Cop28 is nearly over – but the battle over the fate of fossil fuels is still raging

Negotiators from around the world haggled deep into the night to try to strike a deal to halt global warming at United Nations climate talks, with Western powers and vulnerable developing countries worried that a proposed text fell far short of goals to save the planet.

A new draft released on Monday of what’s known as the global stocktake — the part of talks that assesses where the world is at with its climate goals and how it can reach them — called for countries to reduce “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”

The release triggered a frenzy of fine-tuning by government envoys with some Pacific Island nations arguing the text amounted to a death sentence.

“For us this is a matter of survival. We cannot put loopholes in our children’s futures,” said Tuvalu’s delegation chief Seve Paeniu, who added the proposed text “doesn’t even come close to delivering 1.5 as a north star”.

Cedric Schuster of Samoa, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States, said its members felt their voices were not being heard.

“We will not sign our death certificate,” he said. “We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels.

“We have been asked throughout this process, what is at stake if these negotiations do not return a strong outcome that keeps 1.5 alive. How can you not understand – it is our very survival that is at stake?”

He said: “Our red line is a strong commitment to keeping the 1.5C warming limit. Any text that compromises 1.5 will be rejected.”

In the 21-page document, the words oil and natural gas did not appear, and the word coal appeared twice.

Norway minister Espen Barth Eide said: “It is not enough to say 1.5, we have to do 1.5. We have to deliver accordingly.”

US climate envoy John Kerry says the language on fossil fuels for a proposed deal to halt global warming at the Cop28 summit in Dubai “does not meet the test”.

Negotiators worked deep into the night at the United Nations climate talks, but several countries have expressed concerns the proposed text falls far short of goals.

The latest draft of what is known as the global stocktake, released on Monday, called for countries to reduce “consumption and production of fossil fuels, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.

In a closed-door meeting late on Monday, some country delegation chiefs said Cop28 president Sultan al-Jaber had failed in his repeated calls to keep the goal of limiting warming to 1.5C since pre-industrial times as the “north star” of the talks.

The Cop28 president said: “We have a text and we need to agree on the text.

“The time for discussion is coming to an end and there’s no time for hesitation. The time to decide is now.”

He added: “We must still close many gaps. We don’t have time to waste.”

Mr Kerry, who was confronted by climate activists as he left the meeting, described the pursuit of the 1.5C target as a “war of survival”.

“I, like most of you here, refuse to be part of a charade” of not phasing out fossil fuels, he said.

In the final 24 hours before Cop28 is due to officially end, the reference to a “phase-out” of fossil fuels has been removed from the latest draft of the final agreement.

The European Union and vulnerable, developing countries have called for fossil fuels to be phased out while oil-rich nations, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, have strongly opposed. “Phase-out” or “phase-down” of fossil fuels had been included as an option in an earlier draft agreement but has now been deleted.

New foreign secretary Lord Cameron caused a stir with a strongly worded letter to Scotland’s first minister.

With barely disguised anger, the newly ennobled Cameron reprimanded Humza Yousaf for having a quasi-diplomatic meeting with President Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (a man, it must be said, who shows little empathy towards separatist movements in his own country).

The future of fossil fuels is at the center of the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, where many activists, experts and nations are calling for an agreement to phase out the oil, gas and coal responsible for warming the planet. On the other side: energy companies and oil-rich nations with plans to keep drilling well into the future.

In the background of those discussions are carbon capture and carbon removal, technologies most, if not all, producers are counting on to meet their pledges to get to net-zero emissions. Skeptics worry the technology is being oversold to allow the industry to maintain the status quo.

“The industry needs to commit to genuinely helping the world meet its energy needs and climate goals – which means letting go of the illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution,” International Energy Agency Executive Director Fatih Birol said before the start of talks.

Germany’s foreign minister Annalena Baerbock said on Monday that the draft deal at COP28 climate summit was clearly insufficient and disappointing.

Speaking at the German Climate Pavilion in Dubai, she said that replacing fossil fuels was completely absent from the draft deal, meaning Germany could not support it.

“It will be difficult to reach a conclusion here by midday tomorrow. This is not a problem for the European delegation. We have time and we are prepared to stay a little longer,” Baerbock said.

The European Union’s plan to impose a tax on the carbon pollution emitted to make goods imported from countries like India and China has sparked a debate at the United Nations climate conference in Dubai, as poorer countries argue that the tax will harm livelihoods and economic growth.

Known as the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, the tax wants to set a price on the carbon emitted to make energy-intensive products like iron, steel, cement, fertilizers and aluminum in non-EU countries.

The EU says this creates a level-playing field for domestically-manufactured goods that have to adhere to stricter green standards and also reduces emissions from imports. But other nations, particularly developing countries, are worried this would harm their economies and make it too expensive to trade with the bloc.

“The latest COP28 text is a ‘choose your own deadly misadventure’ of bad options and worse consequences,” said Jean Su, energy justice director at the Center for Biological Diversity.

“It moves disastrously backward from original language offering a phaseout of fossil fuels. Where science demands an urgent phaseout of oil, gas and coal, this text champions dangerous technologies like carbon capture and storage.

“The United States must be chief among the negotiators demanding they go back to the table. If this race-to-the-bottom monstrosity gets enshrined as the final word, this crucial COP will be a failure.”