| A flurry of pledges during the opening days of the United Nations climate summit steered clear of a key proposal for limiting global warming: phasing out fossil fuels. Nearly 120 countries promised Saturday to triple the world’s renewable energy capacity and double the global rate of energy efficiency, while oil and gas companies committed to ending methane emissions by 2030. On the same day, the U.S. pledged $3 billion to help nations adapt to climate change and reduce emissions, while announcing a sweeping final rule to slash methane emissions from oil and gas operations. (The money pledge is “subject to the availability of funds,” the Treasury Department cautioned.) Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp summed it up as “the single most impactful day” at the annual U.N. climate summit in the nearly 30 years they’ve been occurring. But some environmental organizations and leaders of endangered island nations are skeptical, write Zia Weise and Charlie Cooper. Accelerating clean energy is “only half the solution,” said Tina Stege, climate envoy for the Marshall Islands. “The pledge can’t greenwash countries that are simultaneously expanding fossil fuel production.” Some of the pledges are also repeats. The U.S. pledge for $3 billion in climate finance is identical to a 2014 initiative from the Obama administration, which delivered only $1 billion. The pledges come as countries debate whether to use the term phase “out” or phase “down” in a global agreement to limit fossil fuel production. The U.S., the world’s top oil producer, has called for phasing out “unabated” fossil fuels — which could allow continued use of oil, gas and coal whose greenhouse gas emissions are captured or counteracted. “COP28 is not a trade show and a press conference,” said Mohamed Adow, director of the think tank Power Shift Africa. “Getting an agreed fossil fuel phase-out date remains the biggest step countries need to take here in Dubai.” Reality bites
In a Sunday report to the U.N., scientists warned that it’s “becoming inevitable” that countries will miss the Paris Agreement target to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, writes Chelsea Harvey. Temperatures have already risen at least 1.1 degrees since the preindustrial era. The best-case scenario now may be limiting the likely “overshoot” as much as possible, by bringing global temperatures back down. And scientists say that requires rapidly phasing out fossil fuels, along with carbon dioxide removal, Chelsea writes. But COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber, the oil executive helming this year’s climate talks, has said that there is “no science” supporting the need to phase out oil and gas to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees. Putting an end to fossil fuel usage could “take the world back into caves,” al-Jaber added in a live online event last month.
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