For those who want Cop28 to agree to quit fossil fuels, the options in Friday’s global stocktake text were probably too good to last.
They all referred to a “phase out” of fossil fuels, not “phase down”. That’s largely because petrostates were backing “no text” and refusing to engage further.
As it becomes clear that won’t fly, the next version of the text today may contain weaker compromise language.
To try and break the deadlock, the presidency convened a majlis, which can mean a sitting room or a council in many Islamic countries. Sultan Al Jaber urged ministers sat in a circle around him to speak “heart to heart”.
Colombia, the darling of campaigners as the biggest fossil fuel producer committed to a national phase-out, talked about being confronted with “the reality of power”. It took a hit to its credit rating and the peso dropped. The minister pleaded for international economic reforms to support the transition.
Bolivia called out the hypocrisy of the US, Australia, Norway and Canada. All are planning to increase their oil and gas production by 2030 except Norway, which is planning to reduce it very slowly.
Saudi Arabia appealed for a focus on emissions, not energy sources.
But it’s the swing votes that matter. India and Russia didn’t speak. China didn’t support or oppose fossil fuel phase-out, just pleaded for a “balanced” text, with finance for developing countries, and for developed countries to go first and fastest in the climate “marathon”.
Norway said any language needs to be compatible with 1.5C. Australia used a footie analogy to defend “unabated” – the contentious loophole for carbon capture and storage.
The UK called for “guardrails” ensuring abatement means a lot of carbon captured not just a bit. The EU took a stronger stance against “unabated”.
The latest headlines
Fears mount over carbon trading rules
The US and the EU have been locking horns over a mechanism for countries to bilaterally exchange carbon credits and meet their climate plans.
Marathon negotiations over article 6.2 of the Paris Agreement were in full swing at the time of writing, with heated debate over oversight and transparency measures.
According to observers, the latest draft closely reflects the US’ desire for light-touch regulations. A group led by the EU and including African and island nations is incensed. They want tighter controls to ensure that credits traded between countries actually reduce emissions without causing other environmental or social issues.
“The text is extremely weak and disappointing,” Jonathan Crook of Carbon Market Watch told Climate Home. “All of the positive elements for transparency and accountability have been removed, in favour of a highly minimalist, no-frills approach.”
The draft includes strong confidentiality provisions making it virtually impossible for anyone, outside countries striking a deal, to see the terms and conditions of the trade, observers said. Their fear is that such mechanism could effectively become the dumping ground for junk credits.
Countries that have already struck preliminary deals are watching developments closely.
Controversial Emirati startup Blue Carbon is aiming to trade credits under the mechanism from several African and Caribbean nations.
Switzerland signed its first bilateral agreement with Peru back in 2020, while Singapore inked a deal with Papua New Guinea on Friday. They are itching to turn words into practice.
Private sector operators also favour a light-touch approach. The text is “a step in the right direction, preserving the flexibility for parties to cooperate… in different ways,” said Margaret Kim, CEO of Gold Standard, a leading offsets certifier in the voluntary market.
In brief
Adaptation playbook – A text on the framework for the global goal on adaptation has finally materialised. Developing countries are asking once again: where is the money? There’s no clear mention of finance in the targets. Rich countries want to keep it that way, kicking those discussions to next year.
Third of the job – If Cop28 pledges are implemented in full, the world will shave off a third of the emissions it needs by 2030 to get the world on a path compatible with limiting warming to 1.5C. That’s the judgement of the International Energy Agency on pledges like tripling renewables, doubling energy efficiency and tackling emissions from oil and gas production.
Food and farming – The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation has launched its two-year roadmap on transforming agri-food systems. This is to lead to national action plans at Cop30 in Brazil.
Peace Cop? – Gulshan Akhundova tells Climate Home she and fellow Azeri climate campaigners are excited for Cop29 and hope it will help bring piece to the region and bring cooperation between Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia on climate change.
Shrinking Caspian – Kazakhstan’s climate envoy Zulfiya Suleimanova told Climate Home she hopes Cop29 will bring attention to Central Asia’s climate issues. With Azerbaijan, they share the Caspian Sea, which is shrinking because of climate change. Kazakhstan’s water-supplying glaciers are melting and it is suffering heatwaves and wildfires.
Dates for your diary – Cop29 will be from 11-22 November 2024 and Cop30 will be 10-21 November 2025, according to new draft texts. Both begin on a Monday and aim to end on a Friday.
The post Cop28 bulletin: Majlis brings fossil fuel views into the open appeared first on Climate Home News.
Cop28 bulletin: Majlis brings fossil fuel views into the open
The expansion could add millions of tons of carbon pollution annually while polluting the air near vulnerable communities and ecosystems.
Georgia regulators have approved a massive expansion of natural gas power plants that could dramatically increase the state’s climate pollution, largely to support the rapid growth of data centers.
Georgia Power Gas Expansion Would Drive Significant Climate-Damaging Pollution
The real action is happening locally anyway, says Monique Harden, an environmental justice lawyer and advocate living in Cancer Alley.
From our collaborating partner Living on Earth, public radio’s environmental news magazine, an interview by Paloma Beltran with Monique Harden, an environmental justice lawyer and advocate in New Orleans.
Climate Change
DeBriefed 6 February 2026: US secret climate panel ‘unlawful’ | China’s clean energy boon | Can humans reverse nature loss?
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
Secrets and layoffs
UNLAWFUL PANEL: A federal judge ruled that the US energy department “violated the law when secretary Chris Wright handpicked five researchers who rejected the scientific consensus on climate change to work in secret on a sweeping government report on global warming”, reported the New York Times. The newspaper explained that a 1972 law “does not allow agencies to recruit or rely on secret groups for the purposes of policymaking”. A Carbon Brief factcheck found more than 100 false or misleading claims in the report.
DARKNESS DESCENDS: The Washington Post reportedly sent layoff notices to “at least 14” of its climate journalists, as part of a wider move from the newspaper’s billionaire owner, Jeff Bezos, to eliminate 300 jobs at the publication, claimed Climate Colored Goggles. After the layoffs, the newspaper will have five journalists left on its award-winning climate desk, according to the substack run by a former climate reporter at the Los Angeles Times. It comes after CBS News laid off most of its climate team in October, it added.
WIND UNBLOCKED: Elsewhere, a separate federal ruling said that a wind project off the coast of New York state can continue, which now means that “all five offshore wind projects halted by the Trump administration in December can resume construction”, said Reuters. Bloomberg added that “Ørsted said it has spent $7bn on the development, which is 45% complete”.
Around the world
- CHANGING TIDES: The EU is “mulling a new strategy” in climate diplomacy after struggling to gather support for “faster, more ambitious action to cut planet-heating emissions” at last year’s UN climate summit COP30, reported Reuters.
- FINANCE ‘CUT’: The UK government is planning to cut climate finance by more than a fifth, from £11.6bn over the past five years to £9bn in the next five, according to the Guardian.
- BIG PLANS: India’s 2026 budget included a new $2.2bn funding push for carbon capture technologies, reported Carbon Brief. The budget also outlined support for renewables and the mining and processing of critical minerals.
- MOROCCO FLOODS: More than 140,000 people have been evacuated in Morocco as “heavy rainfall and water releases from overfilled dams led to flooding”, reported the Associated Press.
- CASHFLOW: “Flawed” economic models used by governments and financial bodies “ignor[e] shocks from extreme weather and climate tipping points”, posing the risk of a “global financial crash”, according to a Carbon Tracker report covered by the Guardian.
- HEATING UP: The International Olympic Committee is discussing options to hold future winter games earlier in the year “because of the effects of warmer temperatures”, said the Associated Press.
54%
The increase in new solar capacity installed in Africa over 2024-25 – the continent’s fastest growth on record, according to a Global Solar Council report covered by Bloomberg.
Latest climate research
- Arctic warming significantly postpones the retreat of the Afro-Asian summer monsoon, worsening autumn rainfall | Environmental Research Letters
- “Positive” images of heatwaves reduce the impact of messages about extreme heat, according to a survey of 4,000 US adults | Environmental Communication
- Greenland’s “peripheral” glaciers are projected to lose nearly one-fifth of their total area and almost one-third of their total volume by 2100 under a low-emissions scenario | The Cryosphere
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
Solar power, electric vehicles and other clean-energy technologies drove more than a third of the growth in China’s economy in 2025 – and more than 90% of the rise in investment, according to new analysis for Carbon Brief (shown in blue above). Clean-energy sectors contributed a record 15.4tn yuan ($2.1tn) in 2025, some 11.4% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP) – comparable to the economies of Brazil or Canada, the analysis said.
Spotlight
Can humans reverse nature decline?
This week, Carbon Brief travelled to a UN event in Manchester, UK to speak to biodiversity scientists about the chances of reversing nature loss.
Officials from more than 150 countries arrived in Manchester this week to approve a new UN report on how nature underpins economic prosperity.
The meeting comes just four years before nations are due to meet a global target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss, agreed in 2022 under the landmark “Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework” (GBF).
At the sidelines of the meeting, Carbon Brief spoke to a range of scientists about humanity’s chances of meeting the 2030 goal. Their answers have been edited for length and clarity.
Dr David Obura, ecologist and chair of Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES)
We can’t halt and reverse the decline of every ecosystem. But we can try to “bend the curve” or halt and reverse the drivers of decline. That’s the economic drivers, the indirect drivers and the values shifts we need to have. What the GBF aspires to do, in terms of halting and reversing biodiversity loss, we can put in place the enabling drivers for that by 2030, but we won’t be able to do it fast enough at this point to halt [the loss] of all ecosystems.
Dr Luthando Dziba, executive secretary of IPBES
Countries are due to report on progress by the end of February this year on their national strategies to the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD]. Once we get that, coupled with a process that is ongoing within the CBD, which is called the global stocktake, I think that’s going to give insights on progress as to whether this is possible to achieve by 2030…Are we on the right trajectory? I think we are and hopefully we will continue to move towards the final destination of having halted biodiversity loss, but also of living in harmony with nature.
Prof Laura Pereira, scientist at the Global Change Institute at Wits University, South Africa
At the global level, I think it’s very unlikely that we’re going to achieve the overall goal of halting biodiversity loss by 2030. That being said, I think we will make substantial inroads towards achieving our longer term targets. There is a lot of hope, but we’ve also got to be very aware that we have not necessarily seen the transformative changes that are going to be needed to really reverse the impacts on biodiversity.
Dr David Cooper, chair of the UK’s Joint Nature Conservation Committee and former executive secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity
It’s important to look at the GBF as a whole…I think it is possible to achieve those targets, or at least most of them, and to make substantial progress towards them. It is possible, still, to take action to put nature on a path to recovery. We’ll have to increasingly look at the drivers.
Prof Andrew Gonzalez, McGill University professor and co-chair of an IPBES biodiversity monitoring assessment
I think for many of the 23 targets across the GBF, it’s going to be challenging to hit those by 2030. I think we’re looking at a process that’s starting now in earnest as countries [implement steps and measure progress]…You have to align efforts for conserving nature, the economics of protecting nature [and] the social dimensions of that, and who benefits, whose rights are preserved and protected.
Neville Ash, director of the UN Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre
The ambitions in the 2030 targets are very high, so it’s going to be a stretch for many governments to make the actions necessary to achieve those targets, but even if we make all the actions in the next four years, it doesn’t mean we halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030. It means we put the action in place to enable that to happen in the future…The important thing at this stage is the urgent action to address the loss of biodiversity, with the result of that finding its way through by the ambition of 2050 of living in harmony with nature.
Prof Pam McElwee, Rutgers University professor and co-chair of an IPBES “nexus assessment” report
If you look at all of the available evidence, it’s pretty clear that we’re going to keep experiencing biodiversity decline. I mean, it’s fairly similar to the 1.5C climate target. We are not going to meet that either. But that doesn’t mean that you slow down the ambition…even though you recognise that we probably won’t meet that specific timebound target, that’s all the more reason to continue to do what we’re doing and, in fact, accelerate action.
Watch, read, listen
OIL IMPACTS: Gas flaring has risen in the Niger Delta since oil and gas major Shell sold its assets in the Nigerian “oil hub”, a Climate Home News investigation found.
LOW SNOW: The Washington Post explored how “climate change is making the Winter Olympics harder to host”.
CULTURE WARS: A Media Confidential podcast examined when climate coverage in the UK became “part of the culture wars”.
Coming up
- 2-8 February: 12th session of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), Manchester, UK
- 8 February: Japanese general election
- 8 February: Portugal presidential election
- 11 February: Barbados general election
- 11-12 February: UN climate chief Simon Stiell due to speak in Istanbul, Turkey
Pick of the jobs
- UK Met Office, senior climate science communicator | Salary: £43,081-£46,728. Location: Exeter, UK
- Canadian Red Cross, programme officer, Indigenous operations – disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation | Salary: $56,520-$60,053. Location: Manitoba, Canada
- Aldersgate Group, policy officer | Salary: £33,949-£39,253. Location: London (hybrid)
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
This is an online version of Carbon Brief’s weekly DeBriefed email newsletter. Subscribe for free here.
The post DeBriefed 6 February 2026: US secret climate panel ‘unlawful’ | China’s clean energy boon | Can humans reverse nature loss? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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