Cop28, marking a key stress test for the Paris Agreement, will be about facing the facts, correcting course and giving solutions a real chance.
The UAE talks cap a year that saw the world’s climate scientists lay out the unequivocal need for steep and immediate emissions cuts to limit warming to 1.5ºC and ways to get there.
A year in which the International Energy Agency set out a narrow but feasible 1.5ºC aligned pathway for the decline of fossil fuels and acceleration of renewables.
Fossil fuels are relentlessly and undeniably killing us, but renewable energy promises a better future, where no one is left behind.
Primer: The ‘inevitable’ fossil fuel fight set to dominate Cop28
Take my homeland of Denmark as an example. For more than 80 years Denmark has allowed exploration for hydrocarbons and since 1972, oil – and later gas – has been produced in the Danish offshore waters of the North Sea.
In 2019 alone, Denmark produced a total of 3.2 billion cubic meters of fossil gas. So we’ve certainly done our part in causing this crisis.
Wind is winning
Yet, now we’re proving the impossible possible. Wind energy, which was long seen as a nice-to-have but not good for energy security, is already delivering over half of all Denmark’s power needs, largely thanks to community commitment and political ambition.
Furthermore, the Danish Parliament announced in 2020 that it would cancel all future licensing rounds for new oil and gas exploration and production permits in the Danish part of the North Sea and end existing production by 2050.
The Nordic nation hasn’t stopped there as it initiated the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an international alliance of governments and stakeholders working together to facilitate the managed phase-out of oil and gas production.
Launched at Cop26 and led by the governments of Denmark and Costa Rica, the alliance aims to elevate the issue of oil and gas production phase-out in international climate dialogues, such as those we will shortly see in Dubai.
Denmark doesn’t have it all sorted out though as oil and gas production is projected to increase over the coming years before peaking in 2028 and 2026 respectively and will start declining hereafter.
Make polluters pay
Rising emissions and planned expansion of fossil fuel production, wherever in the world, are wildly out of sync with the direction of progress needed on the international stage, while financial support to reduce emissions in poorer countries, along with finance to address escalating climate impacts, remains completely inadequate.
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The last thing the world needs is new fossil fuel developments. At Cop28, governments must do their utmost to agree to end expansion and instead rapidly phase out coal, oil and gas, and accelerate the renewable energy transition.
It doesn’t end there. Citizens, like me, of wealthy countries, like Denmark, with historical responsibility for the climate crisis, need to make sure our governments take accountability for finding and channeling money from where it sits to where it’s needed – from polluters to those least responsible and most in need as they transition to renewable energy and build climate resilience.
We need a credible finance package that includes the launch of a new Loss and Damage Fund, and steps to start making polluters pay for the destruction and harm they have caused.
The climate crisis is not in some far-off future. It is here right now and the planet is not coping despite the credible solutions on offer.
A world free of fossil fuels is possible as much as climate resilient frontline communities, but it won’t feel that way until it is done. It’s time for governments to get it done and stop the climate emergency. Dubai awaits.
Mads Flarup Christensen is the executive director of Greenpeace International
The post The Cop28 climate summit must set us free from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
The United Nations may have accepted that overshooting 1.5C of warming – at least temporarily – is inevitable – but God’s representative on Earth didn’t get the memo.
The new pope, Leo XIV, sent a video message to cardinals from the Global South gathered at the Amazonian Museum in Belém last night, saying “there is still time to keep the rise in global temperature below 1.5°C” although, he warned, “the window is closing.”
“As stewards of God’s creation, we are called to act swiftly, with faith and prophecy, to protect the gift he entrusted to us,” he said, reading from a sheet of paper in front of a portrait of the Vatican.
And he defended the 10-year-old Paris Agreement, saying it has ”driven real progress and remains our strongest tool for protecting people and the planet.” “It is not the Agreement that is failing – we are failing in our response,” he said In particular, the American Pope pointed to“the political will of some.”
“We walk alongside scientists, leaders and pastors of every nation and creed. We are guardians of creation, not rivals for its spoils. Let us send a clear global signal together: nations standing in unwavering solidarity behind the Paris Agreement and behind climate cooperation,” he emphasised.
UN climate chief Simon Stiell welcomed the message, adding that the Pope’s words “challenge us to keep choosing hope and action, honouring our shared humanity and standing with communities all around the world already crying out in floods, droughts, storms and relentless heat”.
The post COP Bulletin Day 8: Pope keeps faith in 1.5C appeared first on Climate Home News.
I pause to write this letter in the middle of week one of the 30th UNFCCC Conference of the Parties — the big international climate conference, the space for multilateral decision making to save ourselves from ourselves and rein in the climate crisis. Day two photos showed that a torrential downpour left the blue zone entrance flooded. Mother Nature is present and making her anger known.
This morning I also saw the announcement of Time Magazine’s 100 Climate leaders for 2025. At the top of the list I found the Global Head of Climate Advisory for JP Morgan Chase, Sarah Kapnick. I shook my head, thinking perhaps I was still asleep, and refocused. There it was indeed.
JPMorgan Chase is the world’s largest financier of fossil fuels, having provided over $382 billion since the Paris Agreement, with $53.5 billion in 2024 alone. The bank faces criticism from scientists and activists for its continued large-scale investments, particularly in fossil fuel expansion. How does a person who works for such an institution end up being lauded as a hero working to resolve the climate crisis?
Last week the Guardian released a report from Kick Big Polluters Out showing that over the past four years fossil fuel lobbyists have gained access to negotiation spaces at COP. The roughly 5,350 lobbyists mingling with world leaders and climate negotiators in recent years worked for at least 859 fossil fuel organizations including trade groups, foundations and 180 oil, gas and coal companies involved in every part of the supply chain from exploration and production to distribution and equipment. There are more fossil fuel lobbyists and executives in negotiations than delegates representing the most climate vulnerable countries on the planet.
We’ve known since the late 1800s that greenhouse gas emissions warm the planet. In 1902 a Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius calculated that burning fossil fuels will, over time, lead to a hotter Earth. But the fossil fuel industry followed Big Tobacco’s playbook and despite knowing the truth, waged a multi-decade, multibillion dollar disinformation, propaganda and lobbying campaign to delay climate action by confusing the public and policymakers about the climate crisis and its solutions. See this report from Climate Action Against Disinformation and the Exxon funded think tanks to spread climate change denial in Latin America.
They’ve infiltrated our K-12 classrooms. The Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers, has spent upwards of $40m over the past two decades on providing education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curriculums, a speaker series and an after-school program — all at no cost to educators of children from kindergarten to high school. In Ohio students learn about the beauty of fracking. Even Scholastic, a brand trusted by parents and educators, has attached its seal of approval to pro fossil fuel materials. Discovery Education has also embedded pro oil propaganda into its science and stem free resources.
There is no just transition, no possible way to keep our global temperatures to the limit agreed to in Paris ten years ago without a fast and fair phase out of fossil fuels. We know this is possible, during the first half of 2025, renewables generated more electricity than coal. As UN General Secretary António Guterres said in his opening remarks in Belem, “We’ve never been better equipped to fight back… we just lack political courage.”
Next year, I hope that TIME’s Climate 100 is a list of indigenous climate activists from around the world, whose leadership has led us to find the political courage Guterres spoke of, the courage to do the right thing and phase out fossil fuels forever.
Susan Phillips
Executive Director
Photo by Andrea DiCenzo
The post A fast, fair, full, and funded fossil fuel phaseout appeared first on Climate Generation.
As COP30 reaches its midway point in the Brazilian city of Belém, Carbon Brief has hosted its second “ask us anything” webinar to exclusively answer questions submitted by holders of the Insider Pass.
The webinar kicked off with an overview of where the negotiations are on Day 8, plus what it was like to be among the 70,000-strong “people’s march” on Saturday.
At present, there are 44 agreed texts at COP30, with many negotiating streams remaining highly contested, as shown by Carbon Brief’s live text tracker.
Topics discussed during the webinar included the potential of a “cover text” at COP30, plus updates on negotiations such as the global goal on adaptation and the just-transition work programme.
Journalists also answered questions on the potential for a “fossil-fuel phaseout roadmap”, the impact of finance – including the Baku to Belém roadmap, which was released the week before COP30 – and Article 6.
The webinar was moderated by Carbon Brief’s director and editor, Leo Hickman, and featured six of our journalists – half of them on the ground in Belém – covering all elements of the summit:
- Dr Simon Evans – deputy editor and senior policy editor
- Daisy Dunne – associate editor
- Josh Gabbatiss – policy correspondent
- Orla Dwyer – food, land and nature reporter
- Aruna Chandrasekhar – land, food systems and nature journalist
- Molly Lempriere – policy section editor
A recording of the webinar (below) is now available to watch on YouTube.
Watch Carbon Brief’s first COP30 “ask us anything” webinar here.
The post COP30: Carbon Brief’s second ‘ask us anything’ webinar appeared first on Carbon Brief.
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