With just a half day of negotiations remaining, the current global stocktake draft no longer includes the call “phase-out of fossil fuels,” leaving COP28 on the verge of failure and angering scientists, activists, and negotiators from over 100 countries who support a deep and expedient cut in fossil fuels to limit GHG emissions from rising beyond the 1.5 degree Celsius agreed to in the Paris Agreement.
There is pressure for a new more aggressive document and negotiators continued talks into Monday night and will resume work on Tuesday. Passage of the final document requires unanimous support.
“The world desperately needs to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but this obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word,” Al Gore said. “It is even worse than many had feared.”
The current draft has no timelines and employs watered-down language suggesting countries ‘could’ take action to reduce pollution which includes cutting back on the production and consumption of oil, gas, and coal.
“The Republic of the Marshall Islands did not come here to sign our death warrant,” John Silk, the minister of natural resources for the nation of atolls in the Pacific Ocean, said. At its highest point, the Marshall Islands stands a little over six feet, or about two meters, above the sea.
“What we have seen today is totally unacceptable,” Mr. Silk said. “We will not go silently to our watery graves.” www.nytimes.com/...
As EU Climate Action Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra called the draft document insufficient and disappointing, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), announced it will not support the current document.
“We will not sign our death certificate. We cannot sign on to text that does not have strong commitments on phasing out fossil fuels,” said Cedric Schuster, a Samoan politician and chair of AOSIS, in a statement.
The Guardian summarizes Monday’s accomplishments:
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New draft text released by Cop28 presidency omits reference to a “phase-out” of fossil fuels
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Small island states have complained their voices are not being heard
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Most civil society groups have condemned the text as inadequate
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Azerbaijan and Brazil have formally been approved as hosts of Cop29 and Cop30
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Saudi Arabia has been accused of holding the talks hostage
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The UN secretary general has urged delegates to ‘End the fossil fuel age.’
UN Secretary-General António Guterres told reporters Monday the world is in “minutes to midnight. And the clock keeps ticking.”
The UNFCCC announced last week that Azerbaijan will host COP29 next year. This means for three years in a row the conference has been hosted by countries that are big producers of oil and gas.