisch. "Survival cannot depend on lowest-common-denominator outcomes.
We need alternative forums to manage the decline of fossil fuels, free
from the influence of those who profit from them."

"So long as the biggest polluters, the United States chief among them,
continue recklessly expanding oil and gas and staunchly refusing to
provide climate finance on anything approaching the scale needed,"
Reisch added, "the world will remain on a death course."

Others similarly criticized the inadequate climate finance pledges
made at COP28, where the U.S.—the largest historical emitter of
greenhouse gas—committed just $17.5 million
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loss and damage fund.

"COP28 was doubly disappointing because it put no money on the table
to help developing countries transition to renewable energies," said
Nafkote Dabi, Oxfam International's climate policy lead. "And rich
countries again reneged on their obligations to help people being hit
by the worst impacts of climate breakdown, like those in the Horn of
Africa who have recently lost everything from flooding after a
historic five-season drought and years of hunger."

"Developing countries, and the poorest communities, are left facing
more debt, worsening inequality, with less help, and more danger and
hunger and deprivation," Dabi continued. "COP28 was miles away from
the historic and ambitious outcome that was promised."

_Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams._

* COP 28
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* fossil fuels
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* loopholes
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