Greens erupt as fossil fuel ‘phaseout’ is dropped from proposed climate deal
“COP28 is now on the verge of complete failure,” former U.S. Vice President Al Gore said. But organizers of the summit in Dubai urged nations to be flexible and compromise.
COP28 climate summit President Sultan al-Jaber, who also leads the United Arab Emirates’ state-owned oil company, claps during a session Monday in Dubai. | Rafiq Maqbool/AP
By Karl Mathiesen, Zia Weise and Sara Schonhardt
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The prospect of a deal to end fossil fuels faded on Monday in the oil-rich United Arab Emirates, when organizers of the U.N. climate summit released a draft proposal that merely suggested reducing them instead.
That outcome would fall far short of the demands that environmental groups, the U.S., the European Union and vulnerable island nations had laid out before the COP28 summit in Dubai, with some activists saying the talks would be a failure if they did not call for phasing out the production of coal, oil and natural gas.
The draft “really doesn’t meet the expectations of this COP in terms of the urgently needed transition to clean sources of energy and the phaseout of fossil fuels,” U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said during a fractious, closed-door meeting late Monday night and early Tuesday, which POLITICO listened to via an unsanctioned feed.
Delusions of Adequacy 