A draft released Monday of the final report from the United Nations COP28 climate talks in Dubai does not include a call to phase out the use of fossil fuels, angering many climate advocates and leaders from low-lying island nations that are most vulnerable to sea-level rise.
“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” former Vice President Al Gore said Monday on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. “This obsequious draft reads as if OPEC dictated it word for word,” Gore said.
As the annual climate negotiations near their scheduled conclusion Tuesday, the draft language recognized the need to accelerate the energy transition and make “deep reductions” in greenhouse gas emissions.
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COP28 President Sultan Al Jaber told the delegates Monday that they have made progress but still have work to do. “I want you to deliver the highest ambition on all items, including on fossil fuels language,” he said.
Al Jaber has been a focus of criticism because in addition to serving as the COP leader for the host country, the United Arab Emirates, he is also an executive with the UAE’s national oil company.
References to fossil fuels in the draft report were couched in vague terms that would allow for their continued use. The draft calls for action by national governments that “could include” reducing production and consumption of fossil fuels to achieve net-zero emissions by “or around” 2050.
The draft document’s recommendations on coal, the most carbon-intensive of fossil fuels, recommends a phase down of “unabated” coal power. That term implies the use of carbon capture and storage technology, or CCS, to control carbon dioxide emissions. Critics say CCS is too costly and has not been proven at the scale required to make a difference for global emissions.
Representatives from nations that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as rising sea levels, expressed disappointment and pressed for a clear call to phase out fossil fuels.
“We will not go silently to our watery graves,” Marshall Islands Natural Resources and Commerce Minister John Silk told COP28 delegates. “There is no more pragmatic response to the climate crisis than phasing out fossil fuels.”
The final report from COP28, known as the “global stocktake,” is meant to assess progress toward meeting the goals countries committed to meeting in the Paris Agreement. In Paris, all participating countries agreed to limit warming beyond pre-industrial levels to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).
While the global stocktake is the official product of COP28, one longtime COP observer said it is not necessarily the most important thing that will emerge from the two weeks of climate talks.
“Most of the action is outside of the negotiations,” Harvard University environmental economics professor Robert Stavins told Newsweek. Stavins leads the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, and he said that over the years that he’s attended the U.N. gatherings, the role of civil society representatives, trade associations and non-governmental organizations has grown in importance.
“I sort of think of this as a circus in which the main event is sometimes eclipsed by the sideshows,” Stavins said. He said COP28 has made progress in the agreements and commitments announced outside of the official negotiations, such as agreements to control emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas methane.
Stavins said the parts of the official negotiations that deal with financing for climate solutions and the loss and damage suffered by poor countries remain very important.
“But whether or not the closing statement says to phase out or phase down fossil fuels, it just doesn’t mean much,” he said, because the final document is a nonbinding resolution.
Nevertheless, the negotiations could well extend beyond COP28’s scheduled close Tuesday.