As temperatures broke records around the world this summer, António Guterres, the UN secretary general, warned in September: “Humanity has opened the gates of hell.”
On Wednesday, he hailed delegates at the Cop28 climate summit in Dubai, as two weeks of fraught talks ended. “For the first time, the outcome recognises the need to transition away from fossil fuels,” he said. “The era of fossil fuels must end, and it must end with justice and equity.”
More than 190 nations accepted a text on Wednesday morning that calls on the world to “transition away” from fossil fuels. But is this a historic deal that will spell the eventual end of gas, oil and coal? Or will it be one more step on the road to hell?
In the world of climate talks, these two are not mutually exclusive. The text that was gavelled on Wednesday morning, known as the “global stocktake”, enjoins countries for the first time to embark on a de facto phase-out of fossil fuels. But it cannot require them to do so and it contains “a litany of loopholes”, according to the small island states that are most vulnerable to the impacts of the climate crisis, that will hamper the world from cutting greenhouse gas emissions drastically enough to limit global heating to 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial levels.
The Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, the United Arab Emirates host of the conference, hailed the adoption of the key text on Wednesday morning, and called it the “UAE consensus”. A consensus, but not quite unanimity: Samoa spoke for small island states at the final meeting to say they would not block the deal, but warned that the world was still far off track from the 1.5C limit, and this outcome was not enough to correct that course.
As they and other developing countries pointed out, there are plenty of problems with this deal. Poor nations still need hundreds of billions more in finance, to help them make the transition away from coal, oil and gas. Developed countries and oil producers will not be forced to move as fast as climate science urges.
The US will get away lightly from this Cop, having pledged just over $20m (£16m) in new finance for the poor world, and with its position as the world’s biggest oil and gas producer intact. China will continue to pursue coal production as well as renewable energy, and India’s coal industry will also have little to fear.
But this deal, imperfect as it is, faced colossal opposition from the world’s oil-producing countries. Saudi Arabia tried until the final moments, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, to remove any reference to fossil fuels, and succeeded in inserting some references to carbon capture and storage, a technology it professes to love but strangely fails to invest in.
Russia worked behind the scenes to scupper progress, and will do so far more next year when the Cop is held in Baku, Azerbaijan. This deal, like all multilateral UN deals, is fragile and oil producers may try to backtrack next year.
They worked so hard to scupper the deal because they realise that it is not merely words, as some critics insist. The deal will have an impact on the real world, in the decisions made by investors, banks, financial institutions, by governments and by private companies.
It may seem incredible, but it has taken 30 years of nearly annual climate summits to come up with an agreement that includes clear directions on the future of fossil fuels.
For 30 years, the world has been forced to avoid the elephant in the room: the overwhelming source of the climate breakdown we are experiencing, fossil fuels. Oil-producing countries, abetted by many rich countries, having reluctantly agreed to talk about the climate, refused to allow legally binding treaties to make the link with fossil fuels explicit.
At Cop26 in Glasgow, the UK as president managed to get one fossil fuel into the final outcome for the very first time, in the form of a reference to the need for a phase-down of coal, a commitment that was itself watered down in the final moments from a phase-out. Last year, at Sharm el-Sheikh, attempts to incorporate a further reference to fossil fuels were shot down.
That it has taken an oil-producing country to introduce such a commitment into a Cop outcome for the first time is remarkable. That the president of this Cop is chief executive of the United Arab Emirates’ national oil company, Adnoc, almost defies belief. Few people predicted a strong outcome from this Cop, and Al Jaber was personally vilified. He beamed through his exhaustion as he opened the final plenary meeting, and was hugged by the UN climate chief, Simon Stiell.
We must not forget, amid the hugging and clapping, the expressions of joy and relief, that Adnoc is still planning a massive increase in production capacity, as are other oil companies and countries. But Al Jaber has managed what no other Cop presidency has ever done: to bring Saudi Arabia to the table to agree that a transition away from fossil fuels must be a global priority.
The mood in the closing plenary at Cop28 on Wednesday morning was clear: this deal does represent significant progress for the countries that want to tackle the climate crisis. The world must take this signal as the end of the fossil fuel era – now, before the gates of hell close behind us.
